Writing about exams that have clear non-disclosure agreements can be a bit of a challenge. So, in this lab series, I've been taking the published information about the exams at face value, looking for the words "configure", "verify", and "troubleshoot" in the exam topics to state what hands-on skills will be tested on the ONT exam - and it makes me wonder like the old lady in the old Wendy's commercials, "Where's the Beef"?

Here's why: roughly 75% of the ONT exam topics related to QoS on routers, with the remaining 25% on wireless. Ignoring wireless for now, there are only 3 QoS exam topics that use those three keywords (config, verify, t'shoot):

• NBAR
• QoS Pre-classify
• AutoQoS

So, it got me thinking - surely there's more than those three topics as hands-on topics on the ONT exam! I almost went and took the exam just to find out - and then the issue of non-disclosure came to mind, so if I took the exam, it'd be inappropriate to turn around and tell the details of what I saw.

So, I wondered what other clues might be useful, so I turned to the official authorized ONT course, specifically to the lab guide. Beyond the three topics above, the ONT course's lab guide also teaches the students about how to implement the following features:

• MQC
• FIFO, WFQ, LLQ queuing
• Class-Based Compression
• Class-Based LFI

Considering all that, in this ongoing effort to choose gear for a CCNP lab, I've decided that I'd scope the ONT QoS lab coverage with this larger list of features - those hands-on topics from the exam topic list, plus those in the authorize course lab guide.

Now, to the good news: you've got a lot of good router models and IOS versions to choose from. I couldn't find QoS Preclassify in the feature navigator (www.cisco.com/go/fn), but I found the rest of the features listed above. These features are supported on 2600's - both non-XM's and XM's, 3640's, and of course the currently-sold router models as well. I'm just mentioning these particular models because in the CCNA lab series, the general consensus was that these were the best price-performers in the used market these days.

While you can use the pretty cheap (less than $100 on Ebay buy-it-now) non-XM 2600's, there is some QoS study benefit to using the XM's, 3640's and other routers that support IOS version 12.4. Regardless of router, you'll want at least 12.2(15)T/12.3 IOS. Additionally, these features are all in the IP feature set, so whatever the feature set you have, you should have these QoS features. Additionally, Cisco has been steadily updating and adding QoS features during the last 5-6 years, so for routers that can handle a later IOS, you'd be able to support additional QoS features as need be. That's helpful for CCIE prep as well.

I'll wrap up the analysis of the ONT QoS coverage by saying that just for CCNP, 2600 non-XMs, 12.2(15)T or beyond, is probably good enough.

Finally, I'll close with a question, and as usual, your answers will help me for the next posts. ONT covers wireless (see the exam topics here). If you had to spend say... $150 on a Cisco AP and WLAN card (not Linksys), and that let you try maybe 30-50% of the hands-on skills tested for ONT, would you spend the $$? I'm seriously considering leaving Wireless out of the CCNP lab mix, but I'm looking for your thoughts. Thanks!!

Wendell