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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

MCSE 🔥 i bet you have some stories! I remember configuring checkpoint and PIX firewalls back in my Netware days. The first firewall I worked with might predate you - it was the Linux firewall toolkit or FWTK

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Patrick Jordan's avatar

Ha - that first generation of the MCSE, the exams were tough - each one of the six seemed like ton to get through and then sweat through a four hour exam etc. I didn't work with firewalls much in my Netware days - it was almost all servers and some comms headaches either with dial-in modems or WAN networks.

First firewall exposure I got was in Unisys and IT services days - Sonic Wall, Cisco, and a lot of Fortinet because that was the recommended vendor at the bigger place I worked at.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

Yep MCSE was a bear and intentionally so. CCIE tho...

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Patrick Jordan's avatar

Did you get a CCIE? I did the CCNA - it's the only cert exam I had to take twice - failed the first time by the margin of like one or two questions. But I knew I couldn't go any further. That was never gonna be my strong area.

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

Oh hell naw and same. I did help create a Microsoft certification track called Masters that was meant to compete with the CCIE though.

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Patrick Jordan's avatar

Whoa, that's impressive. Just pure Windows networking content or including network infrastructure?

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Andrew Sniderman 🕷️'s avatar

The first Masters was Exchange (email) this was the 2nd track (real time comms - LCS/Lync/Skype/Teams). They were 3 week rotations and you had to pass a 12 hour hands on written + lab test at the end. I went through rotation 0 to test the curriculum and then taught the all-day video module for every subsequent rotation.

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