文档介绍：CH01 Page 2 Wednesday, February 17, 1999 2:39 PM
CH01 Page 3 Wednesday, February 17, 1999 2:39 PM
C H A P T E R 1
What NA?
The growth of Cisco Systems since its inception has been phenomenal and consistent. This
growth has occurred in part due to market dominance in their core product lines, as well as
through adding breadth of products through acquisition of panies. The stock price
has grown to the point that many Cisco employees who get stock options as part of their
compensation packages cannot afford to leave Cisco and leave such a large sum of money
behind!
The Cisco Certified work Expert (CCIE) certification program was introduced in
1994 as the only Cisco certification. The entire breadth of the then-current product line was
allowed to be covered on the exam, and it was intended to be a truly difficult certification
to obtain. Certification required an exam (computer-based) and then a hands-on, two-day
lab. The failure rate on each portion was high.
NOTE Cisco does not publish the ess rate for passing IE exam or lab. I did some
informal surveys, none of which I am allowed to quote. Consistently, the feedback was
more than a 50 percent failure rate IE lab candidates, with about an 80 percent failure
rate for first-time candidates!
The breadth of Cisco’s product line has been growing and will continue to grow. Inside the
Cisco sales arena, Systems Engineers and Account Managers sometimes long for the days
of a one-volume, thin product manual. In those days, the entire product line could be
memorized. Today, the product line is too broad for any one person to remember and to
understand how all the products work.
So two problems evolved for Cisco relating to certification: one relating to the breadth of
topics, the other to the depth of knowledge required. IE exam could no longer cover
the breadth of products. One solution was to create types IE certifications, of which
there