Cisco's $2.1 Billion AI Infrastructure Orders: Why Your CCIE Enterprise Skills Just Became Gold

Cisco just booked $2.1 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in a single quarter — up from $1.3 billion the quarter before. Their networking product orders surged over 20% year-over-year. If you hold a CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure or you’re studying for one, your skills just became significantly more valuable. The “networking is boring” era is officially dead. Key Takeaway: AI workloads are driving the biggest networking investment cycle in a decade, and the protocols tested on the CCIE EI lab — BGP, VXLAN/EVPN, SD-WAN, QoS — are exactly what hyperscalers and enterprises need to build AI-ready infrastructure. ...

March 5, 2026 · 2:07 PM MST

Do Network Engineers Actually Use OSPF and BGP Day-to-Day? The CCIE Reality Gap

If you’re grinding through OSPF LSA types and BGP path selection at 2 AM, you’ve probably had this thought: “Will I actually use any of this?” You’re not alone. A recent Reddit thread in r/networking went viral when a junior network engineer — actively studying for the CCIE — discovered that senior engineers at his company couldn’t even explain the OSPF templates they’d been deploying for years. The thread exploded with nearly 100 comments, and the consensus was surprisingly honest: most network engineers rarely make L3 routing changes in their day-to-day work. ...

March 4, 2026 · 12:00 AM MST · CCIE Preparation

BGP RPKI Route Origin Validation: A Hands-On Guide

Learn how to implement BGP RPKI Route Origin Validation on Cisco IOS-XE and IOS XR to prevent route hijacks and improve routing security.

December 22, 2025 · 12:00 AM MST