CCNP – and why you shouldn’t let it expire!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m studying towards my CCNP – Cisco Certified Network Professional.  However, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this.  According to the Cisco certification tracker, I first gained my CCNP back in July 2003 and my CCNA in July 2000.  This was at the end of my industrial placement while at Uni – a year that I spent working for Cisco doing various consultancy-type things.  I was very fortunate and was able to get a lot of training – the joys of the dot-com boom era!

This placement (and my background) left me with skills in both Linux/UNIX Admin and Networking.  I ultimately ended up in a job as a UNIX admin and my Cisco skills atrophied – I eventually let my CCNA and CCNP lapse in 2006.

Roll on a few years – I’ve now managed to move into a network admin role at the same company.  I re-certified my CCNA in 2007 and started towards CCNP in 2008.  CCNP is a very different ball game now compared to back then: while the core technologies are the same there are many differences in the syllabus to reflect products, technologies and protocols in use today.  Being out of the loop for a few years means that it’s taking me far longer to get through the exams and having a family now means  I don’t have as much time to study as I used to.  Letting my CCNP lapse has cost me a lot of time and money to re-certify – but given my circumstances it was probably unavoidable!

Things seem to be going pretty OK at the moment.  I passed the ISCW exam in December 2009 (after failing it in April) before the syllabus change was announced – however it did serve the purpose of re-certifying my CCNA.  I took SWITCH earlier this month and passed and am now working towards ROUTE.

If I can get ROUTE and TSHOOT sorted this year, I’ll be very happy indeed!