Cisco Certification
Part II: The Career Certifications

Part I - Program Overview
Part II - The Career Certifications
Part III - Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert

By Anne Martinez

Part 1 of 2    1 2

Cisco's career certifications program was launched in 1999 and has quickly become popular among IT professionals. It differs from the older CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert) program in that these certifications were created with an overall training path in mind – they are geared to help you become a Cisco expert, not just certify that you already are one.

The career certifications come at two levels – associate and professional. The associate level designations are CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) and CCDA (Cisco Certified Design Associate). The professional level includes CCNP (Cisco Certified Networking Professional) and CCDP (Cisco Certified Design Professional). The designations with the D in them are part of the engineering & design path, while those with the N are related to installation & support. You are intended to earn these designations in progression – CCNA then CCNP, or CCDA then CCDP. (Check out CCPreps' CCNA and CCNP boot camps.)

To make things a little more confusing, all but the CCDA offer two tracks – Routing & Switching, which is the main track, and WAN Switching. Thus you can become a CCNA, or a CCNA – Wan Switching.

The N Program

The next step up the installation and support track is the CCNP. This increments the expertise required to skills needed for running a large (100 nodes or more) network, using a much large array of protocols. Earning this designation is substantially tougher. You'll have to hold the CCNA plus pass four additional exams covering such topics as switching, remote access, and troubleshooting. There is a fast track which combines three of the exams into one killer testing session, but it's not for the faint of heart.