Don't panic. Don't rejoice. Don't send John Chambers a letter. But at the end of the post, I wanna know - did the title make you think "hoorah" or "oh @%$&"?

Let me be clear: this is just pure speculation on my part, but I found it to be interesting speculation, so I wanted to share it with you. I got started down this path by noticing Randy Muller's blog on the Microsoft Subnet. Paraphrasing, Randy's blog started to discuss how much real/virtualized/simulated/emulated content could be or should be on some of the Microsoft exams. That got me thinking about that same thing for Cisco exams... and that got me thinking about cheating, and all the good stuff Robert Williams talks about in his blog. (Good thing I don't have a boss - I'd be admitting I need more to do if I've got that much time to read!) Anyway, back to the main point, which I'll throw out as an assertion, and let you comment:

Cisco should change the Associate and Professional level cert exams to use only Sim and Simlet questions today, and strengthen it further by converting to using real IOS images on the testing platform through virtualization tools.

Quick background: Simlets use a simulator, but with multiple-guess questions. Sometimes, you don't get access to enable mode. Simlets require you to choose commands and interpret their output in order to answer the multiguess questions. Sim questions require you to change the config, so Sim questions always boil down to "the config is broken - fix it".

In month's past in this blog, when we've talked about the value of certifications, one of the overriding and most heart-felt opinions ended up as one of my blog titles: " Skills Rule, Certs (without Skills) Drool". Skills matter in real life, with the certs being 1 of many things that can give evidence to someone's actual skills. Certs without skills ... are bad, and from comments I've heard over the years, a cert without comparable skills makes people look worse than just not having the skills. So, my first argument is simple: an exam that requires the use of the CLI for majority of the exam time requires more skills at making the gear work, which in turn increases the value of the certifications, and the perception of those certifications in the job market.

But it's much more than a perception issue. I contend that if you made the exams all Sim/Simlets - and made each instance of the exam cover as many as possible of the related show and configuration commands for that certification - it would be a much greater proof of skills. Ultimately, it's a better gauge of the skills Cisco wants to see in their partner engineers.

I think you could still ask about concepts and theory with Simlet questions, and replace 80% of the multi-guess and drag-n-drop questions with Simlet questions. That's just a guess, of course. For the other 20% - things that might be impossible to ask via a Sim or Simlet - I'd argue that the benefits of a totally CLI-oriented test might outweigh the loss of coverage of some theoretical and conceptual items. How to test the theory with Simlet questions, requiring the user do some command? Most of the concepts and theory is reflected somewhere in the output of a show command.

For example, if router R1 connects to 2 different classful networks, uses RIP-2 but leaves the auto-summary command as default, R1 will auto-summarize routes to the classful network boundary. A Simlet question could start with those details in the initial configuration, and not even give the user access to router R1. The Simlet would then require the user to find the summarized route in router R2, as learned from R1, and know that auto-summary would be one reason that R2 only has a route for the entire classful network, instead of the particular subnet.

The biggest downside I see with such a move would be whether Cisco could touch enough topics on a single exam. So, for those of you who have taken a Cisco cert test: How many Sim/Simlet questions could you cram into one exam? Take the CCNA 640-802 (CCNA) exam, for instance. It's listed as a 90 minute test, but 15 minutes of that is so you can get settled in, take the exam tutorial, etc. So... how many Sim and Simlet questions would be comparable time pressure to the current mix of CCNA exam questions? 8? 10? 12? And if you knew it was all related to CLI in some way... would 15 be out of the question in 75 minutes? And even with 15 questions, could Cisco cover anywhere near as many topics as they do on a single current CCNA exam?

So, survey time. Give me your posts, your survey clicks, your rants about how absolutely crazy this idea is. And let me state again - if I had heard this from Cisco, no way I'd be able to post it here. So, it's just Wendell's ramble! Let me know your thoughts.

Later in the week, I'll wrap this up, address what you bring up, and talk about how I think making a change to all CLI-based questions solves the braindump cheating problem.