Fryguy's BlogNetwork Field Day 15
I just wanted to do a quick post on Networking Field Day 15, which is TODAY!
If you are not familiar with Tech Field Day outings, let me take a moment to explain it to you from my understanding. Tech Field Day is designed to bring together independent IT professionals and vendors. The goal of this get-together is to both educate the delegate, who in turns educates their readers and educate the vendor as to what the market is doing.
The Delegate has the opportunity to listen to the presentations, ask independent questions, and learn about new technologies. The Vendor has the opportunity to educate brilliant IT individuals, explain their product to many who may be unfamiliar with it, as well as gain valuable feedback from industry respected individuals. It’s a win-win for all!
Yes!!! I passed the Juniper JNCIE lab last year!! It was actually back in May 2016 that I_ _earned my JNCIE-ENT #567 and I wanted to finally take a moment and blog about my experiences, study approach, as well as my overall impression of the certification track. 
Let me answer the first question that you may have, what took me so long to blog about my experience as most people who accomplish this shout to the world. Well, that is fairly simple in case you have not noticed my blogging in 2016 started to wane, if not almost disappear. That was primarily due to two things, studying for the JNCIE and work got really really busy. About 50% of every month last year was spent on the road. I had a customer that was doing a big Data Center move and it just kept me overly busy. Much of that has now calmed down and finally allowed me to get this long overdue post out.
It is finally official, Juniper has extended their certification expiration from two years to three years.
Originally Juniper certifications where active for 2 years, and then you had 1 year after that to renew. If you did not re-certify prior to the 2–year anniversary, you went into an inactive status for a year with your certification. Then if you did not renew within that two years, your certification became expired and you would have to take the test(s) again to regain that certification. What Juniper has now done is give you three years of active status, and you need to re-certify prior to the 3rd year anniversary – there is no more inactive status. While this does alleviate much pressure on candidates (it can be hard to re-certify every certification every two years), it also means that the motivation factor of “inactive” status is gone.
I just logged into my CertManager portal page to check on my certifications as I know I had one that was in inactive status. It is now active, but now shows _Expiring._ At least that tells you that you need to re certify soon! Luckily they do also list the date of the Expiration on the page, so you know your drop-dead deadline.
If you have a Juniper certification and want to check its status, you can do that by going to their