Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert

They say that the cream always rises to the top. If you’re an Actor, the top is an Academy Award. If you’re a Professional Athlete, it’s an Olympic gold medal. And if you’re a Professional Mountain Climber, it’s literally “the top” — the summit of Mount Everest.

If you’re a Network Engineer, however, the top isn’t a mountain, an award, or a trophy. It’s a professional certification: the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification, achieved by less than one percent of the world’s networking professionals.

Indeed, if you’re a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, you’ve achieved one of the highest distinctions in the information technology industry, awarded by Cisco Systems to Network Engineers who’ve demonstrated by passing a rigorous exam their expertise in the planning, preparation, operation, monitoring, and troubleshooting of complex computer networks.

Like other Network Engineers, you’re employed in a company’s IT department, where it’s your job to set up and maintain the computer networks employees use to access intranets and the World Wide Web. Your daily responsibilities therefore include installing and configuring the hardware and software needed to run the network, including routers, firewalls, and servers, and fixing problems — day or night — when the network shuts down or malfunctions. In a small office with only one location, that’s an easy job. In the case of a multinational corporation with many offices and many layers of infrastructure, however, it’s an extremely complicated task.

What separates you as a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert isn’t what you do, therefore. It’s the level at which you do it: You’ve proven that you’re up to the most difficult networking tasks, which means you have access to more and better — not to mention higher-paying! — job opportunities.