This is what I want to say to some people I know after learning about some questionable candidates who passed the CCIE...

It's sad that this is likely true, Ive never run into one out in the wild and I can only imagine it would be rather easy to spot them. The thing that upsets me after I got mine is this; the amount of study/practice hours that led up to my first attempt which I failed then the hours between the first and second attempt combined has to be well north of 2,500 hours across ~2 years.

Once I passed many of the "nuances" and "corner cases" I struggled to memorize out of fear of running into them on the lab have since slipped my brain for protocols I don't use on a daily basis OR have never been burned by, as to be expected. This leads me to my point which is I love when I get interviewed even harder by some try-hard who has it out to ruin my day when I can't tell him the bit level off-set of the E-flag in an OSPF header on the fly or explain to him what layer 2 values I would use an an layer2 ACL to block PVST THEN switch gears randomly ask me how many addresses can be used in a /29, come-on man...

The point to most if not ALL of this is the build up to a CCIE lab attempt is much like the build up for an athlete you slowly snowball across too many hours to remember for the event. What happens during the those 8 lab hours is on you. Then afterwards if you fail you stay in crisis mode to maintain the knowledge and level of preparation until your next attempt, you lose motivation and fade or you pass and you relax and much knowledge slowly slips away.

I have been now ramping up for my SP written and going back into many nuances I am only mild/warm on it does come back faster but honestly how many times in a real production environment will I ever need to "supress-fa" on an ABR out of an OSPF NSSA area? never. the point to all of this is that you know two things as an IE (or IE candidate) its expected of you to know to pass the written/lab and if you forget you know how to use the DOC-CD well enough to go figure out what is needed. If you cant figure it out you move on and accept those points are lost (or you google it in real life :) ).

also for those who say that certifications only teach the vendors kool-aids etc etc all I can say is post CCIE life me going and getting certifications in other vendors OS's is cake. Once you have the IE level knowledge you know the protocol, and likely at 80% of the RFC level which is all you need to quickly understand and pickup another vendors OS which is a huge plus for anyone.

/r/networking Thread