CCIE Certification

The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, or CCIE, is a technical certification offered by Cisco Systems. The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) certifications were established to assist the industry in distinguishing the top echelon of internetworking experts worldwide and to assess Expert-level infrastructure network design skills worldwide. These certifications are generally accepted worldwide as the most prestigious networking certifications in the industry. The CCIE and CCDE community has established a reputation of leading the networking industry in deep technical networking knowledge and are deployed into the most technically challenging network assignments. The Expert-level certification program continually updates and revises its testing tools and methodologies to ensure and maintain program quality, relevance and value. Through a rigorous written exam and a performance-based lab exam, these expert-level certification programs set the standard for internetworking expertise.

The program is currently divided into six different areas of expertise or "tracks". One may choose to pursue multiple CCIE tracks in several different categories of Cisco technology: Routing & Switching, Service Provider, Security, Collaboration, Data Center, and Wireless.

CCIE candidates must first pass a written qualification exam and then the corresponding hands-on lab exam. Though there are no formal requirements to take a CCIE certification exam, an in-depth understanding of the topics on the exams and three to five years of job experience are expected before attempting certification.

There are two test sets for the requirement for certification

Details: Lab exam consists of a 2 hour Troubleshooting section, a 30 minute Diagnostic section, and a 5 hour and 30 minute Configuration section.

There are seven tracks of Expert Level certifications. It was designed for the requirement of the industry.

Active CCIE holders are able to apply for CCIE Emeritus status when they pass their ten year anniversary of CCIE certification.

The Continuing Education Program is alternative way of re-certification for the CCIE license instead of passing the written exam. This program is managed by the principals Flexibility, Diversity and Integrity.

Regarding a new approach to networking with software-defined networking, there are some critics about CCIE certifications that challenge corner-case scenarios of written and lab exams. However, the principal of networking is still the same and a router or a switch is a physical device or just a piece of software, the fundamental networking operations remain the same in the real-world internetworking. CCIE holders are still relevant to the software-defined networking era.

...
Wikipedia