I went to write my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) exam today, but came out without a certification. You need an unimaginable 849 out of 1000 to pass, and I had 734. I knew the exam was hard, but in my opion it was too hard. There were a couple of things on there I don’t even remember ever doing in class at school which covered the material.
There was also a simulation question in which I had to configure something on a simulated router. I had to configure an access control list to permit and deny HTTP traffic from different users. I had access to one router only, which was the one I was supposed to configure it on. This should have been simple to do, however the ip access-list command needed to do this was “not supported in this version of the Ciso IOS”. How am I supposed to configure an ACL on a router that doesn’t support the command needed to do so? I think this question was worth a lot of marks, which isn’t fair because I couldn’t even answer it! I know I should have done more studying than I did, but I don’t think that would have helped. Now I’m out $70.
I can attempt to write it again but the next time it will cost me about $170. Next year we do the material for the CCSP certifications, but in order to go for that I need my CCNA. I don’t even know if I want to go for that though. To get my CCSP I have to write 5 exams and pay close to about $700 probably. I don’t think it’s worth it. Being certified in using a Cisco firewall (one of the exams) doesn’t seem like something that will get me a job. I know the exams cover non-Cisco material, but they are very Cisco specific. There are other companies out there other than Cisco. I’d rather spend my time and money on vendor-neutral certifications, some of which are even more recognized than Cisco certifications. I might decide to go for my Network+ and Security+ certifications instead. These cover the same principles as the Cisco exams but do not focus on configuring and using any specific device, which I can easily learn if the need arises.
I want to do security consulting and research, not network administration. I don’t think I need have vendor specific certifications. This is going to require some thought (and $$$), so I’m going to spend some time weighing the options and hopefully all will work out in the end.