CCIE R/S Lab Sample Open-Ended Exam Questions

Here are some facts regarding this portion of the exam:

You must complete this portion of the exam before you start the traditional configuration portion.
You have a total of 30 minutes to complete this section, you may finish early if you like and immediately begin your configuration section.
You will receive 4 questions via the computer and you must provide short answers using the computer interface. The questions are not oral in nature. Typical responses require 4 to 5 words at most.
Spelling and/or grammar does not count against you.
The questions are manually graded by a proctor. If you purchase an exam re-read, they will re-grade your question responses.
You may not return to the short answer questions once you have begun the configuration portion of the lab exam.
You will not receive a score when you complete this section, but you must pass this portion to pass the CCIE. You will receive your score in the open-ended section if you fail the exam. The score is reported as 0% or 100% (pass or fail). You may only miss one question in the section in order to pass.
Most students finish the 4 to 5 questions in approximately 12 minutes.
The configuration portion of the exam has been reduced to accommodate this initial 30 minutes.
You still have a total of 8 hours that makeup the open-ended questions and the configuration portion.
You may not access the DOC-CD to answer these questions.
Using materials for the CCIE Written is an excellent method of studying for the Short Answer questions.

Here are some samples for the many, many different open-ended questions Cisco could ask for the R/S track. Please notice there is no need for panic if you are using one of our recommended study approaches.

Bridging and Switching

What is the size of the 802.1Q tag?
Examine the diagram shown, describe the flow of traffic in VLAN 12 from Switch A to Switch D.
What is the trunk setting that allows the port to trunk only if the port receives the proper DTP frames?

IP IGP Routing

What are the five possible metric components for EIGRP and which two are used by default?
Given the network diagram shown, what is the path traffic will take from Router A to Router B?
OSPF bases cost on what value?
Which routing protocol uses a destination Multicast address of 224.0.0.9?

BGP

What issues can the use of a peer group solve in BGP?
What are the default administrative distances for BGP?

IP and IOS Features

How can a Cisco router assist a client PC to obtain a DHCP address from a DHCP server located on a remote subnet?
What technology allows a router to respond to the name resolution request of a host as if it were the destination host itself?

IP Multicast

Which multicast PIM method uses a flood and prune approach?
Which option for RP assignment is an open standard?
What is the purpose of the override keyword when statically setting an RP?

QoS

What happens to traffic in the priority queue of the LLQ method that exceeds the specified rate?
Which bits of the ToS byte are used for DSCP markings?
Between AF21 and AF32, which has the higher drop probability?

Security

Given the access list and assignment shown in the diagram, what happens to Telnet traffic?