Cisco Certification
Part III: Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert

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

By Anne Martinez

Part 1 of 2    1 2

There may not be as many job openings specifically seeking CCIEs as there are for the also popular MCSEs (Microsoft Certified System Engineers), but there are also a lot fewer CCIEs in the job market: 330,000+ MCSEs versus a little over 5,000 CCIEs. Given the high level of expertise required to become a CCIE combined with laws of supply and demand, it should come as no surprise that an IT professional with a CCIE on their resume can easily command $100,000 salary or more. Just check the GirlGeeks job board or the DICE job board and see for yourself.

So what does it take to get the right to put these four valuable letters after your name? On the surface it's not too daunting: pass one multiple choice qualification exam and one hands-on lab exam. But it's the lab exam that's the killer. It's 2 days long, costs $1,250 to take, and the failure rate for first-timers taking the hands-on exam is reported to be about 80%. But, as over 5,000 people can tell you, it can be done.

Although until recently there were several CCIE tracks to choose from (Routing & Switching, ISP Dial, and SNA/IP Integration), all but the Routing & Switching track are scheduled to be discontinued. The Routing & Switching track has always been, by far, the most popular. To earn your CCIE in this track, you'll have to pass a qualification exam, then the lab exam.

The qualification exam contains about 100 questions and you have up to 2 hours to complete it. Exams are administered through the worldwide Prometric network and cost $300. It covers such a whole lot of territory, including: Cisco device operations; bridging and LAN switching, WAN addressing, signaling, and framing; security access and control issues, network performance management, and of course lots and lots of networking and desktop protocols. You can view the exam blueprint on Cisco's site.

Next up is the lab exam. It's a bit more inconvenient to schedule, as you'll have to travel to a lab location. In the U.S. testing facilities exist in North Carolina and California. There are also lab-testing facilities in many other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Korea, South Africa, Singapore, Japan, and a few others.

The lab exam is a two-day, hands-on test. Most of the exam consists of building a network to specification. Then, while you are out of the room, an examiner will insert faults into your network, and you have to find, document, and fix them when you return.