CCIE Journey

[Digital Whispers]

So, I've officially started studying for my CCIE. I downloaded the CCIE exam topics matrix from the Cisco site which contains some valuable resources for studying assistance. Besides that I have a list of books I'll be using, various training videos, and so on. The first topic involves the difference between IOS and IOS XE. There are three pages in the CCIE OCG book, which lightly touches on the subject. I found a Cisco Press book which devotes a whole chapter to the differences between IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR. I figure that would probably have more than enough to cover what I need to know for the test.

[deanwebb]

Did you get your CCNP yet? There's a TON of stuff in gearing up for the CCNP exams that goes well beyond the CCNA exams. Most of us here strongly recommend getting the CCNP as part of the study towards CCIE.

Also, if you're new to the field, it doesn't seem right to jump right in to a CCIE. Employers question how one goes from little to everything in a short jump.

[NetworkGroover]

Yeah I'd say get your CCNP for a good foundation and hold off until the CCIE unless:
1. You know you have to have it to get to where you want to go
2. You're currently working a job that will benefit from it or require it

It's a tough call.  There is no doubt benefit to learning the material involved in the CCIE, but whether you want to really spend the time and $$$ is another matter.

For me - I was right at that step, but I've decided that while there is some benefit, there isn't enough for me to spend the time and $$$ learning something focused largely on Cisco gear when I work for a competing vendor - I'll probably use maybe 30-50% of it on my job, and the rest will be largely useless.. and then you get sucked into the recertification game every couple years.  Just didn't seem worth it in *my particular unique situation* - definitely don't need it to make more money... but I'm kind of an oddball in comparison to most network engineers I think - I've been really lucky.

[LynK]

Let me give you my opinion.

Everyone defaults to the CCIE R&S. Why not find an industry you love, and make the most of it? Some love telephony, some love R&S, some love design, some love data center. Find what makes you tick, and go for it. I would recommend at least getting the CCNA R&S before going into any other field. The new CCNA is very good, and covers A LOT of the materials to get you off and running.

Another avenue would be to get a job and see what your company needs. They need a security dood? Get certified in that. They need DC dood? Get certiifed in that.

etc. etc.

What matters more than then $$ is finding what you like to do. The niche that really turns your nerd nob. something you could talk about all day/night/weekend. Something you could work with for the next 30 years.

[deanwebb]

LynK and Aspiring bring up good points. For me and where I'm at, a CCIE R&S is not a good fit (I'm in security) and a CCIE Security is *very* vendor-specific, so it's more appropriate for a VAR or other person that needs a Cisco-centric background.

I'm working a lot with Tufin. Getting the Tufin cert was something I wanted to do along the way to formalize and quantify my skillset. I was working with the TippingPoint IPS in 2015-2016, but I'm not now. My cert there is something I can put on a resume, but it's not fresh for me, so I'd feel dishonest in bringing it up in a job interview except to say that I could get brought back up to speed on it pretty quickly.

I do a lot of work with ForeScout's CounterACT NAC product. I'm very much interested in formalizing and quantifying my skills in that product. It's some good stuff and if I want to change careers, I really would want to keep working with that product. Therefore, having the right letters to get past an HRWall makes sense.

It's like we see the holes we want to get into, so we have to make ourselves into the pegs that fit into those holes. Certs alone don't do that: we have to have the right combination of experience and roles to give those certs some context.

[wintermute000]

Let me give you my opinion.

Everyone defaults to the CCIE R&S. Why not find an industry you love, and make the most of it? Some love telephony, some love R&S, some love design, some love data center. Find what makes you tick, and go for it. I would recommend at least getting the CCNA R&S before going into any other field. The new CCNA is very good, and covers A LOT of the materials to get you off and running.

Another avenue would be to get a job and see what your company needs. They need a security dood? Get certified in that. They need DC dood? Get certiifed in that.

etc. etc.

What matters more than then $$ is finding what you like to do. The niche that really turns your nerd nob. something you could talk about all day/night/weekend. Something you could work with for the next 30 years.

The CCIE RS is the 'default' because along with SP (heavily related) it is the only true cross-vendor applicable IE.
BGP is BGP, OSPF is OSPF, IP is IP and ethernet is ethernet.
It is also incredibly useful regardless of whether you deal with a specialisation or not.

Lets run through the others

- DC: nightmarish mish-mash of technologies - 75% of CCIE DCs never get to use half of their armory (i.e. either they focus on UCS/storage and forget switching or focus on switching and forget UCS/storage) - gotta learn ACI, how to lab? DC trends are universally anti-Cisco - open standards, EVPN/VXLAN overlays, net-ops deployment via puppet/chef/ansible, orchestration via NETCONF/YANG, pizza boxes for compute, hyperconverged, NSX, openstack, none of the hyperscalers use Cisco DC technologies......

- Voice: dying market, super vendor specific (i.e. how to drive CUCM), their SBCs are laughable (everyone serious uses ACME/Sonus). Cloud hosted + mobiles is rapidly relegating this market segment to a niche.

- Security: super vendor specific, not market leader except maybe ISE, oh yeah you gotta do ISE, syllabus is rapidly obsoleted as ASAs die off but the sourcefire content is still targeting 2015 sourcefire technologies....

- Wireless - its impossible, no materials, require lots of hardware to lab, converged arch is dying in the behind - we have literally not moved a single converged arch deal in 2 years, Cisco Meraki / Aruba are eating their lunch and Ruckus (Brocade?) + Aerohive + Fortinet (Meru) = fragmented market where Cisco is not a clear leader in any way

Finally, only RS and SP have the troubleshoot segment, which separates men from the boys.

But also I'd second the above advice: lots of people just go straight for the dream and then get completely disillusioned during the slog. They also generally under-estimate the difficulty - going from CCNP to CCIE level is around 4x the gap between CCNA and CCNP. In fact, I'd say obtaining 4x CCNPs is easier than a single CCIE (source: myself). Small steps - definitely knock over CCNP level certs first, then decide if you're willing to commit 18 months and ~1000 hours.
 

[NetworkGroover]

Yep - excellent points.  As Winter points out - R&S is the real general bread and butter.  That's the only IE I've EVER considered.  It is a crap-ton of work - so you need to make sure you're a) dedicated and, b) it makes sense for you in the big picture.  Tread very carefully.

[LynK]

The CCIE RS is the 'default' because along with SP (heavily related) it is the only true cross-vendor applicable IE.
BGP is BGP, OSPF is OSPF, IP is IP and ethernet is ethernet.
It is also incredibly useful regardless of whether you deal with a specialisation or not.

Lets run through the others

- DC: nightmarish mish-mash of technologies - 75% of CCIE DCs never get to use half of their armory (i.e. either they focus on UCS/storage and forget switching or focus on switching and forget UCS/storage) - gotta learn ACI, how to lab? DC trends are universally anti-Cisco - open standards, EVPN/VXLAN overlays, net-ops deployment via puppet/chef/ansible, orchestration via NETCONF/YANG, pizza boxes for compute, hyperconverged, NSX, openstack, none of the hyperscalers use Cisco DC technologies......

- Voice: dying market, super vendor specific (i.e. how to drive CUCM), their SBCs are laughable (everyone serious uses ACME/Sonus). Cloud hosted + mobiles is rapidly relegating this market segment to a niche.

- Security: super vendor specific, not market leader except maybe ISE, oh yeah you gotta do ISE, syllabus is rapidly obsoleted as ASAs die off but the sourcefire content is still targeting 2015 sourcefire technologies....

- Wireless - its impossible, no materials, require lots of hardware to lab, converged arch is dying in the behind - we have literally not moved a single converged arch deal in 2 years, Cisco Meraki / Aruba are eating their lunch and Ruckus (Brocade?) + Aerohive + Fortinet (Meru) = fragmented market where Cisco is not a clear leader in any way

Finally, only RS and SP have the troubleshoot segment, which separates men from the boys.

But also I'd second the above advice: lots of people just go straight for the dream and then get completely disillusioned during the slog. They also generally under-estimate the difficulty - going from CCNP to CCIE level is around 4x the gap between CCNA and CCNP. In fact, I'd say obtaining 4x CCNPs is easier than a single CCIE (source: myself). Small steps - definitely knock over CCNP level certs first, then decide if you're willing to commit 18 months and ~1000 hours.

I see your points, and I am also very aware of the options/limitations of the certifications. I do disagree with your VoIP statements however. But I digress.

When I started my CCNP journey, I really had to sit down and think about a lot of things. This was what drove my personal decision (as of right now) to not pursue the CCIE.

1) Cost (my company will not pay for it)

2) Work/Life balance. Let's say I get my CCIE, well now I am going to want a new job that matches my salary. Work/Life is a significant part of who I am as a person because I do not want to spend 70-80 hours a week/weekends working and then being on call. I know that the higher up I go, the higher demand there is going to be on me/my family. I am also heavily involved in my church, and I need that time.

3) Time. After finishing my route (literally 6 weeks of NON-STOP studying). My wife was begging me to come out of the office, and spend time with her. We do not even have kids yet. I could not see myself doing this for 12 months straight (at the minimum) to get my CCIE. I have no idea how people do this, and maintain a normal lifestyle.

4) My goals. Everyone has their own goals, and what they want to achieve. I personally believe I have what it takes to be the highest tier engineer in my region (for my age group). However, from the points mentioned above. I do not want to live my life to work. I want to enjoy life, and enjoy learning.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion, and should not reflect your personal decisions.

[that1guy15]

@LynK or hell anyone thinking about jumping into the CCIE

Im not gonna try and convince you to go after your CCIE. If you want it got get it. Else its cool. But I will respond to your points with my experience getting my CCIE.

1) Cost: Someone has to pay for it so not much to say here

2)  Work/Life balance: The jobs you want are out there. The jobs you describe and dont want are out there too. A CCIE does not dictate what your work/life balance is just what your skill set is. Be picky as hell on what your day to day is. You have earned it with a CCIE.

3) Time: My CCIE took me 3+ years from start to Pass. We had one kid then (2). The other two were born over the course of my studying (or ehm not studying ). The 100% focused study was not an option for me. Hell 90% of the time I was not able to give more than 20-25 hours a week. The key is build out a schedule with your wife that is acceptable and move from there. Over time you figure out where you can nickle and dime time for studies.

4) Goals: again not pressuring, and I agree if it is a goal make it happen. Else figure out how to be just as successful without the CCIE investment.

[LynK]

@LynK or hell anyone thinking about jumping into the CCIE

Im not gonna try and convince you to go after your CCIE. If you want it got get it. Else its cool. But I will respond to your points with my experience getting my CCIE.

1) Cost: Someone has to pay for it so not much to say here

2)  Work/Life balance: The jobs you want are out there. The jobs you describe and dont want are out there too. A CCIE does not dictate what your work/life balance is just what your skill set is. Be picky as hell on what your day to day is. You have earned it with a CCIE.

3) Time: My CCIE took me 3+ years from start to Pass. We had one kid then (2). The other two were born over the course of my studying (or ehm not studying ). The 100% focused study was not an option for me. Hell 90% of the time I was not able to give more than 20-25 hours a week. The key is build out a schedule with your wife that is acceptable and move from there. Over time you figure out where you can nickle and dime time for studies.

4) Goals: again not pressuring, and I agree if it is a goal make it happen. Else figure out how to be just as successful without the CCIE investment.

@that1guy

Thank you for your comments, and insight. Much appreciated. I do feel that the CCNP materials has not given me all of the information that I think I should know as an engineer. Especially the involved BGP Regex/Multicast/etc. topics that are quite practical in real-world scenarios, but I have little/no experience with. In my humble opinion I think the CCNP topics should be in CCNA, and they should go pseudo CCNP/IE hybrid for the NP.

I personally believe I am a talented engineer (not tooting my own horn), but I do have areas of improvement. One thing I love to do is better myself. I will make the CCIE assessment once I finish my CCNP (or get close to finishing it).

Personally one of my areas of passion has been datacenter, and since working on nexus, I have fallen in love with the infrastructure. I would love to get atleast get a CCNP in datacenter.

I think I would more seriously consider CCIE if a VAR would:
a) Pay me while studying (not even sure if this is possible or not).
b) Pay for my testing.

[that1guy15]

No problem dude.

For VARs all of them will pay for your CCIE as it benefits them to have it on the books. BUT none of them will set time aside for you to do it. Then they dont get billable hours.

The struggle I see from everyone I talk to is a) VAR/Consultant work seeing all CCIE material but not having time to study. B) Good Enterprise gig with tons of time to study but not much exposure to CCIE level topics. And work wont pay a dime outside of what CPEs will give.

Usually with B at a certain point you feel your skills are way surpassing your job role and you want to bounce. But that means risking your CCIE. I chose to stay and utilize that time. Then figure something out afterwards.

DC stuff I would not consider going above a CCNP. And thats only if I worked on Nexus and UCS daily. I always loved the DC track and wanted it, but its a technology specific track and Cisco technology is getting slaughtered in the DC space right now.

[wintermute000]

Why would B mean risking your CCIE if you bounce?

I generally agree with that1guy.

re: work not paying - that's an incredibly short sighted view IMO. Unless network engineers in the US are getting paid food stamp rates (pretty sure you guys aren't... LOL), surely you can afford 1k lab server/tokens, 1k materials and say 3k of lab attempt budget (all tax deductible BTW, and spread out over ~2 years). That 5k (before tax deduction) outlay will set your career up for the next 5-10 years. Your first pay-rise for the CCIE level job will quite likely surpass 5k.

Even more importantly, having those digits means that in enterprise networking (i.e. speaking outside of core engineering in SPs, hyper-scalers etc.), you get to pretty much pick and choose your jobs assuming you present/interview OK and have a track record. This is priceless. Which ties into...

re: work life balance - as a CCIE with CCIE level skills you have the leverage to pick the job and shape the role that suits you. No more on-call? No more Ops? go for it. Its the exact opposite of the 70-80 hours you mention, IF that's what you want. And if you want that fast pace, its there also. Basically, what that1guy said.

re: BGP - guess what mate, you gotta learn it and you gotta learn it well anyway. BGP is love, BGP is life...

re: multicast - no way around it, just roll up your sleeves. Personally speaking, I did the INE v4 multi-cast labs three times, then the v5 labs twice before the lightbulb went on - of course this is in addition to reading Developing Multicast Applications and Interdomain Multicast Solutions cover to cover at least twice. Then you get into the lab and what they get you to do is so trivial and you trigger thinking about how much work you put into it... but that's another gripe LOL.

You say you want to improve yourself. If you do it properly (i.e. don't rely on dumping) you will be able to understand routing problems from first principles and at a level that far surpasses your run of the mill CCNP mid-level engineer. You'll be able to spot and call out solutions to issues (or potential issues) even before people have triggered that the issues exist. It becomes almost instinctive - you can almost smell out redistribution feedback, race conditions, black holing if aggregates are withdrawn etc You can do things that look like black magic to regular techs such as interpret an OSPF database.... Its pretty useful!

re: Voice market observations, I started back in CUCMv4 when it was still windows based, have done 6 and 8, have done ISDN to SIP, have done P to V, have done E164 global dial plans, have done state-based SIP trunking designs (i.e. source based routing like LCR explicitly breaking TEHO), have shoehorned multi-tenancy (overlaping extensions etc.) into CUCM (doesn't work well, full of workarounds lol), have done integration into third party SIP SBCs, CCNP-V (expired), so I do come from a background of understanding the Cisco voice stack from top to bottom I would just add that until you've worked on the provider side (and I have been inside both small mom-and-pop scale VOIP and the equivalent to Verizon) you won't grasp how much the world is changing around the complex vendor locked IP-PBX bubble. Not saying that its going to disappear tomorrow or that voice guys will be out on the street, but in the long run the trend is pretty clear and Cisco do not have an answer in the hosted / provider space - their last carrier-scale CUCM effort was an abomination and they basically ran up the white flags re: 'real' SBCs a few years ago.

[deanwebb]

Agree that employer not paying is no excuse. You do CCIE for yourself, ultimately. If you plonk down your own money, you will be more motivated to get a return on that investment than if the company was shuffling you along.

Paying for it yourself also helps to motivate you to make sure you get a better job, with better all-around opportunities. Maybe you go to work in Europe, where you can be guaranteed leave to be with kids? Maybe you work remotely somewhere in the USA where you get to visit with the kids in between phone calls and WebEx sessions? To be sure, you can also find those jobs at a CCNP level, but your CCIE can carry more weight in a negotiation for an employer. It tells him to be more flexible in making an offer to attract and retain your talent.

[LynK]

@winter

So what is YOUR reason for not getting a CCIE?

[icecream-guy]

Agree that employer not paying is no excuse. You do CCIE for yourself, ultimately. If you plonk down your own money, you will be more motivated to get a return on that investment than if the company was shuffling you along.

Paying for it yourself also helps to motivate you to make sure you get a better job, with better all-around opportunities. Maybe you go to work in Europe, where you can be guaranteed leave to be with kids? Maybe you work remotely somewhere in the USA where you get to visit with the kids in between phone calls and WebEx sessions? To be sure, you can also find those jobs at a CCNP level, but your CCIE can carry more weight in a negotiation for an employer. It tells him to be more flexible in making an offer to attract and retain your talent.

he can spend time with the kids during breaks inbetween the 3 month consultant gigs. with his billing rate at $250/hr. there's plenty to take some time off.