ccie14023 wrote: » The idea here is that incremental, rolling changes will actually have less impact on the candidate. Instead of preparing for a massive revision, there will be smaller changes. This will more easily allow them to remove old technologies and introduce new ones with a lower impact on the candidates.
Iristheangel wrote: » Basically like ccie14023 said, it's due to the fact that they go 4-5 years between updates and there's huge chunks that are so out-of-touch with what's in production and the CCIE Security was a perfect example. If you took the CCIE Security just 2 months ago, the blueprint was 70% different and you were studying pre-8.3 ASA IOS, ISE 1.1, and IPS 4200. I have folks hitting me up on FB and Linkedin who have FRESH CCIE Security numbers and yet they have zero idea on how to configure Firepower, ISE, AMP, etc. If you take an expert-level lab in the last 1 year and pass, I would hope you would want to be able to use some of that knowledge you studied so hard to learn.
JoJoCal19 wrote: » I agree with sea_turtle's criticism on the training material situation. I wanted to pursue the security track and get my CCNA-S and CCNP-S but the CCNA-S OCG is garbage and doesn't cover all of the exam topics, they jacked the online training up from $300 to $1500, and don't even get me started on the disaster that is the CCNP-S books/training situation.
waxtrax wrote: » I think if they could make the blueprints much more specific, things would be better. Granted, current blueprints are more specific than they've been in the past, but I still think it's not good enough. Speaking for the R&S track, all of the information you need is available for free within Cisco's documentation. But because the blueprint is still pretty vague, the question becomes "how deep do I need to go" when reviewing the docs. It seems logical that this is where the Official Cert Guide would step in, but the material within it is copied and pasted from old versions of the text, there are topics still in the current book that have been removed from the blueprint for which the book is supposed to support, and there are several topics that the book claims to cover, but the "coverage" is only a sentence or two, maybe a whole paragraph dedicated to a topic. That's pretty damn lousy. For the Service Provider side (and other tracks as well), there is no Official Cert Guide, so you're left with the official documentation. But once again, the issue is, how deep do you go? Cisco even says not to try to ace the CCIE, just do what is minimally required. But with non-specific blueprints, how do you know where that line is unless you make multiple expensive exam attempts? I'm not opposed to more frequent updates, and I do think it's a good idea. But I also believe having more specific blueprints are the only way to make this successful.
Fadakartel wrote: » Form the SP perspective. I personally think they are giving up this space to Juniper/ZTE/Alcatel(nokia) and Huawei
sea_turtle wrote: » ii just want what i paid for years ago and i want it before INE decides to do away with SP rack rentals in favor of "use your own VIRL server at home" making my rack rental tokens another lost expenditure.
Iristheangel wrote: » Seeing less Cisco in the SP space in Trinidad != giving up the space as a whole worldwide. They wouldn't easily give up a space they have a 42% market share in because they dropped a few points. Especially if they have a majority market share there. That being said, the level of $$$$ that Cisco puts into training materials does not equal the market strategy. Unfortunately, making CCIE training material (or even the exam itself) isn't a big money maker for Cisco. It's probably more revenue neutral which is why prices when up when they started spending a lot more money on getting rid of mass cheating. For the books that are written and material produced, most of the time it's not the author's full time job or something they're making a lot of money off of. I've had some conversations with Narbik about it and I'm always teasing him about retiring from his CCIE R&S OCG money For the debates on "policing training vendors," Cisco does create training materials that are taught through Cisco Learning Partners but a big caveat is that there still requires to be a trainer with the ability to answer questions and thats a lot more of a fuzzy area. Like mbarrett mentioned, one of the nice things we both appreciated about Z2H is that our instructor was a professional services guy who was deploying all this stuff during the week so he brought a real world perspective to it. I've gone to other training providers where you have professional powerpoint readers (my SISE 1.1 class unfortunately). Hell, I think you can go to some of the larger grey market providers and if you have any experience whatsoever, you can usually point out the guys who've done this in production vs the ones that have done it in a lab. In a perfect world, every vendor shovels an unlimited amount of money into their training program, there's low-cost training materials out there that only teach real world scenarios for all, all the trainers have years of hands on experience deploying the technologies they are teaching, dumping has been completely eliminated, and the costs of certifications are cheap as can be and we are all rewarded with high paying jobs. I don't think any vendor is perfect in that regards but that's the thing. We're all studying for or commenting on an expert-level exam thread. An OCG is never going to have all the answers for a CCIE - not even a written. I don't think anyone here can say that they used *just* the OCG and passed the lab with nothing else. Cisco provides a reading list of books, white papers, config guides, videos, etc and usually you have to take that + 1000+ hours of labbing every scenario out to get that pass. As far as the SP track, we're on version 4 now. I personally know two people who passed with less training materials than what's officially offered on the market today: Nick Russo and LRB. I'm personally studying for the Security v5 which INE claims will have material out for over the next year which probably means 3 years if they hold a similar timeline for the CCIE DC v2 "beta" racks that were supposedly available late last year but "jk! Not really" and still are yet to be released. I'm not waiting for anyone to make me training content - I'll go out there and hunt the docs, lab, and make my own and that's what I suggest you do. I give all the props in the world to Nick Russo. He took his studying and hard work and made a book out of it.
tunerX wrote: » From a stock perspective yeah, if they lose some share they lose some points, you lose some 401K value. From an IT job perspective, total market share across all existing installs coupled with quarterly sales figures, I think it isn't time to go ccie emeritus just yet. Last quarter of last year they dropped 3 percent for the quarter while still maintaining 42 percent SP market share with the 58 percent sprinkled across all other providers.https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/ciscos-dominant-share-switching-routers-holds-steadyhttps://www.telecomlead.com/telecom-statistics/cisco-drops-share-router-market-huawei-juniper-gain-75251 “Despite challenges on a variety of fronts, Cisco is successfully maintaining its position as the dominant supplier of switching and router technology with revenues about seven times the size of its nearest rival,” The sky isn't falling yet. But if you aren't doing labs with cross platform SP integration on brocade, juniper, cisco, and any other vendor you are falling behind.
Fadakartel wrote: » Not only in Trinidad but in a few other countries as well, Cisco is being replaced by other vendors such as Juniper due to the lack of training,(btw I work in a SP environment and our IP core is exclusively Cisco ASR 9000 upwards. The submarine network I manage spans a good few countries and I would like to keep Cisco as our IP core equipment. I started networking in Cisco on the enterprise side and i would prefer it stay that way, however when it comes to training for the SP stuff they are way off compared to Juniper. I have had several CCIE`s tell me Juniper is the future of SP, which is sad to say the least. No doubt Cisco is the lead in enterprise and that`s mainly because of their certification program if you know Cisco routers/switches then your going to buy Cisco gear most of the time. And yes at the moment only Nick Russo can save us SP guys lol.
Iristheangel wrote: » Definitely no hate towards you, Sea_turtle. I feel your pain. Remember my anger during DC at certain moments. I just don't want you to give up or stay frustrated. Don't let the vendors lack of materials be the reason you don't move ahead is all. I would definitely reach out to Nick on how he did it and definitely join that study group I told you about for support and to bounce ideas off. Nick Russo, Lrb, JP Cedreno, and other heavy hitters are there and it's a good brain trust
ccie14023 wrote: » For those of you who have passed the CCIE and aren't happy about re-certifying, please reach out to the program and become question reviewers. You can extend your recert without taking the test, and you will help improve the exam quality for people taking the test in the future.
sea_turtle wrote: » no worries, i just feel like the horse is dead at this point. as for the slack channel? or discord channel? if you want to pm me the info ill join up (i hope this weekend).
