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Wendell Odom

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Choosing the New CCTRS Instead of CCENT? Really?

Comparing CCTRS to CCENT as a Cisco Cert Starting Point

By wendell on Thu, 09/01/11 - 11:26am.

. What's this?

Cisco announced their three CCT certs last week, all geared towards technicians. CCT has a clear and obvious good core purpose: to certify techs that Cisco dispatches to customer sites. The question that's not so obvious, and frankly will require some time to pass before any of us can see the real answer, is how useful, appealing, and popular CCT will become as a general Cisco career cert. In particular, CCTRS may be a pretty easy cert to add once you already have your CCENT or CCNA, but the difficult question is whether CCTRS makes sense as an alternative to CCENT. In today's post, I'll start to tackle that very question.

Really Brief CCENT Overview for Those New to Cisco

(Some of you may be reading this because of your interest in CCT, and you don't know much about other established Cisco certs. This first short section is for you; the rest of you can move on to the next heading.)

On paper, CCENT is Cisco's entry-level cert to all Cisco "career" (aka core) certifications. In reality, however, CCENT CCNA is the true entry-level Cisco cert; most people that plan on a career in networking expect to go past CCENT and get CCNA.

CCENT requires that you pass a single exam (640-822) that covers topics included in a 1-week course. To get CCNA, you can pass two exams: that same 640-822, plus the ICND2 exam (640-816), to give you both CCENT and CCNA. So you can think of CCENT as the "first half" of CCNA. (You can also get a CCNA by passing one exam, 640-802, which covers the topics in both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams; ironically, in that case, Cisco awards you only a CCNA cert, but no CCENT.)

CCENT and CCNA both focus on routing and switching, so much so that they might be better named "CCENT Route/Switch" and "CCNA Route/Switch". Over time, Cisco has added other certs with CCNA in the name: CCNA Voice, CCNA Security, and CCNA Wireless so far. For our purposes, when I mention "CCNA", it's the CCNA that focuses on route/switch.

If you really want to know more, well, you can search Network World's site for the name of this blog, plus CCENT and/or CCNA, and learn a lot. Or look at cisco.com/go/ccent, and cisco.com/go/ccna.

Comparison: Prep Time in Class: 27 vs. 5.5 Hours

To study for CCENT, you can take an instructor-led ICND1 authorized course, or the e-learning equivalent, or do self study with books, learn through on-the-job experience, etc. For the newly announced CCTRS, your only options today are Cisco's $299 RSTECH e-learning course, or OJT.

Making a comparison that is fair based on in-class prep time is difficult, but for the sake of argument, let's say that a CCENT e-learning class that includes labs requires basically the same in-class time as an instructor-led version of the same class. That is, the same lecture with a live instructor takes the same time as watching a recording of that same instructor teaching the same content, and doing labs on the same topics live in class takes the same time as doing them at home in the e-learning course.

If you take ICND1 as a live classroom course to itself, not as part of a bootcamp, you'll be in class around 27 hours. That's a full week course, minus getting done before 5PM on Friday, minus lunch and coffee breaks. So you can think of it as a 40-hour workweek, as the 27 or so hours in the classroom with this math, either way.

The CCTRS RSTECH course is stated as 5-6 hours. So the math basically puts the CCTRS in-class time as about 20% as much class time as CCENT, at least by that bit of math.

Comparison 2: CLI/Lab Time Outside Class

I have separated out this next point because it's probably the biggest variable I see for CCTRS prep time, based on what we know and don't know so far about these new certs.

CCENT requires skills with the Cisco CLI. So, some of those 27 hours of class time for the ICND1 course is spent in lab. But most people need more practice with the CLI to pass ICND1 (and that's even more true for ICND2 and the CCNA exam.)

Passing the CCTRS exam *may* require CLI practice, but it may not. The CCTRS exam topics clearly state many CLI skills. For example:

Login to the CLI
Move around to configuration mode
Copy/paste configs
Verify that cards work
Verify the IOS that is loaded

The big question is whether someone new to Cisco can pass the CCTRS exam by reading about these processes and commands, or does the test taker need CLI skills? I think the answer is that skills are required. However, the Cisco web site ever so briefly mentions that CCTRS uses multiple-choice questions, with no mention of Sim or Simlet questions. Does that mean you could really just take the e-learning course and then pass the exam?

I believe that the exam will require skills, which requires CLI practice, but that's a belief, not a fact.

If you assume the CCTRS candidate needs that CLI experience and practice, and we still compare someone who takes the ICND1 course (with built-in labs) to someone who takes RSTECH (with apparently no labs), then the CCTRS candidate has a little more work to do outside class. Then again, the sheer volume of CLI topics is smaller for CCTRS. Just to toss out some numbers, let's give CCTRS a 12-hour time budget for CLI practice. For CCENT, CLI practice beyond taking the ICND1 course, let's say another 12 hours as well. (I'd love to hear your various opinions on the time required, by the way.)

Beyond the time required to practice the CLI, you still need to study beyond being in the class. For the sake of argument, because it looks like about a 5:1 ratio in course lengths, I'll call it 5:1 in study time required for just studying the facts, and call it an extra 2 for CCTRS and 10 for CCENT.

If you add up my wild guess estimates of in-class time, plus CLI practice, plus study time:

CCENT: 27.5 + 12 + 10 = appx. 50 hours

CCTRS: 5.5 + 12 + 2 = appx. 20 hours

Note that more than half the CCTRS time estimate is for that initial learning of CLI skills.

Comparison 3: I Like the CCTRS Topics Better than CCENT

Well, this one may be subjective to some extent. Which one do you like? But it's worth a few words of discussion about what you might like better about CCTRS, just because it's new.

First, you can see what's on each exam by looking at their posted exam topics. (Look here for the CCENT exam topics, and here for CCTRS.) Thankfully, Cisco is more specific with the new CCT exams than with the more established exams.

But to better compare the exams, start thinking of CCTRS as CCEBT: Cisco Certified Entry Box Technician, compared to Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician. No, CCEBT isn't the real name, and Cisco's not changing it from CCT best I can tell. However, if the CCT cert was primarily intended as a career cert, to fit somewhere within the CCENT/CCNA hierarchy, I think the name could've been different. And I've settled on CCEBT.

The CCT certs clearly focus on a box as an end to itself. CCTRS ignores the role of the box in the network, instead focusing on whether the box and its cards, and whether the box powers up and loads the operating system. CCENT is a much more theoretical cert in comparison. It emphasizes the network, and the role of the various components, specifically switches, routers, and to some extent, wireless access points. So CCT focuses on the device, box, card; CCENT focuses on the function of the network, to get bits from here to there.

Which do you prefer?

Comparison 4: Getting a Job

I'd love to be able to look into a crystal ball and tell you which of these would be better to help you get a job. From experience, I can tell you that if you are pursuing CCENT as part of an effort to improve your job prospects, don't stop there! Plan on at least getting to CCNA. CCTRS may improve your job prospects for a technician job working for a company that Cisco hires to do installs, because that is the core purpose of the cert. Beyond that, it's hard to tell this early in the game whether CCT will help anyone get a job or a different job.

I'd love to hear from you folks on that count: do you think CCTRS on a resume' would help? Even if the hiring manager knew what it was, and what it meant?

What do You Think?

Those are some points to consider. For most of us, it may be a case of watching CCT, how it progresses over time, and looking for anecdotal evidence. As always, feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on any of this. I've also set up a couple of polls on the subject, just to get a little informal data. Also, tell me what I'm leaving out. Thanks!