CCDA. Is it worth it?

d4nz1g

Greetings, my fellows.

I am currently working as a network engineer, about to take my final CCNP exam.
I would like to know if pursuing the Design career would add something to my current role.
My main duties include, but not limited to monitoring and maintain the current network (data center virtualized environments), design new solutions for current and new costumers, troubleshoot network issues and deploying new technologies into existing environments.

In my opinion about what I already know about the design path, it would help me a lot in the design and improvement duties, but I would like to know if it would actually help me to improve my productivity in my current tasks, since it's not all about technical stuff.

SteveO86

If you are designing new networks or designing technologies into existing network the design path would be worth it. The CCDA is dry and depending on your experience, however the CCDP is going to be where it gets interesting covering the more interesting technologies (such as data center design).

It revolves more around new 'green field' type environments and not really around integrating designs with existing networks (since every network is different there would be no way to actually do that when you think about it). Not sure how much it would help you, when I worked for an MSP I rarely had the opportunity to design from the ground up.

Optimal routing design (i think it is, the book by russ white) is real good in my opinion involving network design if you have not read it yet.

Whether or not it does something for you now, it would definitely do something for you in the future.

broli720

Thanks for the information @Steve086. I've been undecided if I should go the design route as well instead of security. I feel like that would be a bit more beneficial for me from the strategic aspect of security.

d4nz1g

Yea, that's the same for me.
I deal mostly with security stuff like ASA, IPS (not Cisco) and a little of l2/l3 security.
But I think designing security would be so much better (besides the Firewall technical stuff) than the security track.