Why CCIE Service Provider???
By Jared Scrivener on Friday, November 7, 2008 10:49The Service Provider CCIE track offers a number of enticements to CCIE candidates. However, it is one of the most overlooked tracks, comprising only about 6% of CCIE numbers (about half as many as Security) and only 2% of R&S CCIEs undertake it successfully.
Looking at these numbers, I find that quite an oddity. Obviously, R&S is by far the most popular track and, like most people, it was the first that I undertook. By far the greatest intellectual achievement of my lifetime was obtaining my first CCIE. However, having done so like many people with the study bug, it is worth considering what to study next.
I observe two different paths to a SP CCIE. The first is for those who choose to take it as their first track (a bit over half of SP candidates). This category is presumably comprised of students who work with SP technologies on a daily basis – BGP, MPLS and MPLS VPNs. For this class of student, it seems like the most obvious choice to take as the technologies of the SP track are fairly well focused on building and establishing SP networks with intense protocol dependencies. For those who take this path, the rationale is clear.
The second path, the path that I took and that I’d like to advocate to many others is for R&S CCIEs to expand their level of knowledge and, in my opinion, complete what you started by fully demonstrating your expertise with Cisco routers in any environment.
The R&S track requires you to learn many IGP routing protocols, but in recent times it leaves you with missing a few key technologies required to move from the enterprise to the service provider space. How many job advertisements request an R&S CCIE but also specify MPLS and BGP expertise as well? From my own observations, quite a few.
Having learned to study and achieve your R&S goals, the incremental level of study and knowledge required to obtain the SP CCIE is relatively small. The additional technologies can be learned relatively easily by virtue of analogy and be slotting them into the mental framework you have already established in learning R&S.
Learning ATM is simple by analogy with Frame Relay. Learning IS-IS is straightforward by contrast with OSPF and the ideas of IPv6 (with respect to multiple protocols running over a network as CLNS does). BGP, which is covered well in the R&S track, needs only to be expanded on for other protocols to meet the SP requirements and, after having done so, certain vagaries that were enough to achieve R&S status become clearer.
Which leaves MPLS, VPNs and MPLS Traffic Engineering. These technologies, some of the cleverest innovations in the recent history of networking are the technologies of the future both in service provider networks and large enterprises. Put simply, MPLS takes a whole set of discontiguous routes (or other FECs) and labels them, thus reducing the overhead on routers of routing table lookups and switches the labels throughout the network. Traffic Engineering gives you the ability integrate QOS requirements into the MPLS process to fully control your network.
To me, understanding routers and switches was the goal of my study for R&S. Having completed the R&S CCIE, it irked me that whilst in a sense I had finished, the more I knew, the more I knew I didn’t know! Service Provider provided, in many ways, a feeling of completion to my studies.
For those of you who have or are about to complete your R&S track, I urge you to consider SP as your second. Voice is another beast entirely (one that I’m still in the process of attaining) and Security builds on R&S in a different manner by applying the protocols on a different set of platforms (amongst other things).
SP is unique in that, with R&S in hand, you already know half of what you need to succeed and on learning the final half you gain a better perspective around both your enterprise and service provider technological understanding. If you are looking to distinguish yourself from others, this is the best return on investment in terms of time required to study to achieve a second CCIE of any of the options available.
In my opinion, when you achieve it, that takes you from one of 16000 R&S CCIEs without recognition of that knowledge, to one of the 440 with it. Surely, that must be worth something, be it intellectual satisfaction or remunerative opportunities.
What are your thoughts?
Michel says:
November 7th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Nice write down Jared, its more or less what I was thinking about to take into consideration which track to take as a second CCIE.
Even though I will give myself some more time until I’ll start another track.
All the best
Michel
Josh says:
November 7th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Nice Jared. Congratulations on passing your SP lab on your first attempt. Is it true you only studied for a month?
Jared Scrivener says:
November 7th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Hey Josh,
Yeah, 10-20 days of study over about 6 or 7 weeks for the lab – I did my reading for the written just after my R&S CCIE in ‘06 and took the written in Feb this year. What you’ll find as an R&S CCIE doing SP is that the lab is about 50% overlap with what you already know, so working through our workbooks and proctor guides you’ll quickly discover how the new topics fit into the equation.
I highly suggest reading the proctor guides and searching through the Cisco documentation a lot. Once you understand what fits where, the configuration is no harder than R&S (in fact easier in many ways as there are fewer technologies to focus on). It should take about 5-10 days of labs once you understand what goes where to be pretty comfortable (well, that worked for me, anyway).
Cheers,
Jared
Brad says:
November 7th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Couldn’t agree more :) Got my R&S in May 08 and I’ve got my SP booked for February. This one is a lot easier to study for than R&S seeing as though I’m continuing to build on an already strong foundation. Plus, MPLS is good fun :P
CCIETalk.com says:
November 7th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
That’s impressive Jared! Thanks for this post as it helps us who are working on R&S right now so we can plan it better. Do you have a recommendation on what all to read before someone should start the labs? I know Cisco has a list of books but as we all know most of them overlap. It would be really nice and helpfull to hear from someone who has done it already.
Thanks!
Johnson says:
November 8th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I agreed with Jared, I just passed SP CCIE last week @ sydney in my first attempt. Because my have several years working experience in ISP, so the SP CCIE main topics – MPLS/BGP/Multicast are my knowledge filed.
For my personal experience, SP CCIE should be a good next goal after R&S CCIE. As you focus on MPLS/BGP for a period of time, you will familiar with SP CCIE lab scope thank other CCIE Labs. Then next step actions is just practice and practice lab skill.
Jared Scrivener discusses CCIE Service Provider : CCIE Talk Cisco CCIE Blog For Internetwork Professionals says:
November 8th, 2008 at 10:56 am
[...] others have talked about it too. I won’t bore you with details and you should head over to Jared’s Blog to read the entire [...]
CCIE Candidate - Cisco CCIE candidates blog about the technical + emotional challenges of their journeys. » A Second Track? says:
November 14th, 2008 at 11:36 am
[...] Scrivener is a bad, bad man. His post here has got me thinking seriously about taking on the SP track. Very seriously. And shame on CCIE [...]
Ethan says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Very intriguing, Jared. Thanks for giving me something else to think about…like I needed another distraction in my crowded brain. Oh, look – a butterfly! :)
Next CCIE Track « CCIE Hack’s Blog says:
November 15th, 2008 at 10:57 am
[...] CCIE Track Jump to Comments This was a good post from Jared. I have been wondering what the next easiest CCIE track to take. I’m always looking [...]
Zey says:
November 17th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Excellent experience sharing. I’m planning for my SP lab exam next year. Enjoying every bits of BGP+MPLS knowledge.
Faisal says:
January 27th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Hi guys,
Its really nice to be on this forum, i need openion of you guys
i have CCNP and CCIP and now i am thinking which track i should go for first
R&S or SP, which is good to have according to market demand.
thanks
Thinking of switching to SP « CCIE Lab Preparation says:
July 31st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
[...] wrote a good post on the IPexpert blog about doing SP after R&S which makes sense to me. Im hoping that there isnt a major change in [...]
CCIE says:
August 15th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Thank you, this post really gave me a different perspective, and a push to continue on and get my second IE.
arun says:
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 am
hey seek your advice !!!
I m a Telecomm Engineer ,woking on GSM technology …, i believe that it not far that the convertional telcom has started looking at data network as cheaper ,effective transmission and switching medium and now that GSM started using partially or in other words GPRS on IP (GSM data works on IP network ) … as this being the reality,more to this voip and MPLS have already made their way into GSM . i am keen on the CCIE SP track (Service provider) i hope i not wrong ….. do have a least knowdge in IP networks ….. like nature of the protocal and the requirement to employee them … can u think it a best option to pursue SP …. as my First certification …
i did hear that CISCO has changed it CCIE lab Exam patron(addition of trouble shooting), is it limited to R&S r the changes include Sp /Voice and etc…….
plz help i am keen on it ………