As of July 2014, the CCIE Lab costs $1600 per attempt and ten Cisco locations offer it worldwide. Some of these locations do not offer all CCIE tracks. According to a Cisco survey, $9050 represents the average cost to prepare for CCIE certification as of April 2006, which gets spent mostly on practice equipment and study material. No formal prerequisites currently exist for the CCIE written exam, but Cisco recommends at least 3–5 years networking experience. CCIE exists as the first "Cisco Certified" qualification and no other Certifications have existed previously. The associate and professional Certifications recognized the fact that CCIE is overkill for many networking personnel. Cisco has chosen not to make lower level Certifications prerequisites for the CCIE certification.