Cisco Certified Design Expert certification (CCDE) - Course Topics
Transport Technologies.
- Ethernet.
- CWDM/DWDM.
- Frame relay (migration only).
- Cellular and broadband (as transport methods).
- Wireless.
- Physical mediums, such as fiber and copper.
Layer 2 Control Plane.
- Physical media considerations.
- Down detection.
- Interface convergence characteristics.
- Loop detection protocols and loop-free topology mechanisms.
- Spanning tree types.
- Spanning tree tuning techniques.
- Multipath.
- Switch clustering.
- Loop detection and mitigation.
- Multicast switching.
- IGMPv2, IGMPv3, MLDv1, MLDv2.
- IGMP/MLD Snooping.
- IGMP/MLD Querier.
- Fault isolation and resiliency.
- Fate sharing.
- Redundancy.
- Virtualization.
- Segmentation.
Layer 3 Control Plane.
- Network hierarchy and topologies.
- Layers and their purposes in various environments.
- Network topology hiding.
- Unicast routing protocol operation (OSPF, EIGRP, ISIS, BGP, and RIP).
- Neighbor relationships.
- Loop-free paths.
- Flooding domains.
- Scalability.
- Routing policy.
- Redistribution methods.
- Fast convergence techniques and mechanism.
- Protocols.
- Timers.
- Topologies.
- Loop-free alternates.
- Factors affecting convergence.
- Recursion.
- Micro-loops.
- Route aggregation.
- When to leak routes / avoid suboptimal routing.
- When to include more specific routes (up to and including host routes).
- Aggregation location and techniques.
- Fault isolation and resiliency.
- Fate sharing.
- Redundancy.
- Metric-based traffic flow and modification.
- Metrics to modify traffic flow.
- Third-party next hop.
- Generic routing and addressing concepts.
- Policy-based routing.
- NAT.
- Subnetting.
- RIB-FIB relationships.
- Multicast routing concepts.
- General multicast concepts.
- MSDP/anycast.
- PIM.
Network Virtualization.
- Multiprotocol Label Switching.
- MPLS forwarding and control plane mechanisms.
- MP-BGP and related address families.
- LDP.
- Layer 2 and 3 VPN and tunneling technologies.
- Tunneling technology selection (such as DMVPN, GETVPN, IPsec, MPLS, GRE).
- Tunneling endpoint selection.
- Tunneling parameter optimization of end-user applications.
- Effects of tunneling on routing.
- Routing protocol selection and tuning for tunnels.
- Route path selection.
- MACsec (80ae).
- Infrastructure segmentation methods.
- VLAN.
- PVLAN.
- VRF-Lite.
- SD-WAN.
- Orchestration plane.
- Management plane.
- Control plane.
- Data plane.
- Segmentation.
- Policy.
- Security.
- Topologies.
- Application-based routing.
- Migration techniques.
- Design considerations.
- QOS techniques and strategies.
- Application requirements.
- Infrastructure requirements.
- Network management techniques.
- Traditional (such as SNMP, SYSLOG).
- Model-driven (such as NETCONF, RESTCONF, gNMI, streaming telemetry).
- Reference models and paradigms that are used in network management (such as FCAPS, ITIL®, TOGAF, and DevOps).
Security.
- Infrastructure security.
- Device hardening techniques and control plane protection methods.
- Management plane protection techniques.
- CPU.
- Memory thresholding.
- Securing device access.
- Data plane protection techniques
- QoS.
- Layer 2 security techniques.
- Dynamic ARP inspection.
- IPDT.
- STP security.
- Port security.
- DHCP snooping.
- IPv6-specific security mechanisms.
- VACL.
- Wireless security technologies.
- WPA.
- WPA2.
- WPA3.
- TKIP.
- AES.
- Protecting network services.
- Deep packet inspection.
- Data plane protection.
- Perimeter security and intrusion prevention.
- Firewall deployment modes.
- Routed.
- Transparent.
- Virtualization.
- Clustering and high availability.
- Firewall features.
- NAT.
- Application inspection.
- Traffic zones.
- Policy-based routing.
- TLS inspection.
- User identity.
- Geolocation.
- IPS/IDS deployment modes.
- In-line.
- Passive.
- TAP.
- Detect and mitigate common types of attacks.
- DoS/DDoS.
- Evasion techniques.
- Spoofing.
- Man-in-the-middle.
- Botnet.
- Network control and identity Management.
- Cisco ISE
- Wired and wireless network access control.
- AAA for network access with 80X and MAB.
- Guest and BYOD considerations.
- Internal and external identity sources.
- Certificate-based authentication.
- EAP Chaining authentication method.
- Integration with multifactor authentication.
- IEEE 801 Standards and Protocols.
- Indoor and outdoor RF deployments.
- Coverage.
- Throughput.
- Voice.
- Location.
- High density / very high density.
- Enterprise wireless network.
- High availability, redundancy, and resiliency.
- Controller-based mobility and controller placement.
- L2/L3 roaming.
- Tunnel traffic optimization.
- AP groups.
- AP modes.
- WLAN architectures
- Centralized
- Distributed
- Roaming optimizations
- Mesh network architecture
- RF and radio design
- Channel planning
- Channel width
- Spatial streams
- Radio Resource Management
- Client considerations, such as transmit power, RSSI, SNR
- Antenna types
- Regulatory domains
- Site survey.
- Floor maps.
- Coverage requirements.
- Building materials.
- Attenuation.
- Interferences.
- Capacity planning.
- AP cell areas.
- Wired network.
- PoE.
- Switch port capacity.
- Uplink capacity.
- Outdoor/indoor locations.
- Survey types.
- Walkthrough.
- Predictive.
- Active.
- Passive.
- Heat maps.
- Requirement gathering and analysis.
- Areas of coverage.
- Expected coverage per area.
- Client density.
- Multicast over wireless.
- mDNS.
- Location services and solutions.
- RTLS.
- DNA Spaces.
- Analytics.
- Automation, Assurance, Insights, and Telemetry (Legacy and DNAc).
- AVC/NetFlow.
- DNAc.
Automation.
- Zero-touch provisioning.
- Infrastructure as Code (tools, awareness, and when to use).
- Automation tools (i.e., Ansible).
- Orchestration platforms.
- Programming Language (e.g., Python).
- CI/CD Pipeline.
Cloud.
- Transport Technologies.
- Data Center Interconnect options.
- Layer 3 Control Plane.
- Inter-fabric connectivity, such as Multipod, Multisite.
- External connectivity for on-prem and cloud.
- Multi-cloud Network Architecture.
- Network Virtualization.
- Overlay.
- Management plane.
- Control plane.
- Data plane (such as VXLAN, MPLS).
- Segmentation.
- Policy.
- Security.
- Topologies.
- Data Center interconnect.
- Multiple site strategy.
- Service insertion.
- Virtual Networking.
- Automation.
- Deployment Models.
- Bare Metal.
- VM.
- Microservices.
- Data Center.
- Storage.
- Physical topology.
- QoS requirements.
- FC and FCoE.
- Zoning.
- Trunking.
- Link aggregation.
- Load balancing.
- iSCSI.
- Authentication.
- Multipathing.
- Application delivery.
- Load balancer deployment modes.
- Compute.
- UCS blade integration.
- UCS rack server integration.
- HyperFlex integration.
- Compute connectivity.
- SAN/LAN uplinks.
- Port modes.
Large Scale Network Technologies.
- Transport Technologies.
- Carrier Ethernet.
- Ring-based (such as SONET/SDH, OTU).
- Frame relay (migration only).
- Wireless (including satellite links, microwave links).
- Optical.
- Layer 2 Control Plane.
- Loop detection protocols and loop-free topology mechanisms.
- REP.
- Transport mechanisms and their interaction with routing protocols over different link types.
- Layer 3 Control Plane.
- Factors affecting convergence.
- Transport.
- Generic routing and addressing concepts.
- Large-scale NAT.
- Multicast routing concepts.
- Multicast delivery/implementation models.
- mVPN.
- Network Virtualization.
- Multiprotocol Label Switching.
- Segment Routing.
- LDP and SR Interworking.
- MPLS Traffic Engineering.
- QoS techniques and strategies.
- End-user requirements.
- DiffServ.
- IntServ.
- EVPN.
- Management plane.
- Control plane.
- Data plane (such as VXLAN, MPLS, PBB).
- Segmentation.
- Policy.
- Security.
- Topologies.
- Multiple site strategy.
- Security.
- Infrastructure security.
- Data plane protection techniques.
- uRPF.
- RTBH.
- Automation.
- Lifecycle management/closed-loop automation.