Re: To All

Sign Pavel's Petition and join Certguard:

 PurposeThroughout my career I've met too many people with professional
certifications, like CCNP and CCDP, that did not even know how to properly
configure basic OSPF, EIGRP passive interface, or an ACL. These features
should be easily configured by a CCNA certification holder, and not present
a challenge for a CCNP certified individual. Going through all the
certifications myself, I know just how hard it really was to gain a strong
enough understanding of the technology to pass certification exam. There is
now way a CCNP certified engineer that received the certification in a
legitimate manner would not know that L3 interfaces are off by default, why
it is not possible to configure extended VLANs with VTP mode set to server,
or think that IGMP is L2 protocol in switches. No person with CCIP or CCVP
deserves the certification, if they think that policer can queue the excess
traffic, or that policer refills the Bc bucket every Tc interval for that
matter. (For those who are wondering, policer refills Bc prorated to the Tc
every time the packet is policed, it does not wait for the Tc. Page 361,
Cisco QoS book by Wendell, Second Edition, ISBN 1-58720-124-0)
Certifications are not papersThey give people an opportunity to evolve their
understanding of networks. They show the available paths and directions in
networking. They are an achievement proof primarily to the holder, a
watermark in one's life, a motivation. Certification is not a piece of
paper, which it certainly becomes when an individual uses braindumps to pass
certification tests.
How Cisco certification tests are createdCisco offers a wide variety of
official trainings that cover a precise topic, like BGP, or an area of
networking, like routing. For every training there is an official set of
training materials. From those training materials an assigned team creates a
pool of 400 to 500 questions. When an individual takes an exam, system
pseudo-randomly chooses about 60-70 questions from that pool. Not every
official training has a certification, but every certification has an
official training.
How an individual should studyRemember, the certification test are created
from the training, which describes a technology. Certification test checks
the test taker's understanding of the topic. Any book that sufficiently
covers the topic will be enough for an individual to receive all the
theoretical information required to understand the topic. Understanding is
what is tested, understanding is what test taker should pursue. That is
another reason why certification is of the most value to the test taker -
reward for all the effort and sacrifice put in studying the topic. As a side
note, while official Cisco training might be too expensive to an individual,
it is definitely not a burden to a corporation, even those the management
might say so.
How braindumps are created and usedBecause the pool of questions is
relatively small, after enough people with wrong intentions take the
official test and steal the questions (using cameras to take photos of the
screen with the question displayed) the braindump team is able to put
together all or nearly all questions that the original team that created the
test put together.

Memorizing the 400 questions and answers is a cakewalk. Really understanding
the technology is what's hard. I remember I had to memorize a five-page
poems in fourth grade, and I did that with a success. I was nine years old
then. But do I remember any of it? Of course not. To learn and most of all
understand technology requires years of hard effort. To pass a certification
test by memorizing questions and answers is a matter of several days at
most. People do not become engineers overnight. Will anyone understand any
of the technology? Of course not. Just like I don't remember the poem. But
what I do remember is IS-IS levels and ISO protocols I studied over eight
years ago, because I thought they might be on the CCNA certification test
that I was preparing for. I never touched or read about IS-IS since then.
But it's amazing how much I still remember from the top of my head! All
because I understood IS-IS's basic principles.
Why we want to limit the use of braindumps?We want certifications to retain
it's value. That is only people that really understand the technology to the
level tested by certification should hold that certification. There are no A
B C or D in real life. Remember, passing a certification exam is a reward
for all your effort and time you had to sacrifice studying and understanding
the technology. With braindumps certification will represent the ability of
an individual to memorize the questions and answers, which most children
older than 10 are able to do. But your age is stated on the driver's license
and you don't need a certification for that.
How we want to limit the use of braindumps?The main effort is through a
petition to improve the way how certifications are created. If each created
pool of certification questions would consist of five thousand questions and
not five hundred, it would be much harder to create and use braindumps,
effectively making understanding the technology the best way to pass the
test.
 Links
[image: Sign the petition to stop
braindumps]<http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop_braindumps/>

[image: Cisco learning
resources]<http://cisco.com/web/learning/le3/learning_career_certifications_and_learning_paths_home.html>

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Thu Apr 02 2009 - 12:00:12 ART