A Decade of CCIE Certification

I was notified this week that I’m eligible for the 10-year CCIE plaque. Which means that it’s been a decade since I walked out of Cisco’s Building C in San Jose with a new number and a different outlook on my networking career. The cliche is that “so many things have changed” since that day and it’s absolutely accurate because the only constant in life is change.
Labbing On the Road
I think the first thing that makes me think about the passage of time since my certification is the fact that the lab where I took the exam no longer exists. Building C was sold to the company that owns and operates the San Francisco 49ers stadium just down Tasman drive from the old letter buildings. Those real estate locations were much more valuable to the NFL than to Cisco. I can’t even really go and visit my old stomping grounds any more because the buildings were gutted, renovated, and offered to other operations that aren’t from Cisco.
Now, you don’t even go to San Jose or RTP for the lab. Three years ago the labs in the US moved to Richardson, TX. The central aspect of the location Continue reading



