In the very last day of availability of the  CCIE v4 350-001 written exam I’ve renewed my CCIE for a couple of years more:

<img src="https://www.ifconfig.it/images/ccie_exam_renew_2014-1024x38.png" alt="ccie_exam_renew_2014">

My plan was to recertify with another track - Wireless or Security - but life happens and I took the easy path and did R&S again.

I’ve passed the same written exam 3 times. The first time in 2010, followed by a failed lab attempt in 2011. Then I did it again  in 2012 and passed the lab exam in 2013.

Exam quality

The first time I’ve complained about the quality of the images in the exam, they look like scanned images from a fax printed with a 300dpi printer. The second time the images quality was better but the questions were unclear, hard to understand. I can say the third time the exam was quite better, no question looked strange or unexpected but while some topics were deeply tested other were completely ignored. The  CCIE R&S written blueprint is quite long, even with a 100 questions exam is not easy to test all topics.

What’s next

Now my CCIE is safe until March 19th 2017 so I’ve plenty of time to study other certifications. It’ll be hard to prepare the written exam again in 3 year so I’m likely to do another track for real this time. Another CCIE lab? That’s not in my plans, I’ve spent so much time and energy for the R&S and I don’t think my career would get any improvement from a second CCIE.

Good luck to anyone taking R&S v5 written exam!