ROUTE or SWITCH - which was more challenging?

Cat5

For those of you who have already passed both ROUTE and SWITCH, which did you find to be more difficult to pass? I know it's all subjective, but I'd still like to ask.

willieb

I found them equally challenging and actually made the same score on each, not that score matters but just for comparison.

albinorhino187

I had less experience with ROUTE, but I actually scored better. They're both challenging, though. Most folks go for switch first, then route, and then tshoot while the route material is fresh. That order worked for me. In the end, the order doesn't matter as much as just picking one and starting the journey. You can spend weeks "preparing" to study, trust me I did the same, and I'm sort of doing it again with the CCIE. At some point you just need to press play on those videos or open that book cover and get started.

JustanotherITguy

Route is prob more challenging for most inexperienced networkers because it covers a lot of topics.

shortstop20

At first, I would have swore Route was going to be harder, no question. After passing both of them, I think Switch may have been harder actually, even though I had more experience with L2 than L3.

There's just so much minutia about things on Switch, less so on Route IMO. I scored better on Route and walked away thinking "This test was more fair and easier than Switch".

Just my .02

mj30250

Strictly comparing breadth and depth of material, Route was more difficult to learn for me.

However, bringing it into the exam world, I found Switch to be much more frustrating. Questions and possible answers were structured in a more difficult fashion, and there was a large amount of questions that went extremely specific on topics that the official study materials either glossed over or didn't cover at all. As challenging as Route was, it just seemed much more fair.