CCIP It Isn't

If you are still listening, then perhaps you've heard. Cisco is retiring the CCIP certification. This both good and bad for me.

Firstly, it's bad as now, instead of studying only two more exams to get CCIP, I now have to study 5 or 6 more (more on that later) to get there.

On the other than, it's much closer to the real world in terms of the type of routing you need to know (e.g. IS-IS is back in) which I think is a good thing.

But what this means now is that instead of going for a CCIP certification, I will instead be going for a CCNP SP (SP = Service Provider). In line with other Professional level certifications, there is now a corresponding Associate level certification (CCNA SP) that is a prerequisite for this.

So going back to Associate level, means my certification path is now:
CCNA SP => CCNP SP

The CCNA SP is now two exams and the CCNP SP is four exams for a total of 6 exams but there may be some overlap with the CCNP and thus a possible exam or two that I won't need to do.

There are of course now new topics like IS-IS to learn that weren't in CCIP (though they used to be under the old routing exam BSCI) if you took the ROUTE exam.

I'm actually looking forward to this as it seems much more aligned to work I'm doing now and we all know that's a huge help when trying to learn new things.

Here's to more certificates and the joy of learning.