Applied online and got a call from the HR to set up a pre-pre-screen! This was a 15-min. interview in which the HR went through the motions talking about my resume and experience. Few days later had a C-test. Not the easiest. If you are not a regular in C, then you will take some time even though your C knowledge is complete. This was followed by two 45-min interviews with team members and the engineering manager. I was very well prepared and the first interview went very well. He was thoroughly impressed. Then came the engineering manager. He seemed 'unprepared' about what to ask and started random questions on my experience. This also went well. Later, I thought some of my answers were incomplete, but thought I had done enough to get an onsite. Got a reject mail in a few days. Overall, I thought the employees were very polite. It doesn't seem that Cisco needs brilliant people. People with good programming skills who know simple things like code optimization, data structures, and few relevant projects go through to the final stage. But, what I learned was that one position has about 10 people contesting and say 5 are up to the mark. After this, I think the hiring decision becomes a subjective one. The engineering manager clearly seemed to have a bias towards CS guys. I was EE and his mood changed after hearing this.

Explain TCP/IP.