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IPexpert vs Internetwork Expert

I have to start by saying that the announcement from Internetwork Expert yesterday was well worth the wait.  In fact, I couldn’t believe how much press they were getting.  Brad Reese speculated that they had been bought by Cisco.  Others thought that they would be announcing their involvement with the new Cisco 360 program.  That wasn’t the case at all.  In fact the announcement was far from all speculation.  In essence I understood to be the general message to be that the way training is delivered today is getting old and stagnant and that needs to change, and is going to change.  People are becoming more dynamic and as a company so is Internetwork Expert.

The good news for me is that I own the end-to-end program.  That means that everything I have will be upgraded at no cost.  The bad news is that I am going on my third attempt, which by the way is the average, and the CCIE Security track is third on their list. No matter though, its still exciting news.

I waited till this morning to finish this post because I wanted to see what Matt Brooks over at IPexpert had to say on the IPexpert blog.  Matt Brooks has a really good way of pointing out the flaws in Brian Dennis’ Announcement. And by-the-way, I have had a few conversations with Matt Brooks and he really is a nice guy!  Still I wanted to put some of the thoughts in my mind down in print, not to point out flaws, but to express my thoughts, my likes, my hopes, and my disappointments.

Ill work in no particular order here.  But lets begin with the claim of certifying the most people.

Number of CCIEs Certified

It really gets me when I see one vendor claiming “X” number of CCIEs certified only to find a handful of the same names advertised on each site.  The fact is, many of us use both vendors.  So when I pass the test whom should take the credit for my certification?  Why not just publish your success rate.  If you have 500 clients that actually take the test and only 250 pass the test then publish a 50% pass rate for clients.

Quality of the Product and Interaction with Customers

It’s no lie that IPexpert and Internetwork Expert are staunch competitors, but at some point I think that many of us just want the rock throwing to stop and the vendors to put their money where their mouth is and deliver us some Rock Solid Products.  And I don’t mean in just one area (R&S).  We are not all on that track. Now I’m not saying that the product line is not complete in each area of expertise, but really, when was the last time you updated the workbooks to fix all the typos?  How about the solutions?  Care to add some spots that you skipped?

Also,  I don’t think it has to come to third parties with one-sided assessments giving their 2-cents (even though it already has), and I don’t think it has to come to full blow bar graphs either (even though it already has). I’m not going to trust the word of a third-party that didn’t even contact the other vendor.  And I’m not in sales, I don’t read bar graphs.   While this is nice information, I don’t really care about it.

But Look, All I can tell you about is what I have personally used right?  In my opinion, up until the IPexpert BLS was released the products that I purchased from IPexpert was riddled with mistakes, typos, and was thin in certain areas.  Since then they have enabled PDF access through the members area and I have yet to see a difference between those PDFs and the printed material that I purchased over a year ago.  Still there may be some additions/ corrections that I just haven’t worked my way through yet.  I will say that I had PDF access to the Security Material from Internetwork Expert long before I had it from IPexpert.  Still, the benefit that I have found with IPexpert was the rapid response from their instructors via the online study list.  The fact that an Instructor directly communicates with my is a big plus in my book.  Don’t get me wrong, the idea of a “Customer Success Manager” is nice.  Everyone should have a cheerleader, but when I have a question I don’t want to deal with a “Customer Success Manager”.

On the other hand the Internetwork Expert workbooks that I purchased were very well put together and very detailed when it came to the Volume 1, and very clear and concise when it came to Volume 2.  The only drawback was that Internetwork Expert didn’t seem to be as involved with the social markets as much as IPexpert, thus showing that IPexpert really wanted to get involved in the community that was already out there as opposed to starting their own, and not always were they as responsive to posts for help.  But just to cover all the bases I did receive personal help from Brian M. and Petr.  Just not on all of my questions.  The fact is that every time I posted to IPexperts mailing list I got a reply from Tyson Scott.  I can only speculate that perhaps it was more directed at me since I was a partaker in IPexperts “Prank Day” and posted an “I LOVE IPEXPERT” message on the Internetwork Expert forums.  At the time It didn’t seem like a big deal, and in the end I won an End-to-End program with IPexpert, but hind sight is 20/20.  I know that it was in poor taste.

But seriously, there is no doubt that both companies care about our business, and there is no doubt that either of their material will assist you in passing the CCIE exam. They both provide a TON of material that is relevant to your studies.  Although I have not passed I can guarantee that I would not have the level of knowledge that I posses had it not been for these two vendors.

Dynamic Content and Online classes:

The IPexpert BLS certainly is “Dynamic” in its content, I just wish it did “Automatic Updates” to the drive.  That being said I don’t think that IPexpert is at the level of Dynamicity (if that is even a word) that Internetwork Expert is talking about going to.  Writing a lab and releasing it immediately totally makes sense.  And the swing from a 5-day class to a shorter focused class is cool.  I have personally watched the Internetwork Expert Advanced Technologies CoD and think they are GREAT.  The IPexpert CCIE Security DVD was a bit disappointing being mostly slide material and not as much hands on demonstration.  But, the idea of short 4 to 5 hour classes?  Online?  Twice a week?  I like it but doubt I can take time off work to attend.  Now if the CoD were to show up in my members account that would be a plus. I also like the idea of tagging videos so I can go right to what I want.  Sometimes I want to see JUST the configuration of something.

Rack Rentals:

Also on the issue of Rack Rentals.  I can expense my rack rental costs to some degree.  I know a lot of people cant.  So the idea of being rewarded by way of Rack Rental tokens for participating is a “Key” benefit.  Yet IPexpert has the market in rack rentals with longer session times.  If I could add to the wish list I would ask for the “real” ability to save my configs mid session and then be able to load them up without wasting time the next time I have a session.  The biggest gripe I have is that I have to start over every time, practicing the same stuff and not getting to new stuff, or I have to waste 30 minutes loading configs before I can do anything new.  Automate that!  On the Internetwork Expert side I say get rid of pod numbers, or make default configurations for ALL pods.  I cant stand working on pod 2 for 5 hours today, saving off all my configs and then changing addresses to load those configs on rack 5 tomorrow just to pick up where I left off.  I also want grading for Security.  Nobody seems to have that and nobody seems to offer “Mock Labs” for Security.  Again, offer the same products in each area.  And another thing I would like to see is the ability to reset the ENTIRE pod to defaults.  If I go through one scenario and need to start another I don’t want to have to write erase on each box and wait for the reload.  Like Brian brought out yesterday.  It’s about my TIME.  It’s hard enough to push my kids off to the side while I practice labs but when I’m not learning new stuff or fine tuning skills because of the “General Setup” garbage I take it a little personal.

Associate and Professional Training

I don’t know where I stand with this one.  Maybe because that’s the area I am employed in.  I know that the ability to take learning credits is something that will keep business coming into CLPs or CLSPs.  I can imagine that the CLSPs would be effected to some degree but I don’t know how much.  Personally I work for a CLSP and I know that we have discussing more “Add-on” type stuff for the student.  Brian was right when he said that the canned training doesn’t do the job.  There are so many gaps left after a one week training class and while a student may not see it up front, it can come back to bite them when they are working on the more advanced certifications.  I guess we will have to wait and see how it plays out.  One thing I will say is that IPexpert did announce the IPexpert University a week ago.

What about Cisco 360?

I do have my own thoughts on the Cisco 360 program.  I think that its great that Cisco is getting into the Expert level with “Certified Training.” And I think it will help those who can only use learning credits to progress beyond various Professional level certs. I also think that by Cisco coming into the CCIE market with a decent product it will force the vendors to create a better product, thus benefiting those of us that choose to stick with the “Non-certified” vendors.

Now to add to that I will say that the revision cycle will in no way compare to the revision cycle that Internetwork Expert if touting with their dynamic content, and I’m sure IPexpert will get in there with dynamic content in some way too.  I know that IPexpert does offer the workbooks online so any changes they make are immediately available.  I just haven’t seen this happen for Security.  Sometimes it feels like Security is the red-headed step child.  It seems to be R&S and then Voice as the top priority.  In my opinion none of these vendors should be claiming how great the products they offer are are until the have the complete offering in ALL tracks.

And just as I am wrapping this post up twitter catches a tweet from @ciscosubnet about a post that they just published.  Everybody is talking about this stuff and it;s kinda getting old.  Still the CCIE world has been shaken in the past few months.  For people that are studying right now I wouldn’t worry.  I’m not worried.  I don’t think Learning@Cisco will have a problem delivering the content that have now acquired.  I also dont believe that Internetwork Expert and IPexpert will have a problem developing newer and better content to help us in our journey to the top of that Mount Everest we call CCIE.

But in the mean time, while all of this is happening I have a plan.  While the blog posts are being posted, and while the announcements are being made,  I am going to give my money to the one that proves to care the most about me passing the test.  Who’s that?  You got me.  Maybe I’ll write about it someday.  For now I have rack time at 3pm with Internetwork Expert that I need to build configs for and I also need to schedule another session at Proctor Labs to practice a full multiprotocol challenge lab this weekend.  I also have to watch my Internetwork Expert CoD on VPN and then listen to my IPexpert audio bootcamp on CBAC while I go running later. In the end I guess I will continue to use both vendors.  I think they compliment each other in some weird way.

So much study to do and so much time wasted typing this article.