CCIE, CCNA and CCNP Salaries and demand

It's fair to say that many companies have felt the pinch in this last world wide recession. Certainly Information Technology (IT) in all it's forms has not been excluded from this, jobs have been outsourced, or shared amongst other team members as another is let go, or cheaper workers have taken their place. As a personal comment, I went from a very well paying job in the city to a job in the suburbs paying half of what I was on after being made redundant, thankfully I have bounced back, but times were tough, and i know of many others in a similar situation.

Most information technology salaries have, over the last few years, dropped considerably, when compared to the pre-recession era. So how has the number of CCIE jobs, the Cisco salary scale, and especially the CCIE salary scale faired?

CCIE Salary compared to CCNA and CCNP

Looking at the data listed on itjobswatch.co.uk we can see that in 2011 the average CCIE salary offered was in the region of £57,500, in 2012 this dropped to £57,000 and has risen back to the 2011 figure in 2013, so thankfully the last couple of years have been kind to the CCIE certified!  

Over the last 9 years the CCIE salary scale has actually changed very little, which is good news for anyone trying to justify the cost of the CCIE exams vs the potential salary increase.

CCIE Salary scale

Now if we compare this against the CCNA and CCNP job salary scales, again we see very little change over the same period:

CCNA Salary scale

CCNP Salary scale

We can see that there has been very little movement within the CCNA and CCNP job salaries on offer, in fact the CCNA is showing a very steady climb.

Number of CCIE, CCNA and CCNP roles

Although the CCIE salary has stayed around the same, the number of roles available has fluctuated dramatically:

Number of CCIE roles as a percentage of total roles

Granted, we are only talking about a couple of percentage of overall IT jobs, but there is still a considerable change. Now let's look at the CCNA and CCNP for comparison.

CCNA roles as percentage of total

CCNP roles as percentage of total

So over all we can see that the recession as it was in the period 2009 to 2011 is now slowly recovering and demand is, once again, climbing back to pre-recession levels.

Summary

The number of roles requiring any form of Cisco certification has risen and fallen in-line with the recession. The salaries for the CCNA, CCNP and CCIE have only changed by a few percent over the years and are, in general, on the rise again, which is good news for all Cisco certified people!

We can see that the average CCNA salary is around £37,000, this rises to around £46-47,000 with the CCNP qualification and then to £57,000 with the CCIE certification. So this does show that all the study, hard work and dedication will pay off! 

Passed CCNP TShoot

Hurrah! I am certified in CCNP Routing and Switching!

I took the CCNP TShoot exam yesterday, I passed, but that's not to say I found it easy. In fact I think this exam took me longer to complete than any of the other exams so far. 

The format is that you are given a couple of multiple choice or drag and drop questions, and then it's onto the trouble tickets. 

Passed CCNP Switch exam

So I passed my CCNP Switch exam on the first attempt. So far its always been fail on the first attempt, and pass on the second. I missed my first CCNA attempt by just a couple of points, and same with the first attempt at Route.

But first time round on the Switch exam, passed with a score of 890.

Will book the TShoot for a couple of weeks time, and then straight into CCIE studies!

VTP - VLAN Trunking Protocol (1.20)

Configuring VLANs on one or two switches is easy enough, but as the scope of the VLANs increases managing each switch's VLANs individually can become an administrative headache, and prone to mistakes and inconsistencies. Therefore a VLAN management protocol can make this much, much easier.

VTP is one of a couple of VLAN management protocols, the others being GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP) these are defined in 802.1D (GARP) and 802.1Q (clause 11) for GVRP. These others are not currently supported by Cisco and are therefore not part of the Switch exam, or the CCIE exam.

VTP manages the addition, deletion and renaming of VLANs across the network from a centralised point.

VTP uses domains (areas with common VLAN requirements). A switch can only belong to one VTP domain.

To participate in a VTP domain each switch must be in one of the following modes:

1. Server mode - this has full control over VLAN creation, deletion and modification, this is the default mode for switches.

2. Client mode - cannot create, change or delete and VLANs. Clients listen to VTP advertisements from other switches and modify their own VLAN configuration. Also acts as a relay, forwarding VTP information to other switches.

3. Transparent mode - does not participate in VTP, and does not advertise its own VLAN configuration. With VTP version 1 it does not relay VTP information from other switches unless the VTP domain names and numbers match. In VTP version 2 they can still act as relays regardless of the VTP domain name.

VTP advertisements are sent using multicast and reference an index called the configuration revision number. The revision number starts at zero and increments by one with any change, at which point the update is sent to all VTP listening switches.

New switches should always be cleared of all VTP information before being introduced into the network.

VTP configuration

Head back into the PacketTracer lab we created earlier and add the following:

Management domain:

switch0(config)# vtp domain vtptest

switch1(config)# vtp domain vtptest

Mode:

switch0(config)# vtp mode server

switch0(config)# vtp version 2

switch0(config)# vtp password vtppassword

switch1(config)# vtp mode client

switch1(config)# vtp version 2

switch1(config)# vtp password vtppassword

Now we can add a couple of VLANs - so on Switch0 add VLANs 4 and 5, then do a sh vlan on Switch1

Without adding anything to Switch1 you should see 

Running a show vtp status on switch0 you should see

VTP Pruning

VTP Pruning makes more efficient use of trunk bandwidth by reducing unnecessary flooded traffic.

To implement this it is just a case of typing "vtp pruning" in config mode. But this is not supported in PacketTracer, at least not in the version I am running. It might be supported in future releases.

switch(config)# vtp pruning

Once this is added on server it is also enabled on the VTP clients.

Troubleshooting VTP

Check the mode if updates are not being received - make sure not in transparent.

Makes sure at least one switch is set as the server.

Make sure trunks are used as VTP advertisement are only sent over trunk links.

Make sure VTP domain name is identical across all switches.

VTP versions should be compatible.

Passwords should match for VTP.

The gaps between the CCNP and the CCIE

So moving from the CCNP world to the CCIE world seems like a massive jump. Just look at the book list for instance.


But how huge is the jump really?

Looking at the topics shared between the different levels (and due to space constraints I have had to shorten the topic titles as much as possible) we can see that a number of topics, as expected are already well covered, and there are a few that will be completely new.
The items that aren't covered are in green, and where a topic is covered the corresponding exam is in brackets (R for Route, S for Switch and T for TShoot.

CCNP Switch Exam topics

So although this site is focused on the CCIE R+S exams, I really probably should point out that I am still finishing off my CCNP routing and Switching (R+S). I have completed the Route exam and am lining up to take the Switch exam. 

So lets have a little look over the exam topics.