Howard and dre, First of all, thanks for the excellent thread! You've given me a great deal of information about service provider issues. I was dimly aware of some of them, but now I see how they really affect ISP operations. I've printed out the whole thread and when I can get some quiet time away from the wife and kids (ha!), I'm going to go over it in detail. Thanks for all the links too! It's helpful to know what the best things to read are.
At the risk of extended an already belabored subject, I did want to comment on the whole CCIE issue. I'm not sure it's fair to blame Cisco for not making the lab exam deal with real-life issues, especially those for service providers. Cisco's goal, after all, is not to make great network engineers, but to make engineers who are proficient with all of Cisco's features and functions. That is why some of the lab scenarios are a bit contrived, and also why you should be fired for trying to use some of those features on a real network. Cisco's aim is to make sure CCIEs know how to configure a Cisco router to solve any problem, even those that shouldn't be solved with a router! You guys have obviously great expertise in a relatively specialized field. Should everyone have to understand all these issues before they can rightly call themselves a network engineer? How many SP jobs are there at that level, especially in today's market? I would love to be able to specialize like you have, but the realities of my job require me to be conversant in everything Cisco sells. To use Howard's medical analogy, while I want to master neurosurgery, I work in the ER and have to deal with everything from heart attacks to broken bones to earwax. To push the medical analogy just a bit farther, I think having the CCIE is like graduating from medical school. You have mastered a body of knowledge and have earned the right to put letters after your name, but no one is going to give you a scalpel until you have completed a lengthy internship. That's where the experience comes in. It's important to know where to cut. It is even more important to know when not to cut. Ron Trunk, CCIE Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=44876&t=44876 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
