Cisco certifications

The three exams covered here do not form a straight line. CCNA 200-301 is the routing and switching credential, and it is what an advert usually means by Cisco certified: two hours, pass/fail, no published cut score, valid for three years. CCNA Automation 200-901 stands beside it rather than above it, and the naming confuses people for a good reason. Cisco folded the DevNet track into its main ladder in 2025, which turned the old DevNet Associate into CCNA Automation without altering the code 200-901. It tests Python, REST APIs and Cisco's platform SDKs, not spanning tree, and material sold under the DEVASC title still prepares you for it. CCNP Enterprise is the professional tier, and its ENCOR core exam is the real step up from either associate credential.

Whose equipment your employer runs settles this, not which exam is better

Take the CCNA when the organisations you want to work for run Cisco hardware, and be clear with yourself that you are answering a question about a region and a sector rather than about which syllabus is stronger. Carrier networks, large campuses, public-sector infrastructure and the integrators who serve them are Cisco houses, and in those places the certificate is read as shorthand for employability rather than as evidence of anything specific. Take CompTIA Network+ instead when your first networking job will sit closer to a helpdesk than to a core switch, when the employers around you are cloud-first, or when you need an exam you can sit in German: it is tied to no manufacturer's command line and it renews through continuing education instead of another exam. Be honest about the ceiling as well. A CCNA proves that you can configure and reason about Cisco IOS under a clock. It does not prove that you have run a production network, designed one, argued with a vendor about a support contract, or touched hardware outside a simulator, and the people who hire network engineers know that perfectly well.

Every three years Cisco asks you to sit down and prove it again

All three certificates lapse after three years, and the renewal rule is the true cost of the track. A CCNA stays alive if you pass any Cisco exam at its own tier or above, or gather thirty continuing-education credits; ENCOR wants forty credits or a further professional exam, and a pass in ENCOR carries an existing CCNA along with it. Over a career this puts a metronome on the ladder, because the cheapest route to staying certified is to keep climbing it, and that is precisely the behaviour the scheme is designed to produce. Budget for the cycle and for retakes, not for one booking. The second commitment is preparation, and Cisco asks more of it here than most vendors on this site do. The exams use lab-style items, the published exam topics on the Cisco Learning Network are the only authoritative blueprint, and Packet Tracer costs nothing to install, so nobody has an excuse for arriving at the test centre having only read. Cisco also flags each blueprint revision with a final test day: the last day for CCNA v1.1 is 2 February 2027, with v2.0 live from the following morning, so check which version a course teaches before you pay for it.