So who really was the very first Cisco CCIE in history?
Terry was helping lead CLI development and training as a consultant to Cisco in 1993 when he first heard about the CCIE program and inquired about participating. Brad Wright (the CCIE program manager) told Terry what he needed to do.
So Terry quickly re-worked his schedule, took the written CCIE qualification test, attended the Cisco troubleshooting class and setup a time for the hands-on test, all within two weeks.
In those days, the hands-on test was two days.
One day of build-it and one day of fix-it after they break it.
Terry passed the hands-on test, designing and building the network in one day, then fixing the things that Stuart Biggs (the lab test creator) broke in just over half a day.
Terry Slattery was awarded the third number – CCIE # 1026, in August 1993, the first non-Cisco person to achieve the CCIE and the first person to pass both the written CCIE test as well as the hands-on CCIE lab test, making Terry Slattery the first real CCIE.
A bunch of Cisco employees soon followed and many of them are still working at Cisco.
Something like five of the first ten CCIEs work in the same building at Cisco.
Today, Terry Slattery is the Founder and CTO of Netcordia. Terry invented NetMRI, which enables organizations to maximize network effectiveness and ensure compliance by utilizing built-in expert rules to assess, audit, and proactively detect hidden and harmful problems throughout any multi-vendor infrastructure.As a consultant to Cisco who helped lead development of the Cisco IOS CLI, as well as having earned the first real Cisco CCIE number in history, CCIE# 1026, Terry Slattery has become a very revered historical figure within the world of Cisco networking. Stuart Biggs was awarded the second number – CCIE # 1025, because afterall, Stuart created both the CCIE written test as well as the CCIE lab test. Was awarded the second number – CCIE # 1025, because after all, Stuart created both the CCIE written test as well as the CCIE lab test. In summary:
CCIE# 1024 – Cisco Lab
CCIE# 1025 – Stuart Biggs
CCIE# 1026 – Terry Slattery
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