Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) is recognized as the most respected IT certification today. CertMag even voted it as the most technically advanced, while other reports claim that it is the highest salaried certification in salary surveys. Indeed, passing CCIE is really worth all the efforts and money that candidates have to consider in taking both the written and lab exams. Though there are really no formal prerequisites, Cisco recommends candidates to have at least 3 to 5 years of experience in networking before making their first attempt on becoming a CCIE. Unlike other certification programs such as the ones offered by Microsoft, there is no need to pass lower Cisco certifications such as associate and professional exams before taking an expert level exam as CCIE.

There are 5 that candidates can choose from, making it possible to hold multiple CCIE certifications at the same time. These are:

(a) CCIE Routing and Switching  the most popular track that covers a variety of networking protocols and concepts such as Multicast Routing and Border Gateway Protocol;

(b) CCIE Security   focuses on network security, covering topics such as IOS Security and IDS;

(c) CCIE Service Provider  concentrates on networking in the service provider industry such as DSL, Cable and Voice over IP;

(d) CCIE Voice   covers subjects such as Cisco Unity and Call Manager as voice solutions for the enterprise; and

(e) CCIE Storage Networking  the latest addition on that concentrates on storage networking topics that include FCIP, FICON and iSCSI.

As of November of 2007, there are 1,344 individuals who hold multiple CCIE certifications and 210 of them hold three or more CCIE certifications.

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