Posted on by jason

Cisco, the Master Troll (of CCDE Candidates)

This May, I took my CCDE Practical Exam, and didn’t quite realize all the nuances of how the system worked. Until the day before the test, I hadn’t realized that recently Cisco had changed their policy so that they do not report CCDE Practical results upon exiting the test, or even shortly thereafter. CCDE candidates now receive their results 10 to 12 weeks after taking their exam due to new anti-cheating procedures. I’m happy that they’re doing everything they can to combat cheating, but 10 to 12 weeks is a very long time to stress and wonder over a $1600 exam. Also, that timeline is not conducive to taking the exam the next time, since it’s only offered 4 times each year.

For the past couple months, I’ve been checking periodically in hopes that Cisco was bluffing about the wait being that long. They weren’t bluffing. Once that 10-12 week window opened though, I started checking 2-4 times a day for any update that might indicate my status. This morning, I finally saw a glimmer of hope – in the Certification Tracking System, my expiration dates for my CCNA and CCNP (but not CCIE) had extended. I excitedly went in to check the history and found this:

I must’ve reread it 10 times before finally believing it; then I started to question if, by some chance, this was an oddity of the way the credentialing system worked, and if it might not actually be the final scoring, because I didn’t see any update indicating that I had obtained my certification – only that change in my history (as well as many system-related updates). I checked the CCIE Portal – no indication there either. Finally, browsing Twitter gave me the info I needed:

Fantastic! It’s legitimate! I passed! I spent the rest of the day refreshing the page on the Certification Tracker and in the CCIE Portal several times an hour, hoping to find my shiny new number, until I found out this is not acceptable:

Cisco, you troll! Make me wait for 10-12 weeks after taking a strenuous exam to find out if I’ll need to retake it, finally tell me I passed, then punish me for my excitement? Ugh!

Fortunately – it appears that they were bluffing, at least on this one. I just checked again and was able to access the portal without a problem. Furthermore, my number was there! I’m still waiting for it to update in the Certification Tracker, but it’s present in the Validation Tool already.

I’m glad that the wait is over – now on to figuring out the next challenge!

Good luck with all of your goals and aspirations folks.

Signing off,
CCDE 2018::17

Leave a Reply