Jaime Saldana, CCIE #46199

Finally passed R&S v5 on January 9th. I started in the world of Cisco on 2001. I worked for a Voice partner and got some Cisco certs. CCIE was a two-day lab format but only a dream for me. I moved into a Masters degree but life put me back in the Cisco world. So I had to re-cert and I started the long path but it worked for me-- CCNA and CCNP at least. When I looked at my coworkers and most of the resumes everybody was obtaining all the Cisco certs faster and not only Cisco, but Microsoft, VMware, etc. So I had to change my strategy and work for my CCIE. I looked for several CCIE training vendors and the winner was INE. I did all the workbooks: Vol1, Vol2, Vol3 for v4 and I then felt ready for the test. I tried v4 two times but TS always was my weakness. Since v5 was live I scheduled my lab for January. I reviewed the changes for v4 to v5 and practiced them from INE. I did a lot of TS workbooks from Cisco360 and INE. As always, the test was not an easy one. Know the Cisco documentation-- it helped me a lot. What is next? I'm going for Service Provider and thanks to my company, I have an All Access Pass account. I'm going to practice for DC and Collaboration!!!