Which CCNP RS or CCNP SP should I pass first?

GNKx2210

Now I'm confused, I hope to work in service provider network
and planned to get some CCNP level certification before

But...

Which CCNP RS or CCNP SP should I pass first?

In my opinions, one of the advantage to take CCNP RS first is...
in my country CCNP RS will plus extra salary and CCNP SP equals.
But CCNP RS is easier to pass than CCNP SP.

Please suggest me.
Thanks in advance.

d4nz1g

If you have access to XR boxes (CRS, 9k), then do BOTH.
RS first, then SP. Routing and Edge on SP is serious deal....VPNs, Overlays, etc...Those things are not even mentioned on CCNP RS (afaik)

koz24

Ok so I have my CCNP R&S and I'm currently doing the CCNP SP track. I would recommend to do R&S first because there are a lot more resources for it and there is overlap between the two. Doing SP first doesn't make much sense to me.

Fitzi

I'm in the same boat and taking the same approach as koz24, start with CCNP R&S and then look at SP.

fredrikjj

RS obviously. CCNP:SP is problematic for many reasons like:

- Learning two different CLIs. If you know IOS well, you can often make XR work through trial and error with the context sensitive help, but the exams expect you to know commands without any assistance.
- Harder to lab. There's XRv but it doesn't work for everything. Many things are control plane only in XRv. So you are probably looking at rack rental time if you are serious about passing. QoS is one topic I remember not working on XRv.
- Harder to study for due to no official books. You'll probably end up reading like 10 textbooks for the 4 exams. On the other hand, there are some incredible MPLS books out there so this is not necessarily bad.
- The exams are, imo, of poor quality (based on taking two of them). Many questions required unreasonably detailed knowledge imo, and were overly focused on config syntax. Also, there were errors.
- The cost. You're looking at 6*$200 because CCNA:SP is two exams.
- It's going to take you probably 4x as long as CCNP:RS so it makes no sense to do it first for that reason.
- Just studying the blueprint for each exam is kind of dangerous because ambiguous blueprint lines means that you can get questions outside of what you consider to be the scope. Effectively this means that you should probably study for all four exams first to a good level, and then prepare for each individual test. An exception would be the OSPF/ISIS/BGP exam.
- You might as well study for CCIE:SP written and then do CCNP:SP for fun if you want that cert.

Just my opinion. The only thing that would make me go back and finish it would be if I worked at an ISP that used XR, which would make the config syntax highly relevant to my job (and they paid for unlimited attempts ).

Fadakartel

fredrikjj wrote: »

RS obviously. CCNP:SP is problematic for many reasons like:

- Learning two different CLIs. If you know IOS well, you can often make XR work through trial and error with the context sensitive help, but the exams expect you to know commands without any assistance.
- Harder to lab. There's XRv but it doesn't work for everything. Many things are control plane only in XRv. So you are probably looking at rack rental time if you are serious about passing. QoS is one topic I remember not working on XRv.
- Harder to study for due to no official books. You'll probably end up reading like 10 textbooks for the 4 exams. On the other hand, there are some incredible MPLS books out there so this is not necessarily bad.
- The exams are, imo, of poor quality (based on taking two of them). Many questions required unreasonably detailed knowledge imo, and were overly focused on config syntax. Also, there were errors.
- The cost. You're looking at 6*$200 because CCNA:SP is two exams.
- It's going to take you probably 4x as long as CCNP:RS so it makes no sense to do it first for that reason.
- Just studying the blueprint for each exam is kind of dangerous because ambiguous blueprint lines means that you can get questions outside of what you consider to be the scope. Effectively this means that you should probably study for all four exams first to a good level, and then prepare for each individual test. An exception would be the OSPF/ISIS/BGP exam.
- You might as well study for CCIE:SP written and then do CCNP:SP for fun if you want that cert.

Just my opinion. The only thing that would make me go back and finish it would be if I worked at an ISP that used XR, which would make the config syntax highly relevant to my job (and they paid for unlimited attempts ).

I agree with you Cisco CCNA and CCNP SP exams are horridly bad. I think in the SP case its always wise to go for the CCIE SP after CCNP R&S and skip the CCNA and CCNP SP completely