Congratulations! If you're reading far enough to look at the introduction to this book, you've probably already decided to go for your Cisco certification. If you want to succeed as a technical person in the networking industry, you need to know Cisco. Cisco has a ridiculously high market share in the router and switch marketplace, with more than 80 percent market share in some markets. In many geographies and markets around the world, networking equals Cisco. If you want to be taken seriously as a network engineer, Cisco certification makes perfect sense.
Historically speaking, the first entry-level Cisco certification has been the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification, first offered in 1998. The first three versions of the CCNA certification (1998, 2000, and 2002) required that you pass a single exam to become certified. However, over time, the exam kept growing, both in the amount of material covered and in the difficulty level of the questions. So, for the fourth major revision of the exams, announced in 2003, Cisco continued with a single certification (CCNA), but offered two options for the exams to get certified: a single-exam option and a two-exam option. The two-exam option allowed people to study roughly half of the material, and take and pass one exam, before moving on to the next.
Cisco announced changes to the CCNA certification and exams in June 2007. This announcement includes many changes, most notably:
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The exams collectively cover a broader range of topics.
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The exams increase the focus on proving the test taker's skills (as compared with just testing knowledge).
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Cisco created a new entry-level certification: the Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician (CCENT) certification.
For the current certifications, announced in June 2007, Cisco created the ICND1 (640-822) and ICND2 (640-816) exams, along with the CCNA (640-802) exam. To become CCNA certified, you can pass both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams, or just pass the CCNA exam. The CCNA exam simply covers all the topics on the ICND1 and ICND2 exams, giving you two options for gaining your CCNA certification. The two-exam path gives those people with less experience a chance to study for a smaller set of topics at a time, whereas the one-exam option provides a more cost-effective certification path for those who want to prepare for all the topics at once.
