What is the CCIE Exam Like? Is the CCIE Certification Worth It?

people who are involved with computer networking and love networking are often aware of a very high level certification from Cisco called the CCI II and also they also are aware that most people who attempt the CCIE fail it at least once in this video I'd like to chat with you about my story back in the day back in 2001 about my journey through the world of a 2-day exam for a CCIE and let's you know out went so let's start at the beginning when I first had the the what-if question about well maybe I could become a CCIE it started when I started the lower level certifications so I start off with the CCNA a Cisco Certified Network Associate in routing and switching got that and then I went to the next level which is the CCNP cisco certified network professional for routing and switching got that and then I went on to continue to study for a CCIE I did all that in span of about two years I started my Cisco experience and Cisco training back in 1999 and I got my CCIE my first one in 2001 so here are some secrets I learned along the way when we're learning something new about networking we should really take time to learn it to know it not just to memorize something because there were a few topics where I learned it once or I thought I did and then as I got to the professional level I had to learn it again or reinforce it and then when I got to the CCIE level I realized you know what I don't think I really understood it as good I could have so one of the secrets in building a foundation is that no matter where we start learn and take time to really understand it and that involves reading something or watching something getting some hands-on practice verify that what you think is happening is happening protocol analyzers are very helpful as well to help verify under the pen scenes what's going on on the wire so that's a big tip from the beginning is when you're learning something learned it to know it not just to memorize something okay so in my day back in my day when I took the CCI exam it was a two-day format and in that two-day format it went something like this the first day we'd show up my Proctor was Katherine she was great so they assigned us some seats and they gave us a binder and then back in those days we had this rack of equipment actually it was to the hmm was it to the right was it to the right or to the left I'm thinking it was in that lab experience it was to my left so I had this rack of gear here that my desk was here and I had a notebook that are a binder with the instructions and part of the setup was we had to go ahead and cable so they had patch panels where we cabled everything there that switch there was a token ring switch there were routers of course and we had to cable them all together and then once they were cable then configure it and we had a lunch break so the first day we have to do all the work as much good work as we could to get everything working then we took an organized lunch break together they marched just over to this area and has to have lunch now during lunch we're not allowed to talk about you know technical aspects of our lab and what we were asked to do but I have a friend I studied with Edie and he was sitting there at lunch I said how's it progressing for you no technical issues but how's it going he goes great I'm not ready to be GB and I was thinking oh my gosh he's already doing border gateway protocol I'm having problems with layer 2 connectivity on a switch so I thought oh man I'm I'm done I am having so many problems I can't even get baked trunking working so I went back in after lunch and I verified that I could not get link and so I went to Cathy and I said Cathy I think I have a physical cabling problem on the backend of the past panel I don't think it's me and she said oh well don't use that gigabit port go ahead and use the ethernet port that's next to it you can do if you want to so I went back to my desk ok and then I realized on that model switch at that time in life as far as the year of that switch it didn't support trunking on a 10 megabit port and that's what she invited me to do so I just took a moment I said is this part of the test it wasn't but I went back and I said Cathy I listen I I have two trunk on that part and if it's a different port it's not gonna build a trunk it's 10 megabits so she said well because it's already after lunch and you should have pointed out a problem like this way earlier and she was right you can go behind if you want to where all the connections are from the patch panel to the gear and you can verify those and change those but I'm not gonna give me any extra time it's all on you now so I did I went back there and sure enough there's three connect three connections that were based on the topology in the diagram and what we were given and so at that moment I didn't realize why they were wrong but I fixed them I verified connectivity got link and then I was like flying through so uh who huge scare so that was now working and I was now pressed for time now before this I had spent months and months of time and many many many hours in labbing up and practicing and one item that Edna Nez who was my study buddy back in the 2000s one thing that he did was he encouraged me to continue on when I was tired of studying and one of those times was for IP telephony voice over IP back in those days we had to configure or it was on the blueprint anyway we had to configure full of phone ports FX o FX s a free which one it was where you plug phones in and so you'd pick up one phone and you could dial the other one or you could pick up the phone how to automatically bring down or just called private line automatic ring down the other phone so I was near the end of my studies before the lab experience the first day of this lab and I said I'm so tired studying it I'm just I'm just gonna I'm good I understand the concepts I'm not gonna configure it because dude you got to configure the voice at least once to get the hands-on practice so I did I preached IDI thank you even those day I'm always grateful for edginess for helping me out so I practiced it early on and then for the day of the lab I was pressed for time and I'm gonna when they it wasn't a buzzer but when the time was up you had to stop and I had just a few minutes left and there I had voice that's one of my last tasks that I had gotten to so I was just flying through pool configs one time save save save save save all equate across all the routers and switches and then I thought okay I got to pick up this phone and if I pick up the phone and the other one rings I have a possibility of going on tomorrow because what happens is you have to get so many points on day one if you don't get enough points towards what they asked you to do they ship you home they you go home they don't continue so I picked up the phone and the other one rang and I thought to myself this is a good moment this is a good moment excited all the problems with the cabling and is pressed for time and it rang so all night so I went home to the hotel I went back to the hotels in San Jose and I sat awake for many many hours thinking of all the configs I did did I check this did I do that and just my mind was just racing and I thought I needed to just go to sleep and they need to get up tomorrow and give myself enough time to get back to San Jose tar to the testing center in San Jose for Cisco and and and hit it again fresh so I woke up I set the alarm I woke up and then I realized this is 2001 I I realized after I was up that the clock was off an hour I don't know why I don't know why so maybe there's an accident or whatever but the clock gave me an extra hour this is good news so it gave me an extra hour of time to prepare so I looked over back in those days we had to do token ring switching datalink daling switching IPX SPX in addition to ATM and IP of course so it lots and lots of things so I I took that extra hour and I sat down and I can fit I just reviewed a bunch of commands and configurations so as we march ourselves in there we go in the lobby day 2 everybody's there they don't tell you who failed yet and they're gonna cut by a certain percentage so ed is there I'm there there's probably 12 or 13 mmm so we're doing 10 and 14 people total there and they invite us back so we've marched back in and then as we go back to our desks in the lab environment the way it works is this if there's a binder on your desk you get to continue if there's no binder on your desk you're done and the Proctor can come over and say something to you and and then you basically get a new flight home or you wait till your flight later that day and you're done very disappointing so I want my last name is Barker starts with the B so I was near the front in fact I was like this this first or second desk they up near the in the lab anyway so I walk in all excited and eager worried thinking million thoughts and I go to my desk I sit down there's no binder there so Co wasn't quite sitting so I standing at the desk no binder how about oh that happens sometimes right it happens things don't always go our way so I sat down at the desk like it was yesterday and this person I'm so sorry but this person comes up to me and says buddy you're at my desk and I look up and I realize I had been one row off I got up I said I'm so sorry and I saw my book up there on the desk in front of me and I thought that's my desk is gonna find her so I was my major thought was for myself at that moment self-preservation I get to continue and so yeah goose bumps again good experience so i sat there at my desk with my binder I opened up and I had things like multi cast I was going to configure I smoked that nailed it several other things I had to configure did those well because I didn't have any unexpected challenges or problems and then then it's not quite over yet because then at lunch time they sent us all the lunch in those days that second lunch was you could go wherever you want be with a group doesn't matter the first day it was all like quarantine anyway so we went to lunch at some restaurant with whoever was left and there was like maybe less than half of us left and the way it worked is during that lunch break they would look at your work from the first half of that day and they would identify whether or not you had enough points to continue in the afternoon and if you don't they pick you off at the door and so so so I walked back we go to lunch we're all on pins and needles we're walking oh also why I won't tell you about that because that's personal story he can tell you another time maybe I'll interview him and he'll tell his story maybe we were walking back in and as we're walking back in and were like no eye contact with Cathy no eye contact so we walk in and she's picking people off at the door hey Johnny or whatever your name is I didn't talk to you and you talk to you need talk to you and that means you're done and so I'm walking in and the emotions not going to help this place is either going to have not happen and I didn't get picked off so it was Edie myself I think one other person out of this group of twelve or fourteen that started that were left so the tail end the second half of the second day was troubleshooting and what they did was they injected problems into everybody's labs some were physical problems like they would have what I learned after the fact sometimes they take a connector and they would turn it over upside down nine hundred eighty degrees and force it in so it looks like it's connected but it's the wrong pins sometimes they would change the actual connections in the back and I figured I assume even today I assume that's what happened to my lab my rack I assume that some poor person made it to the second day of their lab on my before I got there and he made to the second day and they changed some cables on him and he never solved it because when I and then they forgot to put him back that's one I'm still thinking happened to today so um I think Kathy at that point had a little soft spot for me because she realized all the work and troubleshooting I had to do early on and how much I had to fly through but they would do so they inject problems configuration issues a lot of great problems oh my goodness uh and what they us to do is identify I think it was five or ten things that are wrong with the lab and correct them and then actually had to right way to write out what they were so this is this and here's the solution and if we as I recall it I think we fixed them all - so as go through that process thinking okay I don't want to point out maybe something I failed on as a task that I didn't get perfect earlier in my config as a problem now so I was just looking for differences and I found him so I thought oh this isn't working all this is well here's the key and it was basic troubleshooting it was just it that part was the easiest part of the whole lab certification for me because I just I just said this isn't working should be let's chase it down okay is we don't have the route that's why or this BGP route filter isn't correct or this access control list is here or this process ideas been manipulated in a poor way so it matches another one on the same device yeah so I used basic troubleshooting drive later to connectivity Drive layer three connectivity and am i blocking any layer four protocols it shouldn't be so I identified those solve them hand it in my paper and then in those days before you left in this than the two day format before he left if you passed they gave you a piece of paper with your freaking freaking number on it so I'm six seven eight three that so with CCIE they start there's a really cool story there a bit around the low 1000s is where it starts number wise and I was six seven eight three meaning less than you know 6,000 ish people in the world at that point had a CCIE night now there's you know if you look online there's a lot more than that now so anyway I'm 673 and I think was six seven eight four we have numbers right next to each other and I'm eternally grateful for Eid for you know helping me in taking that extra step even though I thought a lot of studied hard I've studied enough that extra step the joy that I felt after realizing that all that work that I had put in finally paid off was totally worth it and I did pass the CCI routes which in 2001 on my very first attempt and it was only due to a lot of work a lot of study and a lot of encouragement from a friend so now the CCI a lab the practical lab is one day still I believe just as hard in a slightly different way so it's no easier than it was in 2001 it's hard hard hard and it's it's set up to identify how many people know their stuff did you practice do you know it can you and the benefit of that is having those skills is that when we take those skills and we go out in the production world and we can solve those skills like a lot of times companies don't need to hire a CCIE to configure switches but sometimes they do because it's when the problems arise and the integration and the communication between multiple devices when those problems show up you need the expertise to go ahead and solve those problems so um anyway that's why I said that's my CCIE story I also will finish this off by saying in 2003 when I went to go get my second CCI in security I went in with wrong attitude and the wrong attitude goes something like this so almost CCIE is one of the few times in my life that I felt this way I almost CCA I could knock this out of the park I can you know add my IPSec they had some pics firewalls and ace access control server ACS and CAC action radius I can integrate those you know kicked my butt on my first attempt for CCIE security it was B GB because I thought oh I got that down so I was good on the security stuff but I had let my core routing and switching skills which were also needed to make the whole network function I let those slip so I shall take a few more moments and tell you the rest of the story because it's pretty good so I failed it I was like oh poor me yeah yeah poor me I just was I wasn't prepared I just didn't do enough preparation to go take the exam so a period of time later I forget how many months there was a waiting period for taking it again so I had a waiting period I studied it up I went back in took it again and failed it again and again I thought okay I'm done I don't need a second CCIE I don't need it I don't know so the proctor who I met at Cisco live following that whatever year that was I guess it would be like 2003 ish somewhere in that year I saw him I I told him oh yeah so unfair let me tell you this Proctor's for CCIE they've heard all these stories and their reality is the test is freakin hard they want it to be hard they want you to prepare just be really good at your game so you can pass and if you're really good and you fail that's unfortunate but you're gonna try again and do it again and pass so he said I thought it was great at wrong and he was very kind he goes you know what if you come and take it again totally up to you I will put a second set of eyes on it regarding the grading just to verify that the automated system is grading it correctly and everything else so I put on my big boy pants and I said okay I'll do it and I went back and I prepared really hard I mean I prepared really really hard for that and so I went back and I got my second CCIA in 2003 in security and one of the cool things is that it used to be at the way like sometimes 24 or over the weekend to get your results for the one day for Matt and I by the time I got to the airport in San Jose to fly home I looked online just because I was like anxious and I had my report so I logged in and my Cisco account and though I was CC CIA they give you the same number so my CCI number six seven eight three and it's just that I have two CCS associated with that so that's my story is something like that worth it and I would say getting the skills at that level is absolutely worth it most of the people that I know who have studied and got the skills and demonstrated those skills by getting a CCI II will tell you it's absolutely worth it and it's not just the number it's not just the paper it's not just a recognition for being a CCA it's the skills it's the skills my routing and switching skills in 2001 where incredible in 2003 when I cut that second CCA and I had to rethink everything incredible and today I teach most of the time today but I still lab up a ton and so my routing and switching skills and my security skills today are still rock-solid and as I learn new things with cybersecurity and the the advances that hackers are taking to compromise our integrity of our systems I need to get in it just continues to give me an opportunity to get better and better and better because the world needs us we need to protect our networks when you take simple steps and then sometimes complex steps including using security intelligence from the cloud to defeat the hackers and prevent them from getting access to our data so that's a lot longer of a video in a story that I intended to but I wanted to share with you if that's of interest to you I hope you enjoyed it so my takeaway that I want you to take away from this story is that if you're studying anything new and you're getting that knowledge don't just learn it to learn it so I can memorize something and repeat something learn it to know it and then as you build that foundation whatever the skill is it could be IT it could be automotive it could be music it could be voice whatever it is as you build those skills you can keep those and continue to build and build and build and make your world a better place be more valuable to your family to your loved ones to your employer be a better overall resource to everyone around you and that's gonna make the world a better place eventually as well so thanks for watching this video and I'll see you my friend in the next one have a great day so Weezer is performing again at Cisco live this year 2019 in San Diego if you are going look me up I'm gonna be teaching a session with Jason gulley and you can reach me via social media so if you're at Cisco live 2019 look me up I'd love to meet ya [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Keith Barker

Views: 46,241

Rating: 4.9494281 out of 5

Keywords: ccie certification, ccie lab, ccie r&s, ccie routing and switching, cisco certification, jorge almazan, ccie security, ccna 2019, cisco certifications, ccna training, ccnp study, ccie exam, ccie training, cisco training, cisco ccna, ccna 2019 study guide, ccna certification, ccie certification kit, cisco ccie, ccie certification path, certification cisco ccie, ccie certification salary, ccie r\&s lab exam, ccie security training

Id: VVeEYZo4cys

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019