LebGeeks

mir

Member

Cisco Certs

did u guys notice that cisco certificates 3am yzablo
did u  notice how many universities are offering cisco certificate courses ? lot of them for free for their students or for symbolic charges for outsiders ?!

does this reflect some cisco phylosophy or change ? does it reveal some plans ?

battikh

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

usually what universities give is not the cisco certificate itself, it's just a certificate that you attended the course. to be certified you still have to pass the cisco exam. and they usually just give ccna in universities, which is, yes, mzabbal, and not really much anymore. for other certificates, it's not as obvious as ccna, ccna is just 1 exam while ccnp is 4 and ccsp 5, the training for each exam costs around 1600$, and believe me, no university in lebanon will be giving trainings in more advanced things like cisco IPS or NAC which are required for ccsp. to be able to give the course you MUST have the lab equipment and i don't know how many universities will invest in equipments other than switches and routers, they barely have layer 3 switches and not enough firewalls for all students (that's if they have any).
from what i know from USJ, they never had cisco firewalls before, they just bought 2 pix firewall last year (and pix firewalls will soon be obsolete due to ASA) and many of the switches and routers we had were huawei, question of price. 2 pix firewalls is just enough for 1 student for the some parts of the lab and for other parts of the lab you MUST have ASA, so technically talking, USJ CANNOT give anything more than ccna, i don't know for other universities. but i know that USJ is thinking about going also for juniper certificates, which would be a good move.

Last edited by battikh (December 22 2007)

karim soubra

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

i second battikh opinio i have been it to a cisco conf.
and the lure is great they offer lots of facilities to the point that that you think that there is a catch

mir

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

i am really glad that learning is becoming available and affordable to much more pppl and is not limited by "paying"
i personally hope it opens new job market for lebanese
sadly.. this job market is not lebanon.. so ppl get their certs and travel
but it helps pushing ppl to learn more and it increases the overall tech knowledge
but as karim said i was wondering where is the catch

teodorgeorgiev

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

Indeed, battikh, if you not only take the exam (a lot of people use braindumps), but study the curicculums and follow carefully the labs, you will get a great level of knowledge!

And I doubt that it is a matter of price (the hardware). Cisco offers HUGE discounts to education institutions (more than 50%).

A Cisco ASA5505 (the big brother of Cisco PIXes), costs some $1000. This is the smallest model, but
the restrictions are only in capacity/performance. And for training/lab you do not need these :)

The layer 2 Cisco switches (29xx) cost $500-$800. And what should work there - works, the way it is
described. Unlike Huawei ;)

So, with some $8000 you can obtain all the equipment needed to cover 80% of the "old" CCNP curicculum -
routing/switching/troubleshooting/remote access.

P.S. In the new CCNA (4.x), some outdated technologies (dial-up) has been removed and replaced with
802.11 (wireless). Soon ATM and frame relay shall be removed and replaced with METRO (fiber MAN).

So, even CCNA is worth studying. If I was an IT manager, I would prefer to hire a student who has
solid knowledge and lab-practice even on the first 3 semeters of CCNA, than a CCNP who has got his
certificates by braindumping :mad:

Go for the knowledge that CCNA gives, not for the certificate paper!

battikh

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

yeah, agree with teo about the knowledge thing but the thing is that to get better wages and better positions, companies usually require the certificate. in the company i currently work in you can even find CCIEs that no nothing about networking and still have issues with vlan concepts. it's really sad

mir

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

you can even find CCIEs that no nothing about networking

yeah.. i have heard of senior engineers who have 12 years experience and can't calculate proper bandwidth and have issues with bits and Bytes

battikh

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

you can even find CCIEs that no nothing about networking

yeah.. i have heard of senior engineers who have 12 years experience and can't calculate proper bandwidth and have issues with bits and Bytes

hehehehehehhehehe
;)

rebel0

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

naaah, comon a CCIE holder who knows nothing in networking that one cant happen, you know that to be certified as CCIE you have to pass as i remember 4 lab exams, not that kind of exams that you sit behind a computer and do it. plus 20% of all CCIE studentes only pass it.well i got my ccna back in 2003, there wasnt much uni's offering it, comparing it to know, yes i think Zabalet.However, lebanon market as i see it needs microsoft certifications and not cisco. anyone share my opinion with me?

7aRami

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

Guys, does any1 have some resources for the new CCNA curriculum? ebooks.. videos... anything
I already have CCNA 3.0 but I am looking for the new one..

darkstar

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

you can even find CCIEs that no nothing about networking and still have issues with vlan concepts. it's really sad

thats too much of an exaggeration :lol:. Imagine passing one of the toughest exams and not knowing the basic stuff that are taught in pre-ccna ;).

As teo said, imo using braindumps is the biggest mistake one can commit.

I've seen some ppl use braindumps to pass the exam but try asking them something after a day or two, they'll remember nothing.\

Anyone knows where I can purchase cheap Cisco routers here in lebanon, i plan to build a home lab. (Ebay is flooding with such products :()

thanks.

battikh

Member

Re: Cisco Certs

for the ccie thing and vlaning, believe me, i used this specific example coz i saw it from my own eyes. a ccie guy was convinced that you cannot have the same vlan on 2 different switches on the same network and keeping them separated (without using trunks).
and a second one, a double ccie (routing and switching, security), who was convinced that on his 1MB link all the users who are sharing it must be able each to get 1 MB/sec (and not that the sum of all the bandwidth should be 1 MB/s). he couldn't even make the difference between bytes and bits. i had a big fight with him about it trying to convince him, and till now he is not. he, the big double ccie, doesn't want to hear lessons from me...