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Overview of Cisco Certifications
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The audience for this book includes candidates that have successfully completed the Building
Cisco Remote Access Networks (BCRAN) class and those that have a breadth of experience in
this area. The
show
and
debug
commands from that class are fair game for questions within the
Remote Access exam, and hands-on work is the best way to commit those to memory.
If you have not taken the BCRAN course, the quizzes and scenarios in this book should give
you a good idea of how prepared you are to skip the class and test out based on your experience.
On the flip side, however, you should know that although having the knowledge from just a
classroom setting can be enough to pass the test, some questions assume a CCNA-level of
internetworking knowledge.
Overview of Cisco Certifications
Cisco fulfills only a small portion of its orders through direct sales; most times, a Cisco reseller
is involved. Cisco's main motivation behind the current certification program was to measure
the skills of people working for Cisco Resellers and Certified Partners.
Cisco has not attempted to become the only source for consulting and implementation services
for network deployment using Cisco products. In 1996 and 1997 Cisco embarked on a channel
program in which business partners would work with smaller and midsized businesses with
whom Cisco could not form a peer relationship. In effect, Cisco partners of all sizes carried the
Cisco flag into these smaller companies. With so many partners involved, Cisco needed to
certify the skill levels of the employees of the partner companies.
The CCIE program was Cisco's first cut at certifications. Introduced in 1994, the CCIE was
designed to be one of the most respected, difficult-to-achieve certifications. To certify, a written
test (also at Sylvan Prometric) had to be passed, and then a two-day hands-on lab test was
administered by Cisco. The certifications were a huge commitment for the smaller resellers that
dealt in the commodity-based products for small business and home use.
Cisco certified resellers and services partners by using the number of employed CCIEs as the
gauge. This criterion worked well originally, partly because Cisco had only a few large partners.
In fact, the partners in 1995­1997 were generally large integrators that targeted the midsized
coporations with whom Cisco did not have the engineering resources to maintain a personal
relationship. This was a win-win situation for both Cisco and the partners. The partners had a
staff that consisted of CCIEs that could present the product and configuration with the same
adroitness as the Cisco engineering staff and were close to the customer.
Cisco used the number of CCIEs on staff as a criterion in determining the partner status of
another company. That status in turn dictated the discount received by the reseller when buying
from Cisco. The number of resellers began to grow, however, and with Cisco's commitment to
the lower-tier market and smaller-sized business, it needed to have smaller integrators that
could handle that piece of the market.