CCNP Switch

LDhiker

Going to throw my hat in the ring for CCNP. I have had my CCNA for two years now. My job consist of me doing 50% help desk 50% networking duties. My networking duties consist of mostly all switching related stuff. Vlans, trunks, STP. HSRP, dhcp snooping, snmp, ntp, acl’s etc.

I am starting out with switch, since it is what I know best. I have studied for switch in the past, but life happens.

My work purchases Stormwind training (not my choice). That comes with boson netsim, and boson Exams. I have already taken the class. It was 2 hours a day for 8 days online. I wasn’t that impressed. While it was nice to have a live person to ask questions, the class felt lacking and did not provide very many examples or best practices.

I also have bought ITproTV subscription, it was half off and I could not afford INE on my own. I also have a Safari books online subscription. I think Kevin Wallace’s videos are the most informative.

I am just about done with section 1.6 Configure and verify spanning tree part of the blue print. This puts me about 50% though the blue print.

I hope to sit for the exam in 6 to 8 weeks. I will let you know how it goes.

LDhiker

Well after a year of going back and forth between going for the CCNA security or CCNP Switch, I PASSED Switch.

It seemed stressful. First I was already to go on Monday, then the testing center cancelled my exam, I got the email 6 hours before my test. I had to then spend 45 minutes on the phone with Pearson VUE, trying to get it rescheduled. I was able to finally get Pearson to approve to test the next day.

The test was pretty hard, I had 10 minutes left when I was done. I believe one sim took me at least 30 minutes I am not sure how they weigh the questions, because I thought I failed. I actually bombed infrastructure services. I am pretty sure I nailed the Sims, so they must be worth a lot of points. I had no issues or bugs with any of the sims. NEtsim helped a lot, it gave me a lot of scenarios I do not see at work. I also used CBTnuggets, which was a hard sell to my boss.