this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers how are legends born do they grow over time into their hundred meter copper ethernet capacity or are they chiseled from the solid stone of the 6509s of yesteryear maybe the answer is both maybe skills are learned and shaped over due time with determination how do you become legendary find that out on this episode of the art of network engineering all right welcome to the art of network engineering i'm lexi aka trackit pacer and i'm joined today by mr tim bertino at tim burtino how's it going tim i am doing well lexi how are you i'm doing pretty well you know it's been a day went to work came home did stuff going on at your house you were just on a hamilton barns podcast weren't you i was actually i did really bad i'm sorry if you're from hamilton barnes and you're listening to this i did really bad about promoting it when it first came out because i was super busy doing other things and it i didn't actually talk about doing it for quite a while after having done it um but yeah i did back in in march now oh my gosh couple months ago i was on a hamilton barns podcast they have started their women in tech podcast so i was i was lucky enough to be the first guest on it i was gonna say it's episode number one of the series right yeah yeah it was yeah and it was a blast too they were super nice like they're in the uk and they like stayed after work hours so that i could record like for morning time for me at like a reasonable hour um but yeah it was a great time i i had a good time chatting with with their host maddie so very cool go go check it out if you want to it is just me talking about myself again so i don't know how interesting that is to anyone who regularly listens to this podcast but um yeah it's gonna be a really great um women in tech podcast so excited about that do we want to talk about can we talk about your your other secret yet i'm not sure i know it's gonna that's gonna take your mind off the hummingbirds oh okay should we wait we can wait well i'm i've been talking about it already i just i'm just so afraid yeah let's talk about it let's talk about it okay because i've already spent too much time on it um so we we are finally adopting a dog which i've really wanted to do for quite quite a while now um i'm really excited we don't have her yet i've told the rescue that we want to adopt her but we haven't actually like heard back from them yet so i'm really just sort of sitting here tapping my foot forever waiting for them to call me back and say yes you can come you can come get her so really thrilled about that i i do not know dogs very well but i i gotta ask what kind of puppy she is a sharpay which is one of those wrinkly dogs if you don't know what a sharpay is they're they have when they're puppies their whole bodies are super wrinkly and like pudgy and really cute and then they grow up and their bodies are smooth but their faces stay wrinkly okay so that is why andy was doing squishy face so often did that not register yes no so if anything i thought it was just they wanted to be in there nope it's andy being it's andy bullying my dog before i even have her in my home so rude yeah if you if you guys have seen andy like making weird faces on social media him squishing his face together he's bullying my poor dog um but no she's she's beautiful and wonderful and amazing and i'm trying not to talk too much about it anymore even though i've been talking quite a lot recently because i'm worried i'm jinxing myself like these people are taking a little while to get back to me and i'm really like the last couple days i've just their their answering machine hasn't been on so i've been calling and calling i finally left a voicemail yesterday i'm freaking out so that's the news in my life very excited about it and you're right it has taken my mind off of those damn hummingbirds that's still well i had like one fly by and like look at my feeder um i think i mentioned that in the uh in our live episode in asheville but i never really got there's like 80 of them over like a block away so i'm at least i have a dog now to take my mind off of that misery i did want to bring you i did want to bring up that asheville episode because i'm listening to it now so that was the one that was recorded uh the day i i got there really late that day in fact i got there the next day uh early morning but i did want to thank you because with how you all handled that it really felt like i was there with you even though i i couldn't be yet so yeah it was really cool it was not the same without you i gotta say like we were having a good time but yeah we we missed you we were we were super bummed when we thought for a little while that you weren't gonna be able to make it i'm so glad that you made it because it just you know you know it was an awesome time right had a great i would have been coming pretty hard had i not made it yeah that would have sucked um but i'm glad everything worked out right that was a fun episode to record because we were just trying to see if we could live stream it that well that was part of it right like we wanted we had wanted to record an episode um that first day but we didn't know really what about and then i just decided to do a live stream of it sort of off the cuff so now now we have a twitch by the way everyone if you weren't aware it's twitch.tv slash art of netenge i'm pretty sure yeah art of netenge twitch.tv art of netenge that's our that's our twitch stream anyway yeah i'm i'm so glad you were able to join us tim it was awesome thank you and i like your new twitter profile picture too you and andy yeah together at last that was a long time coming yeah otherwise this week is is pretty exciting i have finally finished my ccmp this week i've been yeah wanting this for for such a long time and i'm i'm very methodical when it comes to studying and i take a ton of time to get through it and it so it it took me probably longer than most but got through encore at the end of last year and just finished the uh enterprise design one earlier this week so very relieved i feel like i uh i get more excited about doing things like this now recording these because i just got that i mean it's really a weight lifted so take some time to figure out what i want to do next and move along congratulations that's such a huge accomplishment i remember when you like just started studying for encore 2 last year and we were talking about it i mean you you i don't think you took that long to take it honestly or maybe my i take quite a while to study as well so i can relate i guess but you did you it was a pretty good pace you studied that last year was my second go-around i actually started studying in 2020 and oh okay yeah and i i just i went about it all wrong um i all i did was really go through material so i was reading the official cert guide going through i did uh the digital learning library from cisco um i believe cbt nuggets as well but all i was doing was consuming content i was never reviewing so that's when later on that year from before i was on the show i heard the team here at art of network engineering talking about the reviewing methodology with the digital flash cards with anki and i'm like okay i need to reset so i reset at the beginning of 2021 so i basically i don't want to say wasted because i did get some good labbing and that kind of stuff out of 2020 but yeah i basically started over in 2021 and then took it in november i think encore so yeah it this is there's been so many ups and downs and that's why we always say it's all about the journey and to not give up when things get discouraging because there were so many times where i was just ready to i don't need this i'm done but you stick with it and you uh stick with the routine and you'll get there thank you very much i'm excited yeah we're also so very proud of you tim really awesome news yay so now you can be an inspiration to those of us who do want to study for our ccmps soonish i have fallen off the horse it's okay you've got a few things going on yeah okay so we teased it a little bit in that goofy intro i did but with us this evening for this episode we have cisco product manager of learning and certifications team jeff anderson jeff how are you i'm doing just great today how about yourself i'm doing great it's it's so good to have you here not only am i am i calling you legendary for what you do but the reason i kind of leaned into that is because we're going to be talking about cisco certifications and i think how a lot of us while it's it's not required and it's not necessarily for everybody i'm not saying everybody has to do it but certifications especially cisco certifications are uh at least early on in somebody's career and throughout but especially early on they're a big part in people getting in the door getting that base of knowledge that that helps them i know myself and andy um both give a lot of credit to cisco certifications for us getting our start andy um he spent i don't know how long as a cable guy working on the truck and he would spend his his lunch time any time that he had available to him studying for the ccna to help get him his first job and i remember early in my career i had a director that took me aside and basically said hey what do you want to be when you grow up and i said well i want to get on the network infrastructure team and he asked me well what are you doing to position yourself to be able to do that and i said well i'm working toward my ccna i'm at the time i was working on the icnd1 ccent and he basically said come back to me when you got it done so i finished the the ent went back to him and shortly later they uh created a position expanded the team on the network team to to get me on so it's it's a great way the ccna specifically is a great way to break through and jeff we're very happy to have you on and really kind of give us the uh what the ccna is all about maybe some history and uh some things coming forward with it yeah that's great you know and i i i like your story because it you know i'm going to guess that you know first you were already in progress but that really gave you the motivation to to just pull out the stops and get it yes you know that's great too great to hear and one of the things that i really enjoy you know when i surf around twitter and other places when somebody says hey i just passed and they they you know of course they whited out the stuff that's personal information they show their sort of their their their report and everything it's like that's just the coolest thing because i you know as you said it is really that entry point into a career um you know many people you know and honestly you do not need to be oh sorry lexi a rocket scientist to get there you just have to do that i'm technically a scientist it helps well it helps but you all give me way too much credit well i got my degree in physics so i i i've hobbed you you're closer than i am to rocket science jeff don't worry um but you know the the certifications at cisco you know we we are extremely proud of it and it's you know something that that began back in the early 1990s and it wasn't very long after cisco um came into existence now ccna wasn't a thing back then we really started off with the expert level certification and back then it was a true ball buster of a certification it was a two-day exam and it was all hands-on and it was um it would to to achieve that required quite a bit of fortification of your skills and your knowledge and uh just uh it was it was brutal but you know as time went on it was clear that you know cisco wanted to continue to grow continue to provide the plumbing for the internet we needed people who really understood the technology and how to use it and how to deploy it so the certifications really grew from that initial core and throughout the time throughout the years we have added quite a few variants of the certification you know i think we were up to nine or 10 ccnas at one time for a variety of things but you know with the with the evolution that we did back in the early 2020 we compressed that down got back to the cisco's core architecture so you know enterprise networking service provider data center security and collaboration boy my brain just froze up there for a second um we went we got back into a a places more appropriate to what people were doing but also well aligned to cisco's technologies um certifications are an interesting space you know we have quite a few you know design considerations that we take into you know we try our best to make it so no not up to the moment with what's the hottest and latest and greatest technology but really to focus on things that have enough longevity you know because you're i'm sure you've both uh have experienced it it's it's a journey that takes time to get to and if it's changing every five or six months like we do with some of our product training courses it uh makes it very difficult for you it's a moving target right so to speak yeah so we try to make sure that we abstract it to a point where it really is about the knowledge the skills and the abilities that it takes to perform at the job can i ask jeff i'm i'm so just curious um because i got my ccna right just maybe less than a year before um it the most recent change so i did my icnd1 and then two and that's how i got my ccna so i'm curious why maybe why it was in two parts for a little while or that was an option and why then it was that option was rolled back for the cc so well first of all you must be talking about ic or ccna routing and switching so we had a variety of ccnas yeah but just about all the ccnas shared the icnd ones that really is your foundation if you remember your icnd1 yeah you're talking about the osi model which you you you have to memorize because you are going to be tested on it i guarantee it but the reality is everything after that you start just going to the tcpip stack but the the way it was structured before was that you know a ccna required two exams any ccna which was two exams and those two exams were equivalent to about a week's worth of training if you kind of equivalent equival equivocate the amount of work to the the topics that are covered and you know the the depth and the exams one of the main reasons why we had our big change we call it portfolio 2.0 so you may hear me use portfolio 2.0 or p 2.0 or whatever we have a whole bunch of internal code names that we use for it so i think everybody else called it cert pocalypse well i can tell you that a lot of people work to finish their yelled certs before they were before they were done because they didn't want to have to wait for it and then of course covet it all at once here um but you know we do part of part of what we do for you know keeping up with the certifications and really understanding what the world is we do an annual certified individual survey we also uh sort of we also do a survey of hiring managers and i.t leaders just so we get a feel for what our certifications what their what the perception is what the values are you know where we might need to tune them up what what people like about it what they don't like about it and one of the things that came back quite clearly is they hated to have to take two exams they wanted it to be a single exam now we did have a combined program which gave you essentially like a boot camp for treasure it was an option right yeah i could have sworn oh i failed it's a brutal test i go and take most of the exams and i am certainly not in your i don't my challenge is i don't do it day to day i don't actually live with the hardware so if i did i would probably be able to pass it but for want of a better reason i go and test it just to experience what you guys do and see the pain yeah i do like that yeah but the goal was people wanted to be a single exam and since we took away all the other certifications all the other ccnas and compress it down into one we expanded it so there's there's topics on security and virtualization um and let's see what else we have oh we have a bit of wireless in there as well so things that weren't really part of the original ccna route switch and that really provides a good foundation and in many ways it's probably you know all people need to get into their career and get started and like i think i heard you mentioned prior that you know some people you know will go on further but some people will use that as a springboard and then just take their own journey and that's that's all i ever ask for is it people go and um you know i won't say they enjoy the process of getting the certification but they certainly feel like they've accomplished something when it's done definitely i will tell you what jeff i i like the ccna so much i got it twice and that was my fault i uh i had let it expire and at the time it this was the the pre-2020 so if i wanted to move forward to ccmp i had to get the n a first again so i i did that but i did want to ask a few questions about the the 2020 change and i didn't sign my nda so anything you don't want to answer you just tell me but first off how within cisco how difficult was it to make those changes how long of a process was it to decide okay we do need to pivot in a few areas and this is what we're going to do to achieve that that is an outstanding question and i am going to answer it because it really tells a tale um so changes like this are are like turning around the aircraft carrier in the san francisco bay it's like you just you don't want to do that it's just just not a not a good thing um there is an awful lot for a program that's been around as long as it has i think over the years we've certified somewhere near three million individuals i don't know the exact number but it's high um you know people have been in and people have been out um you know they worked their way through and a whole lot of people retired you know ccna ccies there's a whole bunch of emeritus ccies people who just keep it alive because but you know they're off doing other other things you know so there is a huge amount of institutional inertia but we also knew from our surveys i talked about earlier that there is a definite desire to change uh the program now it took a fair amount of convincing of our leadership to make this investment because it was a pretty pretty involved thing so when we create a certification you know it's not you know it's not something we can decide on a tuesday and by friday we have a new certification it it really is a process we have to go through and do what we call a full job role analysis of jra you know really understand what people who are employed with that a job that that qualifies you for what they know what they need to know what they're expected to know and then from that we do a job task analysis and that is then used to build the blueprint and the blueprint is what's published on the web right so you know you do not need to take a class you don't need to read a book you just need to understand everything there is to know about that list of topics and subtopics and beat your head against the wall and practice and lab and redo it again and again and again and probably take the test the first time then take it a second time because you didn't pass it the first time um but that is a fairly lengthy process so you know we involve you know industry experts subject matter experts we do a whole lot of um pre-work on that for job role analysis we'll go and look at the tongue job openings we'll take we'll do investigate you know we'll do um we do what we do what i call voice the customer which is essentially interviewing people who have that role or people who hire people in that role or people who work with people in that role so we understand what they're expected to be able to do and then we uh from that blueprint we go and build the exams have a whole team that does that and we build training to support that as well we work with cisco press so cisco press gets access to what we do as well and there they publish books we work with networking academy you know keep them informed because they build their own training they build their own programs from uh from what we do so it really kind of all grows out from that so it's it took you know i think we we finalized all of our blueprints about a year in advance it took about a year to create that training uh and the uh the certifications that go with it to go live was it a difficult call to not require a ccna to to move further it really wasn't a difficult call it was it was just we had always required a ccna to get a ccnp and that was just kind of the thing but you know a lot of people would say well look at the ccie you don't have to have a anything to get a cci if you can if you can sit that exam you can you can get your ccie is that a holdover from the past the not needing a ccna or np to get the ie is that just something that it's always been that way or always been that way i never knew that yes because you you mentioned ie was the very first really it was like cert so that kind of makes sense in a historical context but yeah it's cool to shed light on that all right yeah no it so if if you can well you have to pass the written exam first you know and now the written exam is the the core exam for the for whichever certification which i think uh tim you you mentioned that you passed the the end core last late last year and just passed your your ensld core uh and sld exam so you're got your ccnp your rock you should be rocking a shirt soon um but for ccie the uh the challenge has always been you know it's always been a cut above a notch above and it's you know we have it's a different team that builds those those exams and builds that program i interface with them and i i help them define where it wants to go but the reality is like you know i'm down here somewhere and they're like way up here and but they're all they're all good they're all you know mere mortals and so you know they don't understand the business side of it at all so i'm more than happy to to lend my uh my credence on that side so back to the uh the ccna we do have a comment from the traffic network and uh he although he had to go through it he did say that he wants to thank you for taking frame relay off of the ccna much appreciation yeah we felt it was about time to move that out you know although there are parts of the world where there's still quite a bit of free frame relay circuits out there so it's it's it's not entirely dead it's kind of like i spent some time if you look at my my linkedin profile i spent some time at opentext and i managed the fact server product and you'd be absolutely astounded by how many faxes are still sent every single day it's mind-blowing i used to work in law offices before i got into tech and definitely there's faxes sent all the time in the 20 in the 21st century we're faxing still it's wild yeah it's it's it's a very sticky technology but you know it it is definitely down significantly but back to the uh the ccna requirement for the before the ccnp it it really wasn't that hard of a decision once we once we took a look at the data that came back when we surveyed people um you know and the most common thing was like hey you know i got a ccnp route switch and i'm doing a lot of security i want to see ccnp security you're going to make me go back to kindergarten before i can get my ccnp security that's just stupid um so when you start putting those sorts of arguments together those connecting those dots it's like okay it kind of makes sense you know but you know here's the other side of that equation you are responsible for being ready to study and test at that level so it's like there is no easy on-ramp into it's like you have you know if you don't know the ccna stuff you're you're gonna you're gonna struggle well that's fair you gotta have that foundation or you're not gonna be able to move forward for sure so you you mentioned the blueprint a little bit ago and i i do think or at least maybe i i dreamt it over time but i i thought it says in there somewhere in the various blueprints or exam topics that they you know they could change at any time so i think a lot of us would like to know how often do those change oh you would really love to know that wouldn't you i would love to know that so so you are you know you've been through a test recently you can't schedule a test within seven days so if you took if you took your ian core test on november 1st and then november 8th you said it again you would see different items on the exam so we typically have a fairly large pool of items and they are selected at exam time so you will not see the same things the second time um but that is normal operation so there is there's a big pool more than we have for uh one test so you know makes it a lot a lot more difficult for those brained-up sites out there that we do our best to try to shut down but we are constantly adding items to the pool because some items get compromised those brand dump sites are out there so we do a lot of psychometric analysis of performance on the exam items and as time goes on when when an item becomes compromised we the statistics will tell us that so we have psychometricians that that constantly monitor that we also have people that are out there monitoring the pearson view sites to make sure that you know there aren't breaches out there in the wild as well but we're also constantly adding to that pool so probably over a period of a year we're probably adding 15 or 20 percent of the total pool of items i can't tell you the number of items that are in a pool at any one time but we are constantly writing items and one of the things that you know as you know as ccnps and ccies you can use to help recertify his volunteering time to write exam items and if you think the nda that you are supposed to sign for taking a test is tough writing items is much worse and i do not have access to the items i couldn't go and look at them so it is truly oh wow there's a brick firewall between us i didn't realize people could just volunteer for that i thought they had to be like invited to or asked well i think i think once you get to a certain level you have a certain level of connections and then those volunteers those asks come you'll be there by next week lexi yeah she's she's on the fast track i can't get past and narcy what are you talking about no that's interesting because we we have some people in the community who have written exam questions um and obviously they don't like breach the nda or anything but it is interesting hearing about their experiences in general right i i only recently found out that that was even a thing that you could do i assumed it was just employees of cisco that wrote those questions um why so why is it that you all take volunteers to write the exam questions instead of just putting that on you know cisco people well if i had to be perfectly honest writing exam items is very difficult and we truly want to not breathe our own exhaust so when we talk to subject matter experts about you know and we try really hard to mix cisco people and outside people when we create those blueprints as well so the idea there is that we get a breadth of experiences and we make sure that we're not just capturing the inside cisco view because you know we tend to well yeah we tend to we tend to think that we know everything and it's not entirely the truth um but writing writing items it's you know you talk about the art of network engineering there is a lot of art that goes into it and writing a good a good item with a a good stem and the correct answer and then good distractors it is not not easy and it's um imagine and you know and that's where really is frustrating when they get compromised and they're out there on dump sites and then we have to throw away a whole bunch of them yeah i'm so curious about the turnover too with questions and i know you can't probably talk specifics at all it's just i i you know i totally understand what you mean about perspective actually i think that's super healthy right that's great that that you all have people from the outside you know other perspectives than just cisco employees writing the questions right because you know like you said subject matter experts those are the best people to be writing exam questions regardless of where they're working right um but yeah i i am super passionate about brain dumps being just absolute garbage and i hate that people do that because they've ruined it for everyone else who's trying to like earn that certificate um you know honestly and uh yeah i mean it must it just really sucks that that happens so often all the goddamn time people brain dumping i mean i've had i've worked with people not in my current job i'm just gonna say that like it's just i have heard people in my place of employment in the past talk about how they bought brain dumps and it just drives me insane because there's no way to prove your knowledge what what pisses me off is like i'll go go do a google search of an exam number and like the first five things that pop up are various brain dumps it's like and they're they're showing up in linkedin messages now i mean there are people that are getting reached out to yeah i've seen it on on uh twitter and maybe linkedin that people get inbox messages that say hey do you want some help going through this exam and it's like it's nuts yeah no it's a it's it's a tough it's a tough thing you know and it's you know we had we've had some you know some some very high profile incidents in the past that i can't really talk about but it affects all levels of our certification and it's it's really unfair for the people who put in the effort to get there and i see a question that says somebody asked about why the reason was removing the ccda and dp um and the main reason why we did that is just just to be crystal clear is that we now have a very in-depth design component for each one of our ccnps and of course there's no outside of ccna and devnet associate and cyber ops associate there are no more associate level certifications so the idea there was that we truly tried to encapsulate enough of the the design side so that somebody truly wanted to go into that half of the equation which i think you did tim for your enterprise design work and hopefully that was a good experience for you or not too stressful yeah it was great um i jeff i did find uh what i was what i was trying to get at earlier so i've got the ccna exam topics in front of me now and right before it gets into the topics it says the guidelines below may change at any time without any notice so what i what i was kind of trying to get at was if i'm somebody that's new that's trying to get my ccna and i go look at these exam topics and i get a good feel for what i need to study if i'm planning on taking the ccna in the next four to six or however many months do i need to keep coming back to this document to make sure it doesn't change so the answer is most likely not now we occasionally will make some small changes like we will move like power over ethernet from one area to another or we will downgrade something from an apply to a describe just because we start seeing that there are issues with people just not picking that up uh in the exam or we just you know we blew it and we made it too difficult up front that does happen sometimes as well now if we are going to do a significant change which would be more than like five or ten percent you're we will publicize well in advance that we're making that kind of a change and we will let you give you runway to get there and you will have a last day to test for example okay so it's never like a sneaky thing it's always announced that's very good sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes we fix them um you know i i get copies of all of our uh student kits is what we uh shipped with ilt i just like to just get a feel for it and like i just was looking at in a rsi yesterday and i think we were up to 19 minor fixes and those are like spelling errors or grammatical fixes or numbering errors so stupid things but you know if we are constantly evolving and looking at our our programs so you did mention the other two associate level certifications that are still there the cyber the cyber ops and the devnet can you kind of unpack what the decision process was to break those out but keep them as associate level versus just professional yeah so our our experience with cyber began probably five years ago and it really was something that came out of cisco corporate at the highest level in the elt the executive leadership team they wanted to get more serious into the cyber operation side so there was a a scholarship program that was funded by cisco's trust and a few other things around that so we built that out and we kind of let that go with the transition but then we realized that nah you know we probably need to get that back because there was quite a bit of interest in it so we are keeping that one alive um devnet is the cisco developer relationship program i'm sure you have some familiarity with that um and you know we were for a brief period of time we were merged with the devnet organization there is you know the future of a lot of the future of networking is going to be around automation so you know clearly using apis and programmability you know and a bunch of different tools to to do that so the the goal there was to embrace that automation future and build out the associate level as well as the professional level in that space and i think we just recently went live with the expert level and the automation and space so something else that came out of 2020 is something that i really appreciate and i gotta know do we have you to thank for the continuing education program across all certifications i you don't have me to thank that for that specifically but i advocated for it because i i felt that it it was something that when we opened it up for uh for ccies it was the just the clamoring for it the demand for it was just huge um and you know logistically it took a while for us to figure out how to scale that into the other other programs but it is extremely popular you know there are still are some people that like to take tests you know and that's fine um but the other side of that coin is that this is a way to recertify and to grow your skills at the same time and to not have to go through that oh my god i'm walking into a testing center again um program uh so that that's going very well and we do we work very hard to try to accurately reflect the complexity and um level of the trainings that we include into that program and that's extremely popular yeah i went through the uh i went through the uh cisco on-demand digital learning library for the enterprise core exam and it was it was incredible content and even if i didn't want to sit for the enterprise core exam going through and passing all the quizzes and and getting credit for going through that course could have afforded me the continuing education credits to research had i already been there so that was that's really cool to see yeah you know it's you know i want to say a couple things about our our training programs we put a lot of effort into building them you know i know that a significant number of people you know they'll use the books so they'll they'll go out and study on their own they'll go to cbt nuggets or they'll you know maybe just hardcore roll up their sleeves and just do it um but the people that do take the training you know they they give us really good feedback you know my brother has been in it for his entire career and he's bounced around a bunch of companies doing security things and he joined cisco about four years ago and the first thing he did was work on his ccnp and he says oh my god your training is so good it's like you have real laughs i cannot you know it's not like anything else that he's ever experienced out there now granted he wasn't paying for it but he was working for cisco at the time but he says it's it was unbelievably good and he was able to pass in his first attempt on the test because he had that experience that's awesome um we have a question that i'm interested in actually uh from a patreon with a lot more industrial and iot devices being deployed are there any plans for an industrial or iot cert track well we had an industrial search track for quite a while it actually again never gained any traction we had a ccna industrial we were working on a ccnp industrial and it just kind of went nowhere so but it is something that we are looking at you know again there is a lot of growth in iot and cisco itself cisco has a complicated relationship with the internet of everything and iot now and um seems like our our position changes fairly regularly but there is little doubt that the growth of iot you know one of the things that will be driving uh iot growth at least in technology-wise for cisco is the promise of private 5g you know so private 5g is essentially spectrum lease to like a company or a private concern and it provides scale and bandwidth that goes way beyond what wi-fi can do so if you think of you know think of you know a trucking company or a delivery company with you know 10 000 vehicles and they can do all the tracking with private 5g and they can do that or they are a mining concern and they have you know very difficult challenging environments that they need to work in so you know places where wi-fi 6 and wi-fi 6e are just not going to give them the performance that they need private 5g gets there and it gets you to scale number of devices the number of data streams that is almost impossible to do elsewhere so you know that is again kind of our our entry point into that space or at least it's what i'm reading about from the internal site so i think we're going to see more push for it but we're not the radio people right not for that so as far as industrial you said there used to be a certification track but not anymore are there any plans to revive that because i am very interested actually we're looking at we're looking at what that what that demand looks like you know the the challenge is the challenge was before that it's really hard to narrow it down into something that is consistent enough for a program let me tell you where i'm coming from i'm coming from aerospace and networking on a rocket and there are a lot of similar similarities between you know industrial spaces and the type of technology you're using there and aerospace right i don't still know a whole lot so i can't give you super specific examples but you know the technologies that i've heard of you know being worked with things that nasa works with um stuff that we've looked into at blue it's all very like tied to industrial automation type stuff and so you know space tourism and things it's only gonna grow right like that that sector is just gonna grow in the future and so i'd be really interested to see you know if anything comes from the specific sort of networking and automation technologies that are being used in those spaces that aren't necessarily used you know in data centers or you know enterprise environments and things like that you know moving forward in the future so yeah hey jeff i i think we i think we found you a volunteer to write some exam questions first i have to learn it but yeah sure um no that's you know again you know iot is a very a very large and expanding space and you know i think the first wave there was just an awful lot of commercial or not commercial but consumer grade stuff that quite frankly is junk you know it's just you know but you know we're seeing you know there's been some some use cases general electric uses quite a bit of iot in their jet engines for example and they pull literally hundreds of gigabytes of data off of a flight and that that information goes back and it helps them maintain and monitor and improve the design and efficiency of their engines and i imagine those are the sorts of you know sensors and devices you know they're not high bandwidth but they're you know harsh environments and high reliability is incredibly important in the aerospace industry um cost is less important i won't say it's not important but it's certainly less important than performance and reliability and robustness so you know again i think that might be something that uh that can drive something in the future so we'll keep our ear to the ground looking at when the right time for that is cool hey everyone it's lexie aka trackit pacer or as my co-workers now know me that little gremlin that keeps crawling in and out of the server racks i have a question for you have you ever heard of the usnua so let me throw three topics at you number one network engineering number two no annoying sales pitches and number three beer does it get any better have you ever wished you could have someone to chat with in person about network design that isn't trying to sell something to you if your answer is yes then let me tell you you need to check out the usnua the us networking user association is a group of fellow network engineers that like to openly chat about all things networking and the added bonus there's no selling these user group meetings are completely devoid of oem agendas that means no pushy salespeople cornering you after the meeting trying to squeeze you for that next purchase order while you're just there to get mildly buzzed and talk about vxlan or something find out all the goodness of the usnua that's the u.s networking user association by going to usnua usnua.com we hope to see you at the next meetup in your area so jeff can you go we've talked a lot about the ccna can you go into any any of the other aspects of cisco learning and certification that you work on sure so i i am responsible for all the enterprise networking certifications i'm also responsible for the service provider certifications you know and it's like i have a new boss joined about eight weeks ago time nine weeks ago now feels like about two years that's just good time um and he goes hey we have this routing course and service provider in this writing course enterprise why aren't you know how how much how close are they we don't need two do we it's like yes we do because it is a very different set of problems you know it's beyond just ios xe versus ios xr it's really you know the scope and scale of routing from a carrier perspective versus even a very large enterprises it's just apples and oranges comparison yeah thank you thank you for that answer yeah i greatly appreciate that answer i i don't know what i said that seo print the kudos but i'll take it um oh just that they they should be separate because yeah they are very different very different uh use cases and issues that are that are solved in those different spaces well i was i was looking at a data sheet for a one of our carrier grade routers and it's like i was like 192 terabytes and i was like that's not that much it's like wait a minute 192 terabytes per second throughput it's like oh okay that's a little that's a lot that's it's huge um and that's just the kind of things that that that that world works on and it's it's just different um let's see i you know we are constantly on the lookout so when we when we built the new certifications you know one of the things that was a challenge before is it you know it was two two exams for ccna four exams for a ccnp and we we had to keep those you know they were they had to be fairly static because we wanted people to have stability in their preparation we didn't want them to get frustrated because we're changing things so frequently with the idea now so it's the kind of the model would be like the university experience you had your your core stuff that you had to take and when i got my degree in physics i had to take you know i had to take basic physics i had to take mechanics electro electromagnetism i had to take um a modern physics class a quantum mechanics course but then i had like four or five courses where i could choose i could go into an experimental area or i go into you know theoretical or i can go into applied spaces or i can go harder harder to the math side and still get my degree and so we kind of took the core plus the concentrations as the model and the idea is that as technologies change and evolve we can add concentrations without messing up the rest of it so we could expand upon what we currently have so for enterprise for example we have you know the advanced routing and services that's in the ena rsi but we also have the design which you've taken yourself we have wireless implementation wireless design um software defined networking software-defined software sd-wan i just always call it sd when i never see the word software defined so that's like just chokes on my mouth and we also have the automation side so that kind of is shared with the devnet world and those programs give you quite a bit of flexibility so you are able to get what you need out of the program without concentrating on things that don't make sense to you and since every time you take an exam you get a specialist certification that goes with it so kind of giving them out you get a certification you get a certification and you get we're like oprah right no not quite you still have to actually pass the test but um you know the goal there is that as your career changes as your goal goals in life change you can skill up where you need to and and get that level of um validation of what you've done um and you know the other thing is when certifications started back in the early 1990s for us you know it's like people's career started down here and they kept going up and up and up and up and up that doesn't really work anymore right because you're over here and then down here and then back over here no you're changing over it's like so i wouldn't say that it's you know add but the reality is that people's careers are not linear and will provide the flexibility for you to get what you need when you need it in your moment of need so to speak i like that i am i think i i passed encore so i'm an enterprise specialist and i'm happy with that you've passed it that's yeah that's quite an achievement yeah nrc is the current mountain i did want to highlight that because that's something that i i think is really cool that you at least have have something to add that you you got through something now i i never went through the previous ccnp where you had to do three and you mentioned earlier on i didn't even realize this jeff that it used to be four exams for the ccmp well actually for everything but enter a route switch had four okay so data center security everything had four route switch was different so you had three you had route switch and t shoot and then if you took the i think it was the design dsds gn or the sgn that gave you the ccdp so you could take four exams okay two certificates okay yeah it was really uh a rewarding feeling for me back last year when i i didn't just pass the test and go okay that's cool but i don't get anything until i get this this next one done yeah which now i'm i'm glad that it is the two but it was still nice to get that specialist and then you know i got the np and i got the np and a specialist out of it so it's yeah i i don't know if that was uh something that that was a homegrown idea within cisco or if you got a lot of feedback from um people that go through the certifications but i i really welcomed that change yeah there was a lot of people that gave us feedback that they wanted something to show because if you got three of the four you never got the fourth and you started not you know things started expiring it's like you got nothing right you put all that effort into it and you got nothing to show for it's like oh i got i've got three quarters of a certification it's like okay that and three bucks will buy you a cup of coffee denny's right yeah it is nice having something to show like hey i i did this i i have proof that i passed this exam um that was that was what made it great for me you know it did feel like some kind of validation and you know you can show it to people you can say that you've done it it's proof did you happen to get any pushback that wireless didn't get its own track anymore let's see the bruises we got some pushback from that uh we got some pushback from the field we got some pushback from internal on that one but it was very clear from the data that it was really well intertwined with the you know the route switch side of the world so it was a difficult decision to make to pull that inside but i think it was probably the right decision yeah yeah i mean i i won't say that it was you know incredibly in-depth but preparing for um enterprise core i mean lexi you can uh agree or disagree but i i felt there was a fair amount of preparedness that you needed to get to for both uh physical rf requirements as well as understanding the controller-based infrastructure as well that was part of enterprise core absolutely yeah there was quite a bit of preparation for encore for wireless yeah and and that was by design obviously and you know adding the two concentrations it gives you the chance to pick up the more depth if that's where you need to go you know and now with the release of the six g the six gig um bandwidth or spectrum you know we're working on you know how to incorporate those changes so adding more wi-fi six and the wi-fi six e which is now shipping i think on the new access points you know so again it's evolving fairly quickly which makes it hard to have a full certification around it because it's you know you don't want to be testing on two generations ago just so that people feel like they're they're in you know there's there's progress in that so it's it was not an easy decision but it was the right decision to do actually i really appreciate it because for me wireless was never something i was probably gonna look into but having to study it even just at a basic level for encore really got me interested i i gotta be honest um without being exposed to it through that test i probably wouldn't even be giving it a second thought or care right now but it is fascinating i mean it's radio frequency it's kind of totally different than copper wires and optical fiber right so i i i actually was really that was one of my favorite parts of that test was or preparing for that test was getting to study that material and actually demystify some of the stuff behind you know physically how does data you know move across radio waves and get to where it needs to go what's the you know design behind the hardware that that allows that to happen it's pretty fascinating because it's not it's similar but obviously not the same as just your typical like data center switch or router it's pretty cool yeah i will give you my standard answer for that everything happens for a reason that reason is almost always physics that's a good answer yeah i i want to circle back around the enterprise core and the enterprise design and i i really think they're they're applicable to folks that are in the the small especially the small and medium-sized enterprises like like i am it was i don't think i hit and i'll pick on enterprise core i don't think i hit anything that was on there that wasn't at least somewhat relevant to what i'm doing in the enterprise space and i think that's what kept it interesting because i never really hit anything that was like oh i'm never going to see this or i'm never going to look at this because it it really i mean we're a medium-sized shop so we have to have on our team involvement and pretty much across the portfolio that was in the enterprise core exam so everything in there was was really applicable and for me when i'm going through these certification study journeys that helps because if if i find something that's not applicable i mean my mind's easily gonna wander and i'm gonna get bored and and i don't feel like i got through both exams preparing for them i don't think i ever felt like i got bored because almost everything that was in there was applicable to what i was doing on the job so what i'm hearing is we shouldn't bring back frame relay you're not going to get me to ask you for that i i don't even really know what frame relay is i'm just going to say it so yeah i'm cool with that i just hear so many people complaining about frame relay all the damn time it's at that osi layer one is frame relay so all that stuff that you you memorized and then just straight to tcp real one is good though layer one is fun yeah but but when we're talking about ethernet that's what i know there we go you don't really have to you don't have to think about it that much though right that's the key like i said it's the physics behind it yeah electrons and photons ideally okay so uh bringing out the nda again jeff is is there anything on the horizon for ccna and other cisco certifications that you can share with us i'll say that we have you know we're at the two-year point of the after the launch of the new certifications we have been through a couple of rounds you know we tried twice between once and twice a year to do a pretty deep dive into the review of the state of the program we have some very minor changes to the blueprint and again it's just like moving some things around and changing some priorities we were working very closely with the networking academy to make sure that we were keeping everything in the line because we don't certainly don't want to cause them any troubles with their programs as well for ccna so we are probably going to be looking at a next major revision probably in about a year maybe a year and a half so but again the way we designed it and the way it's put together is i think it's still just as relevant today as it was the day we launched it the technologies haven't changed that much and if anything we were going to do you know one of the things that comes up from the training side not from the exam site from the training side is that you know the way we built the course is it's got about eight days worth of content for the instructor-led program you know so it's five days in class training or virtual ilt or these days instructor-led training and then three days of self-study and that is something that doesn't resonate very well with the community so you know one of the things i look at is you know should we split that back out you know we try to we try very hard to keep it to that eight days of magical content you know and it might make more sense as to two five-day courses kind of like the old icd-1 icd-2 was you know the reality is is that it's just tougher for people to do particularly with this with covet era and a lot of a virtual instructor-led training it's you know it's just like you know i'm over here looking at my twitter no i'm not but you know it's just very difficult to sit at a desk for eight hours and um stay focused on a program and that's something that our our learning partners uh talk to us about quite frequently so if there's anything that we were going to do we might expand uh the topics a little bit as i think you know getting more into virtualization and controller-based networking that seems to be a high priority um i know we touch very slightly on the meraki world so the sas based uh control of networks and i think that might be something that comes in a little bit more i'm going to see quite a bit of um it'll get a quite a bit of growth in that space as well you know people are going to start seeing that earlier and earlier in their career so those are the sorts of things that we're looking at for that for the professional certifications that's you know again we have the same scope of of reviews the same cycle of reviews we are looking to add a few concentrations i can't talk about what we're looking at that right now but you know you'll start seeing some expansion there as we take a look at what's happening in the marketplace and i keep seeing i keep looking at that you know asking more about industrial iot devices and you know what we need to do there so uh definitely going to be on the lookout for that potentially here's what i'm hearing potentially expanding some of the concentration so lexi keep an eye out for the aerospace associate can i make a suggestion yes aerospace associate oh that's so good tim that's so good that's on point oh i love it um if i can make a suggestion i need something to teach me about time triggered ethernet i just think it's so fascinating so interesting i can't find anything about it on anywhere right like there's like a little bit um by the company that invented it but there's not actually that much like there's not anything really in depth and so what i've heard is that people who use it have to struggle quite a lot through learning to use it and i would just be thrilled it would be the most thrilled i i ever have or ever will be to go through a certification track if there was something that involved time triggered ethernet and other similar technologies i'll write that down thanks thanks jeff he's actually writing it down awesome i am i am indeed i i wasn't i wasn't pulling your leg on that one oh man yeah because i yeah i could talk forever about how i think aerospace is in the actual traffic engineering space so actual vehicle traffic so yeah not not qos not qos real cars traffic engineering very um yeah that's an interesting topic in cisco cisco has we publish a fair number of of articles and documents about that but it's definitely going to be coming a much larger focus as more and more um routing people and packets over here i love that i love that that's great um that's great you know i i'm i'm old you know i'm in my closing in on my late 50s so i i have lots of doubts about fully autonomous driving and i've seen some of the videos of tesla's kind of navigating into like yeah the train tracks here in san jose so i'm not so sure that i'm i'm going to see more than just tesla out there there's more than just tesla out there there's actual competitors for that software which is very interesting yeah i see a bunch of you know i i go to the office a couple of days a week and there's a whole bunch of autonomous driving cars that are around but they have the big lidar towers on the top and all this other stuff so you can clearly see them from far away what they're doing and how they're doing it but it's uh you know it'll get there but uh you know i i think the biggest challenge would be dealing with all the idiots on the road that aren't autonomous because yeah people do stupid stuff how do you autonomously have defensive driving yeah you go so jeff as we've gone through this is there anything that you wanted to get across that we haven't asked you or talked about yet um you know you covered quite a few bases you know the i guess the thing that i find fascinating and why i really like doing this why i've been doing this for the better part of six years now is you know first of all you know i studied physics in in college and the reason why i study physics is i really like to know why things happen you know i don't care about you know making something do something but i like to understand the fundamentals of why you know the other thing that physics taught me was you know how to solve a problem and how to look outside from the outside in to figure things out you know i i'm one of those weird people i love word problems in math because all you need to answer are in there so you just have to figure it out right you just have to figure out what's the important things that they're telling you and then how to you know how to get to that solution so i've been a lifelong believer in learning you know constantly looking to stretch and expand my horizons so doing what i do helping other people you know you know better themselves and you know the the the number of success stories that are out there you know it's you know you know lexi you got your you're out switch you took off into a great career you took a huge leap of faith into what you're doing now and it sounds like it's it's paying off you know it's again i love hearing stories like that i would really like to see far more representation from underrepresented groups in tech you know there is you know early in my career i was working as an application engineer for a company that made microscopes that measured things and one of my peers was a woman who got her degree she got her master's degree in particle physics or higher energy physics from san diego state and i sat there and watched her be mansplained to by our engineers like she knew far more about how the instrument worked than our lead engineer did and it's like i was just flabbergasted and that's like you know it's like this this is just this is it doesn't make any sense it's just stupid so i you know i really want there to be you know it's we're not digging trenches we're not doing anything where you know strength makes a difference or anything like that then the intelligence is there the capabilities are there it's you know nothing nothing magical to do that and i want you know i really want to help drive that you know i try to support that i work with a group within cisco to help you know bring more more women into the organization more women into to networking in general um and i really want to to see that happen uh in a big way and i you know we get to donate money and cisco matches funds and i make sure that i pick places where my dollars go to that uh that betterment of that space um and you know again i was talking about one of my chief content engineers actually our manager content engineering that i work with is nikita she's in india and she's absolutely fantastic and she has one of her content engineers under hers desiree linfield who did most of the work for the ccna and you know she's recorded the videos for it so it's like again i really want to see i want more people more young young people to see that they can do that and you know this isn't you know this isn't a boy's club you know you don't need to have a lot of math it doesn't hurt to have it but it doesn't help either it's really you know and that's just the lamest excuse i've ever heard in my entire life um i think everybody should have the equal chance and the equal opportunity to get there and certifications are the great equalizer right it's like from dif people from different backgrounds different levels of education you know you can get into it's pretty easy to get into a networking academy program and get two thirds or three quarters of the way there and then all you have to do is take that next step and that can be the springboard to a career something that could last you for 20 30 30 plus years and you know greatly increase your you know your your uh uh cut your your your experience of living and what you can do and where you can go and take away a lot of barriers you know and working with the networking academy team is like you know hearing what they do overseas and then you know in places where you know there's far less opportunity where you know third world markets and india and in africa it's like it's really great to be part of an organization that helps build programs to bring those people into the world because you know the world's changed and i love it that's awesome i love hearing that from a product manager at cisco i mean that's fantastic i gotta say that gives me a lot of hope to know that you think that way that cisco thinks that way um and i find it so interesting you said certifications are the great equalizer because i don't disagree with that right like if you you know i i don't have a four-year degree in anything stem and all i really did was you know i got interested through cisco netacad and somebody took a chance on me for a job and now here i am right like you it's still hard work but it's it's i feel like certifications are a maybe a way without as many barriers um to get into a really positive you know career track for yourself um especially in tech where things can be kind of ephemeral if you don't like grow up with it and it's not it doesn't come naturally to you for whatever reason like just focusing having that like study track for a certification for me at least helps me understand like okay i'm gonna take this in bite size pieces and learn tech this way because it's it's telling me how to do it step by step it really was like you know earning certs as as much as we can complain about it sometimes because a lot of us are on what we call the certification hamster wheel it's still it's still a wonderful way at the very least at the very least to get your foot in the door when you don't really know how else to do it and like a four-year degree is too expensive or just too out of reach for whatever reason right i so i love that you said that because that's really how i feel and i've never really put that into words before but i'm always trying to encourage more women and girls to get into stem careers and of course network engineering and that's kind of the impression i try to impart on them is look you don't you don't have to necessarily go through like a ton of schooling and study math or whatever if you don't like it if that's not your thing you can still have a great career in tech just look into certifications there's a lot of them out there that you know can address the things that you specifically are interested in tech just just look at them you know so yeah i loved hearing that from you jeff yeah and the other thing is you know the certification isn't the end of the journey it's the start of the journey right it it really is the springboard and from that you can take it anywhere that you want to go um and you know plus you get to play with really cool toys right i mean some of the coolest stuff you know when i took over the cisco modeling labs and viral products you know it's like i needed to get some hands-on experience so they pointed me at one of their their qa systems and it's like i have never ever touched a computer with 112 cores and 1.5 terabytes of ram that's like wow this is cool i am glad that we've highlighted the uh naticad program multiple times here and i'm i'm also glad to hear how uh closely ingrained and how often you communicate with them because as we talk more about the the math and the science aspects of technology and in people that think that you really need to be heavy on math because i was not and i i got into college i went you know the traditional computer science route and i started getting nervous because i was sitting in those c plus classes and calculus and going this is way over my head i don't know what i'm doing here and then i sat in on our uh the school i went to had netacad that was part of the curriculum so i sat in that class and i just became engrossed with the material the the high level osi model where you know you start at the physical and work your way up all those high level concepts just really clicked and made sense and netacad really just opened my eyes to i sat through those classes and i was like okay this is what i want to do with my career because of netacad so i'm glad that we've highlighted that program and i'm really glad that you as a product manager and the ccna team work closely with that group to make sure that your your goals and and requirements are in line yep absolutely you know and the other thing is you know if you're struggling with a concept you know don't think that you're alone you know i i don't do it very often so when i subnet i actually write i just do it on paper and so i asked a cci it's like so do you just like know how to do this like hell no i write it out on paper it's like okay so subnetting yeah it's like so you do it as well and it's like i don't feel so bad anymore so jeff um if people want to learn more about yourself or the ccna and other certification programs where would you point them to well the best place to get the most up-to-date information on the the certification programs is the is learning learningnetwork.cisco.com that's our our main page you can also there's we also have pages on cdc which is cisco.com that's our shorthand for it we love our three-letter acronyms at cisco um if you want to learn more about me well my linkedin page i'm my id is gander2112 anybody who knows what the 2112 stands for you probably know that i'm an old dude um i'm on twitter it's ganders2112 so there's an s in there because somebody had taken my my name at one point so that sucked um and you know again uh let's see if you hit me up on linkedin you know i'll i'll probably respond and uh and you know add you and you can we can exchange messages there or you can hit me up on twitter i don't do facebook or you know simply because it's just such a scummy place they're they're just their lack of caution with my private information is truly astounding and i'm i'm getting close to that with with twitter we'll see what happens with elon musk taking it over but um you know again oh boy i'm more than happy to uh to answer questions and if you really want to reach out to me at cisco i'll probably hate myself for this but uh under geoff.anderson cisco.com comes to me so that way you can you can find me there and uh i'm usually pretty good about answering emails don't feel too bad about giving out your your cisco email because they're easy to get i think they're usually pretty easy to guess well so here's the thing we went to uh microsoft 365 for all of our our stuff so we all have an eight character internal email address which for me is g-e-o-f-f-a-n-d so you would never have figured that one out but if you put somebody's first name dot last name it's also gonna get to them wow okay that's a secret now we know the yeah now we know the secret secret well jeff thank you so much for uh for joining us in this episode uh lexi do you have anything else no just thank you jeff for letting us kind of put you in the hot seat and ask you all these questions kind of specific ones about certifications we really appreciate it this is something that i think not just tim and i but everybody at a1 and also you know our community we're all super curious about the inner workings of cisco and the certification track so thank you so much for shedding some light on that we really appreciate it i was looking forward to people saying you you're ruining my life it's like i'm doing nothing but study i hate you but no you know the reality is is you know there's a lot of work that goes into it there's a lot of thought that goes into it we try to make sure that we put it put together a fair and balanced program we ensure that it retains its value to both you as the certified individual but also the people who are looking to hire you because a certification that doesn't give you doesn't help you get to your goal doesn't really do you any good so we want to make sure that there's good value for effort that you put into it and i think we we maintain that absolutely again thank you so much for right coming and chatting with us yeah it's been great thank you jeff and thank you all the listeners for joining she is the soon-to-be aerospace associate number one lexi i am tim burtino and join us next time on the art of network engineering hey y'all this is lexi if you vibe with what you heard us talking about today we'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast in your favorite podcatcher also go ahead and hit that bell icon to make sure you're notified of all our future episodes right when they come out if you want to hear what we're talking about when we're not on the podcast you can totally follow us on twitter and instagram at art of neteng that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find a bunch more info about us and the podcast at art of network engineering dot com thanks for listening you