>On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Gayathri wrote:
>
>> Thanks for all the varying thoughts,
>>
>> It is good to hear first hand information from like minded people than to
>> visit some recruiters/head hunters web sites and make wild guess.
>>
>> It looks like CCIE is the ultimate. These middle level certificates only
> > land you in a sys admin job..
I have to ask, Gayathri, what do you consider the ultimate with
respect to jobs? I'll talk more about the role of CCIE in large
carrier operations, but, if your "ultimate" includes network product
development, no vendor certification is particularly relevant.
Brian continued,
>
>This really isn't true. Lets look at some basic facts:
>
>There are only ~6000 or so CCIE's in the world, possibly as many as 30%
>are employed by cisco.
>
>There are over 6000 ISP's in the US alone.
>
>There are over 7000 AS's in the world.
>
>My point is, that if most of your CCIE's work for cisco and big big
>companies, then their are a ton of networks, complex networks, that don't
>even have CCIE's at the healm. Even a large company like UUnet may only
>have a handfull of CCIE's.
And again, CCIE, as presently constituted, isn't all that relevant to
large carrier operations. I think you'll find that many CCIEs
employed by large carriers may work more in system integration than
backbones.
No major carrier is all-Cisco, for both technical and business reasons.
First, although the model is always evolving, there is usually, at
the very least, a complex layer 1/2 system (SONET/SDH, ATM) that
interconnects major internal hubs and POPs. Routing is overlaid onto
this system. MPLS will reverse this paradigm, using routing to find
paths over which MPLS tunnels can be constructed. Cisco is not
dominant in the layer 1/2 area. Yes, the ex-Stratacom WAN switches
have a real market position, but so do Lucent/Ascend, Nortel, etc.
In the optical transmission area, companies such as Nortel and Lucent
have large installed bases, and there are many competitive new firms
such as Sycamore.
Second, access technologies also is a very competitive area. I
remember when the Cisco 5200 series was first offered as the "Ascend
killer." It wasn't.
Third, while Cisco dominates in enterprise routers, there's
significant competition, from Juniper above all, in the large
provider space.
Fourth, CCIE-level routing policy and BGP don't begin to approach the
complexity of a large carrier routing system.
From the business standpoint, large carriers deal directly with
Cisco, so do not have the reseller's incentive to have certified
people on staff in order to get better discounts.
Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Accomplishing CCIE
certification is very meaningful. But it isn't the pinnacle of
networking -- there is no single pinnacle.
It would be difficult to get much done, for example, in the IETF
without a reasonably strong computer science background. RFCs,
except for a few informational ones, are vendor-independent, so
extensive Cisco experience still doesn't prepare people to design
protocols and operational techniques in a more general way.
While, for economic reasons, resellers may assign CCIEs to do design
and presales, the CCIE blueprint doesn't emphasize design issues.
Many of the issues I have to deal with in designing networks with
thousands of routers aren't all that Cisco-specific, but apt to be
requirements analysis, statistical and operations research,
addressing & naming policy, etc.
>
>Their is very few CCIE's, and very many networks that need help. I am not
>talking about simple networks, but complex networks with complex issues.
>
>Brian
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------
> I'm buying / selling used CISCO gear!!
> email me for a quote
>
>Brian Feeny,CCDP,CCNP+VAS Scarlett Parria
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Netjam, LLC
>http://www.netjam.net
>1401 Oden St.
>Suite 18
>Shreveport, LA 71104
>318-222-2638 x 109 318-222-2638 x 101
>Fax 318-221-6612
>
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