New CCNP Route exam - comparison?

I'm sure this has been covered, but I wanted to touch on it a bit deeper and get some opinions.

I've struggled with maintaining my ROUTE studies for years now, unfortunately. I passed SWITCH a while back and have read through the existing ROUTE FLG a couple times, labbed up most OSPF and EIGRP stuff, etc. Without going into too much detail regarding my personal feelings of the exam content, I'll just focus on what I've observed regarding the new exam.

It seems that Cisco has made a drastic change in terms of what is now on the ROUTE exam, to say the least. They have lumped Layer 3 into a category that accounts for 40% of the exam, as opposed to about 95% on the current exam. Other content is mixed, but seems much more "real world".

I remember when Cisco updated to the current exams and focused on their whole "design, implementation and verification" thing, but they seem to have all but abandoned that at this point.

I am strongly considering waiting to sit this new ROUTE exam, because quite frankly, it looks much more interesting to me. Instead of studying a ton of ROUTE stuff I will likely not use, it seems the new exam focuses on what's practical, then gives way to learning other technologies that a professional at this level is likely to utilize.

Do you all think Cisco took such a drastic redesign of the exam because the current version just isn't up to par?

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Comments

Hondabuff

After looking at the new Route objectives, I'm very interested in it. The book series would make a great Xmas present.

lrb

I wish they would bring IS-IS back to the CCNP, that sucker was awesome back in the BSCI days!

fredrikjj

My opinion is that you are exaggerating.

They have lumped Layer 3 into a category that accounts for 40% of the exam, as opposed to about 95% on the current exam.

This just isn't true. There's way more overlap than that but they've reshuffled things into different categories. For example, there's now a 10% layer 2 category that has Frame Relay. In the previous books, this was discussed in the OSPF and EIGRP chapters. The new 40% L3 category is basically the OSPF, EIGRP and BGP sections from the current exam plus some IPv6, and those do not account for 95%. More like 50-60%.

A big change is that IPv6 doesn't have its own category anymore and it seems like you are expected to know both the IPv4 and IPv6 implementations of the protocols equally well, making it slightly harder. For example, address families in BGP.

So yeah, bigger scope, still roughly the same amount of routing protocol stuff. If my only goal was to pass, I would study the current exam.