At 3:33 PM -0400 5/23/02, Ron Trunk wrote: >Howard and dre, >First of all, thanks for the excellent thread!
First, thanks for letting me know you are still around! >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. If I've given that impression, it was in error. One of my concerns, however, was that some people get the incorrect impression that a CCIE shows qualification for every conceivable networking job. Your analogy to medicine is not bad; it basically says you are ready for the specialty training. More on that later. >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. I do have a problem with the emphasis on "all." There are any number of features that shouldn't be touched unless one has a thorough understanding of the proper environment to use them. I rather regret that X.25 has come off the lab, because it's still an amazing protocol for certain very specialized applications. A lot of the IBM stuff makes very little sense unless you have had substantial experience with mainframes/front ends, and then some of the Cisco features become quite clever. It's probably not unreasonable to know how to configure a basic route reflector, but even though I might JUST be able to set it up with 6 routers, hierarchical route reflectors (and there are a couple of commands, but more design issues) are really too specialized. I'm the first person to admit I know very little about Microsoft networking, especially when one gets into domains and the like. But I can be very busy with real networks and not need that knowledge. In other words, I'd rather see the CCIE a little more specialized (i.e., even more variants), and perhaps a little more in-depth in those areas. There's still a certain mystique that it qualifies someone to work in every area of networking at a senior level, and that's just not the case. >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! Again, my concern is with "any." I understand why _Cisco_ is well served by some version of that. How does a hiring manager, however, find the people that know when there are better tools than a router for some problems? > >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? Good question, really, and hard to answer in the current economy. Last year, I was on an Internet Society panel on the future and scalability of Internet routing. One of my co-panelists was Sue Hares, who is vice-chair of the IDR (BGP) working group and founder/CTO of NextHop. One of her slides read something like "CLI jocks don't scale." In other words, in the minds of everyone on the panel, if the growth rate continues, we MUST develop better automated tools because there simply won't be enough qualified global routing engineers. Once the current economy shakes out, I think you'll find more demand than supply of such specialists, just as you will for VoIP/AVVID, etc. >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. Please, Ron. You're a nice guy. Do you know any neurosurgeons? Their personalities tend to be like Catbert's. > >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. As I say, a good example. It's amazing how many levels of "certification" exist in medicine -- the minimal National Board licensing that lets an intern write prescriptions, the basic residencies such as Family Practice or Internal Medicine or General Surgery, the secondary specialties (examples in Internal Medicine) of cardiology, hematology/oncology, nephrology, infectious disease, gastroenterology... and then tertiary and even quaternary subspecialties like invasive cardiology, split into interventional and noninterventional techniques, angioplasty/atherectomy, electrophysiology, etc. One of the interesting points is that there is more than one way to get into a subspecialty. Hand surgeons, for example, most often come from orthopedics, but a significant number were trained as plastic surgeons. Pain management people are usually anesthesiologists, but can be neurologists or psychiatrists or physiatrists, etc. The same applies to networking. Getting to the most specialized job will require a combination of practical skills, pure theoretical knowledge, and experience. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=44907&t=44876 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
