Zach Malmgren has been working off an on with Cisco equipment since 2000. He achieved his CCNA certification in August of 2000 but unfortunately let it expire three years later. He recertified and got his CCNA back in August of 2007 so that he could work on achieving his CCNP certification. After nine months of study he finished his last test and received his CCNP certification in May of 2008.
His early experience with Cisco and networking was with 2600 series routers, 5500 and 6500 series switches, and Pix firewalls in a purely TCP/IP / Fast Ethernet environment. The company he was with used static routes, but moved to OSPF in a single area shortly after his arrival there.
Since then he has been promoted to the Senior Data Systems Administrator and has migrated the company from a single OSPF area connected to remote sites via VPN T1s to a multi-area OSPF environment using fractional (and full) DS-3s via MPLS, with some BGP thrown in for fun. The company is moving to a more robust setup and so the opportunity for the direct assignment of IP addresses and ASNs from ARIN has presented itself. Zach hopes that this new stance by his company will help give him the practical experience to pass the CCIE tests.
Zach holds current CCNA / CCNP certifications.