>>BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is usually used between central offices and large
>>ISPs. I could write a short spiel on the subject, but to save time and space
>>here on UT, I'll just provide a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGP .
>
>Yes, well, the CCNA curriculum mentions it, but doesn't enter into details.
>Those are covered in CCNP, and from the little I have seen, it is quite
>complicated.

Well, I read the CCNA and CCNP books, mainly out of curriosity, but also
to learn Cisco's operating system. Basically, I was dealing with a couple
of their routers at work. A friend (CCIE) knew that my background was (mainly)
UNIX(tm), so he knew I wouldn't have problems with the Cisco CLI commands
and recommended that I take a look. (Later, he told me he was trying to get
me to come to work for him doing nothing but networking. Like you, I love to
hack code, so his efforts were somewhat thwarted by PHP, SQL, C/C++, assembly,
and now VFP :^). I did tell him, however, that I have absolutely nothing against
networking, and, if he really needed me for a project where he was short-handed,
he could give me a call and that I'd give him a hand on the weekends or after
work.)

>What you say sounds like it MIGHT be true, but I don't know. I don't know whether
>we have a single CCIE in Bolivia.

Not surprising. Most contract out to the Bell companies, IT&T, and they
usually live in the main telecom hubs of the US, such as New York, Atlanta,
Dallas, Denver, and so forth. Also, I'm not sure about this either, but
I believe there are only a few places in the world that you can actually
take the CCIE. I believe it's something like: San Francisco, New York, Atlanta,
Chicago, London, and maybe one or two other large cities. With Bell and the like
usualy paying for the exam, it's really no big deal if the CCIE canidates fail
on the first go-round. From what I hear, most folks are actually expected to
fail the first try.


>The certification exams for this particular "series", BTW, are, in this order:
>CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), CCNP (Cisco Certified Networking Professional),
>CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking (?) Expert). Cisco Networking Academy has
>preparatory courses for CCNA and CCNP, but not for CCIE.

Same here in the States, except the last exam is called something
like "Cisco Certified Internetwork Engineer." Check this out: Some
young kid out of highschool passed all three exams, making about
$150,000.00 US a year, saved his money, and he just dropped it all
to go to university and study phillosophy(sic?). :^). BTW, there
are around 5 CCIE's here in town, all working for telecomm providers.
I know two of them, and both work about 6 months out of the year,
making something like $100,000.00++ a year. Personally, I don't
think I'd have any problems at all doing networking, but, for me,
it's not about the money -- it's about the fun and being happy.
I can see that networking can be a lot fun, but it involves a LOT
of travel, and I can hack code from home or at work, which is fine
by me :^).

>I only heard that CCIE are the top experts, and that there are very few,
>so it makes sense that the exam is difficult - and costly.

Makes sense to me, too.

>I assume a CCIE has to know LOTS of different technologies.

At the CCNP and CCIE levels, it's more about designing networks and
solving the critical problems that can arise, so my friends tell
me.

>I, for one, am not even very keen on the CCNP certification, for now,
>because (a) my area of expertise is programming, more than networks,
>(b) it would take a lot of time to research the additional topics
>(although I do want to take the time to read SOME of these topics,
>for my CCNA students), and (c) Even the CCNP exam is too dear for me,
>right now.

I totally agree. It's fun learning about this stuff, and it does look
good on the resume', but I like hacking code. I know a lot about security,
but I'm not a security expert; I know a lot about telecom, but not an expert
there either. OTOH, knowing these things a bit do help with programming,
and who knows -- one day I might have to make a latteral move to another
area of computing, and knowledge in those areas might be the difference
in getting a consulting job or sitting at home twiddling my thumbs :^).
Also, with all the out-sourcing going on here in the States, knowing
networking just might save my b***, especially when we consider the
fact that networking and tech work are hard things to out-source.

Best Regards, Hilmar. Nice talking with you, as usual.

Randall