There’s no way to dump that lab I don’t care what anybody says. I’ve heard that crap before. Know lots of people at Cisco and they agree that it is completely false. Explain to me this. I passed the CCIE SP. There is like 30 some routers and 6 switches in the lab. They are all blank. in 8 hrs I put almost 2000 lines of code into those devices. You’re going to tell me that someone will memorize what exact code goes on what device, nevermind that it’s IOS and IOS-XR and everything you program in IPv4 you have to do in v6. Not only that, you miss one command, ONE in the core and your inter-AS communication is not working and you failed. Sorry I don’t buy it. Took me 7 months of 8 hrs a day every week day outside work plus 16 hrs on Sat to pass that lab on my third attempt. YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE FUNDAMENTALS or you will not pass. It’s a lot of work but I actually think trying to dump it would be more difficult then just learning it. I do agree with you that just because you’re a CCIE doesn’t mean you know everything. It’s just like anything else we have to keep at it, keep up with the technology and stay sharp. I’ve been in networks for 23 yrs now, I’ve worked with a lot of talented people. One guy that I had the pleasure to work with for several yrs was the sharpest person I’ve ever worked with and he didn’t have any certs. I’m with you certs don’t mean shit. But CCIE to me is a cert that demonstrates your character and unwillingness to never give up. Not to mention dedication and commitment. For me it was a personal goal that I could start and finish until the end no matter what. It also doesn’t give you a license to be a dick and I’ve seen that to. Finish that masters then do that CCIE! That would be a nice little combo!

LikeLike

LikeLike

LikeLike

Three years ago I had a car accident, which has left me with a permanent brain injury, I’m so lucky in some respects that I still have that knowledge, and can still do my job, but learning new stuff is very tough and I expect my time in industry is limited if I can’t overcome some of the problems. I have thought long and hard about trying to have another go at the CCIE if only to try and beat the physical injury, however, I too am sometimes put off by the new world, should I try learning Python or something else? However I find it quite alien and very hard due to my condition. My customer is not yet embracing the new world and may not for some years, in fact unless you are looking at greenfield deployments I would argue moving from traditional campus/DC networks to new fabrics, SDN and ACI, its actually really hard and very expensive to do so.

The CCIE has a lot of merit, even if you never pass the exam, the foundation in knowledge you get from it, takes you to another level, and yes I can easily know when someone regardless of qualification is having me on, its been invaluable in so many situations. I’m glad I retain a lot of it, but I do regret not passing it when I was more able to do so, especially when I’m asked if I know what I’m doing by senior managers who see the CCIE (Correctly sometimes) as a badge that puts down in their minds as I don’t have it.

LikeLike

In the past (“iron age”) it wasn’t really possible but with cloud computing, it became possible to abstract the infrastructure as a service. There is no need to re-invent wheel or create some snowflake systems. DevOps is for the present and NoOps is for the near future.

LikeLiked by 1 person

Yes, it helps get you hired cause HR can look for that in a stack of resumes.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be better than somebody without it.

As always, YMMV.
…karl

LikeLike

1stly : When it comes to new technologies vs a CCIE , i always tell people to picture a fighter jet pilot being given a Next generation plane. First, having been in the thick of the things and confidence gained from that, ensures the guy can pick up the challenge. The curve is not so steep.

2ndly : As we talk about new technologies like cloud, virtualization, SDN etc, you have to realize that majority of the current networks are actually hardware and more hardware. Cisco still makes good margins, same case with Juniper, Huawei and the likes on hardware. These new technologies have evolved to the point of being able to run a DC network in the cloud but it is yet to reach a point of carry TDM traffic from remote areas and MPLS traffic engineering in some advanced service providers cores. In addition, ISPs and the rest are yet to embrace the part of entrusting the logic of their network to some controller and software . Single points of failures is any CIO’s biggest headache. Same applies to having to justify for Forklift projects into uncharted waters

3rdly : Being a CCIE is not really about Cisco. It is about delving deep into the mucky waters of networking and understanding concepts in a deeper way. I for one, I have been faced with Huawei boxes, Juniper firewalls and now am deploying Fortigates and Perl Altos. All i have always looked for is the 10 page or so pdf manual of how to log in 🙂 🙂 and being able to do “?” on the command prompt. The rest falls in very comfortably.

LikeLike

Thanks Jonathan! I love the wording on viewing what Cisco does as a wrapper, I couldn’t agree more.

LikeLiked by 1 person

This is probably the most important comment here.

I have a background in Voice (I’m a collab CCIE), but found myself in a similar situation. In chasing the CCIE, I over-specialized in VoIP. Therefore, my routing and switching knowledge is relatively poor, considering my IE status. However, I also managed to transition to Linux networking pretty easily and have also had zero issues in picking up any SIP-based VoIP system – days, not months as you said.

My advice therefore to any aspirant is to focus less on the clunky command line configs. I prepped for three years for the lab and spent two and a half of those three years learning the underlying protocols. I focused rather on RFC documents and reference material that focused on protocols, stacks/queues and hardware/software interactions. If you view what Cisco does as just a wrapper for the actual skill set that you need to acquire to become a strong network engineer, your skills become easily transferable. This way the qualification becomes a by-product of acquiring valuable knowledge.

As an aside, it is also a hell of a lot cheaper to learn these skills in open source than paying an instructor to teach you an antiquated interface that (oops, soapbox) will becoming largely irrelevant in the next 5 years.

LikeLiked by 1 person

Thanks for the comment, Arie. I’m 100% on board with the network automation trend but I totally agree that though it’s a great tool, it’s doesn’t supplant foundational networking knowledge

LikeLike