CCNP: Route-OCG

sp3coz

Hello all. I've been studying for Route for several months now using OCG, GNS3Vault, Lab Manual and various videos; however, after doing some final research (sitting exam in two days) and forum browsing I'm getting the vibe that OCG doesn't cut it concerning book resources. My question is: how much information is missing from OCG and am I totally up-the-creek at this point? I'm confused because when I look at the exam blueprint it matches everything covered in the OCG, yet I've read countless posts stating this book isn't enough? I completed my CCNA studies using the OCG and GNS3 and didn't feel like any information was left out so I decided to take the same approach for this exam. I tried to search for an answer to this question, but came up empty-handed. I just kept finding posts stating "I can't believe how much was left out" etc..

networker050184

The CCNA OCG is a bit different than the rest of the exam OCGs. The CCNA book pretty much presumes a starting from scratch approach. The OCG for the other exams is more a review book rather focused on teaching you the content from the ground up. So it really depends on what kind of prior knowledge you have which on you should use. A lot of people like to use both, the FLG first and OCG as review for the exam.

I haven't taken the current version of the exam though so not sure how far off you'd be if you only know what is covered in the OCG and nothing else.

sp3coz

I completed my CCNA studies not too long ago, so hopefully that knowledge combined with the Route OCG and other resources will be enough to pass. I mean, when I'm doing GNS3 and the Route Manual labs I've never looked at an objective and been totally oblivious or in the dark. Same goes for the Boson Exam Sim. It's too late now to attempt the FLG, besides, even though I cringe at the $250 price tag, I'd like to see where I stand on the exam...

theodoxa

I mainly used Chris Bryant's CCNP Videos and the ROUTEv2 (300-101) OCG when I took ROUTE (642-902). I also read part of the ROUTEv1 FLG. I haven't seen the ROUTEv1 OCG, but I felt neither the Videos nor ROUTEv2 OCG covered everything I needed to know, whereas the ROUTEv1 FLG covered a lot of stuff that I didn't need to know. I passed, but not by a lot.

My suggestions --

1) Read the ROUTEv1 (642-902) FLG's IPv6 Chapter. Other materials (even those for the new exams, which is surprising) seem to be woefully lacking in this area. Boson's ExSim-Max was what keyed me into the fact that i was underprepared in this area, and I probably wouldn't have passed had I not discovered that.

2) Lab. Practice configuring the various IPv4 and IPv6 Routing Protocols, Route Redistribution (including tuning path selection when there's multiple points of redistribution), Policy Routing, and VPN (IPSec, IPSec over GRE, and GRE over IPSec using Pre-shared Keys). Finally, experiment with various show commands to get an understanding of how to interpret their output.

sp3coz

It's unfortunate that I'm just now learning about the FLG, but that's my own fault. I'll definitely be purchasing it for the 300 Switch exam if it's available. I feel comfortable configuring OSPFv3 and EIGRPv6 and IPv6 redistribution. The OCG only devotes one, brief chapter to Branch Services, so I'm admittedly weak in those areas. Luckily, it's only 5% of the exam.

theodoxa

sp3coz wrote: »

Luckily, it's only 5% of the exam.

I didn't realize that. That's good since that was the 1 topic I did very poorly (33%) on on ROUTE. My best topics were BGP (5%), IPv6 (15%), and Redistribution (15%), which I scored 100% on.