"We have come to the conclusion that trying to evaluate a candidate's design skills in an implementation lab does not make sense and customer feedback   that we have received supports this conclusion," the company said on its Web site. "Although there may be other ways to assess design skills, we feel that the CCIE program is not the place for such an exam. Our decision is to retire the CCIE Design track."

According to the site, candidates who have passed the CCIE Design written qualification exam will be eligible to take the CCIE Routing and Switching lab. If the candidate has already passed the Routing and Switching lab, Cisco is allowing the candidate to use the passing score on the Design written exam to satisfy the CCIE recertification requirement.

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In other CCIE news, Cisco has announced new retake restrictions for CCIE Lab exams. The new policy is as follows:

"All candidates must wait 30 days in between CCIE lab exam attempts. If a candidate scores less than 20 points on day one, the candidate must wait at least 6 months before making another lab attempt. Candidates scoring under 20 points on day one can schedule a new lab attempt at any time provided it is at least six months beyond the date of their previous lab attempt."    

For more information on both these stories, please visit the CCIE section of the Cisco Web site. -B.N.