Is the CCNP:Route the hardest of the three?

marcj04

So I have recently started studying for the CCNP:Route about 2 months ago. I am using the Official Cert Guide and I am only on Chapter 10. This material seems so much tougher than the CCNA. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying every minute of learning new material but I thought I was going to be able to pass this by the end of the year.

Would you guys consider the CCNP:Switch or CCNP:TSHOOT to be harder than the Route?

bermovick

I took the previous version of the exams, but ABSOLUTELY. There's so much "more" and the material goes quite a bit more in-depth. I ended up studying route for maybe 5 or 6 months total, using multiple resources because of how 'dense' it is.

SWITCH wasn't terribly difficult. I studied it for about a month to 6 weeks.
TSHOOT I could have sat on the same day I took Switch (if I'd had the money). If you know ROUTE and SWITCH, TSHOOT is a piece of cake.

networker050184

It's really all going to depend on your comfort level with the material beforehand. Obviously someone very comfortable with routing topics won't find the exam as difficult as someone not as familiar.

hurricane1091

I had read the first 7 chapters of the CCNP book when I first started here awhile ago. It's way more in depth than the CCNA and what's helped me is that we're doing the things discussed at my job. Would be really tough to grasp if we weren't.

fredrikjj

I thought switch and route were similar in difficulty and I had almost identical scores, but I spent two weeks less studying for switch.

d4nz1g

SWITCH was the hardest for me.
TSHOOT was a piece of cake, scored 1000/1000

theodoxa

I found ROUTE (642 Series) to be the hardest. SWITCH (300 Series) was difficult, but easier than ROUTE (642 Series). TSHOOT (642 Series) was a breeze. Honestly, I might have passed TSHOOT without even having studied for SWITCH as save for VACLs and HSRP, I had run into every Layer 2 issue they threw at me at some point or another.

ph4ntom74

you can bet its definitely the hardest, for me, the hardest of all exams iv done so far. the thing is you really need to understand routing protocols operations, specially OSPF in depth and BGP in depth. EIGRP and RIP is pretty straight forward.

richypc

It seems a lot of people go switch > route > tshoot.

I passed route this weekend after failing it 3 weeks ago. The hardest part is obviously the labs. Once you realize what labs are covered in the exam, just dedicate about 1-2 hrs a day, after work for a couple of weeks and hammer down those labs. You will have a complete understanding on what every command does and make it a lot easier the second time around.

I broke down the lab study times like this:
Monday - route redistribution
Tue - policy based routing
Wed - EIGRP
Thur - OSPF

Random ones on the weekend. Rinse repeat for 2-3 weeks.

Hondabuff

Route was just a grind for me. I actually got burned out trying to study for it and passed in the low 800's. After I passed my CCNA, I was super excited and felt like I accomplished something not a lot of people do. Once I passed CCNP, I felt like I survived it. What a grueling cert to study for.

rjon17469

In my opinion, SWITCH is maybe 85% of the difficulty of ROUTE. Having said that, many people have substantially more switching experience on production (or even non-production) networks than routing experience, so for most the perceived difficulty of ROUTE is substantially higher.

hurricane1091

I'm not really going to start studying for the CCNP until after I finish WGU (4 classes left!) but I was assuming switch might be harder for me. I'm constantly turning up new backup/primary circuits and I did a handful of chapters of the route book and we're doing many of those things in production.


I will pass the CCNP next year, but it seems like it will be a grind. Route is 1200 pages, Switch is 900, and T-Shoot is 2300 (do people read this one?)

White Wizard

hurricane1091 wrote: »

I'm not really going to start studying for the CCNP until after I finish WGU (4 classes left!) but I was assuming switch might be harder for me. I'm constantly turning up new backup/primary circuits and I did a handful of chapters of the route book and we're doing many of those things in production.


I will pass the CCNP next year, but it seems like it will be a grind. Route is 1200 pages, Switch is 900, and T-Shoot is 2300 (do people read this one?)

I'm currently reading switch 300-115 of the OCG and its 527 pages front to back. That includes the index, glossary, etc. Where did you get those numbers from?

hurricane1091

I have the PDF so I am not sure if that is different?

I just looked and there's a lot of blank pages actually. Not sure why it is like that. The Route seems to be that long though.

joeljosue

I´m using also the OCG for both the Route and Switch Exams..

But which video tutorial is better'? INE or CBTNuggets??

Because I had been using CBTNuggets but since 4 weeks ago i started using the INE material and Its seems that INE cover more in depth the topics of the exams.

Simrid

joeljosue wrote: »

I´m using also the OCG for both the Route and Switch Exams..

But which video tutorial is better'? INE or CBTNuggets??

Because I had been using CBTNuggets but since 4 weeks ago i started using the INE material and Its seems that INE cover more in depth the topics of the exams.

I am quite biased and I really like INE - However, I would recommend Chris Bryant. He seems to narrow the content down and go into detail quite a lot. You can buy the courses for £8 on Udemy when their on offer.

OfWolfAndMan

Depends on what you work more with. However, if you work on typical campus LAN, ROUTE will definitely be the hardest. It was the hardest for me.

theodoxa

hurricane1091 wrote: »

T-Shoot is 2300 (do people read this one?)

You don't need to. I got a few chapters in and put the book away. It was basically just a rehashing of ROUTE and SWITCH with a few chapters on troubleshooting models, Extended PING, and Traceroute, all of which I was already familiar with. I passed TSHOOT with a 986/1000 if I remember correctly. I suspect I may have missed one or two of the MC questions at the beginning. TSHOOT includes a handful of MC questions at the beginning, but if you know what you're doing, the Simulations should be no trouble.

The only problem I ran into was the size of the screen. I had one question where to correct answer was off the bottom of the screen. I knew the right answer, but could not find it until I realized that there were more options off the screen. I wasted something like 20-30 minutes trying to figure out if there was any way my solution was wrong before I realized I just needed to scroll down.

shortstop20

theodoxa wrote: »

You don't need to. I got a few chapters in and put the book away. It was basically just a rehashing of ROUTE and SWITCH with a few chapters on troubleshooting models, Extended PING, and Traceroute, all of which I was already familiar with. I passed TSHOOT with a 986/1000 if I remember correctly. I suspect I may have missed one or two of the MC questions at the beginning. TSHOOT includes a handful of MC questions at the beginning, but if you know what you're doing, the Simulations should be no trouble.

The only problem I ran into was the size of the screen. I had one question where to correct answer was off the bottom of the screen. I knew the right answer, but could not find it until I realized that there were more options off the screen. I wasted something like 20-30 minutes trying to figure out if there was any way my solution was wrong before I realized I just needed to scroll down.

The small size and low resolution screen they use for these exams is so painful.

Heck, I'd be OK with it if they gave 10 less minutes to do the exams but provided dual High resolution monitors.

late_collision

I completed the old exams.

ROUTE took me the longest, but I think I struggled with SWITCH more. TSHOOT was just a donation to Cisco.

theodoxa

shortstop20 wrote: »

The small size and low resolution screen they use for these exams is so painful.

Heck, I'd be OK with it if they gave 10 less minutes to do the exams but provided dual High resolution monitors.

No kidding. I have dual 25" widescreen (16:9) monitors at work, yet I would swear I have more real estate on my laptop than on some of those test center monitors.

siggnation

ROUTE has so much information to digest. From what i've seen with SWITCH and T-Shoot studies, there isn't as much information to learn compared to ROUTE, imo.