Cisco Press 642-503

jeffmikers

Hey everyone.. First time poster here.

I'm interested in pursuing a CCSP and would like to start with SNRS. Looking at Cisco's Certifications website tells me that 642-503 is the current exam.

I'm quite fond of the Cisco Press books and can not find 642-503. The only book I can find is the 642-502. Does anyone know if Cisco Press has released 503? When did 503 replace 502?

Thanks a lot folks...

-Mike

dtlokee

The SNRS exam was updated back in June and it doesn't look like Cisco Press has a book yet. I would use the exam blueprints to find what has changed, off the top of my head they have added DMVPN and zone based firewalls

New Exam:
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/current_exams/642-503.html

Old exam :
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/current_exams/642-502.html

jeffmikers

I decided to maybe start studying one of the other exams, since Cisco Press hasn't released 503 yet...

It looks like I'm running into that same scenario with MOST of the CCSP exams.

SNPA is outdated
IPS will be outdated as of 1/16/2008

Do you have any ideas as to how much the exam will change? I'm not married to the Cisco Press books. I like them a lot, but am willing to look at other resource books. Does anyone have any recommendations?

soliars

I am new here,too!

Glad to meet you!

changlinn

So does anyone know when they are going to release the new books for this I was looking at starting this later this year.

mikej412

jeffmikers wrote:

It looks like I'm running into that same scenario with MOST of the CCSP exams.

SNPA is outdated
IPS will be outdated as of 1/16/2008

Check out the using 642-532 resources to study 642-533 thread for IPS suggestions.

I just checked the exam blueprints for SNPA and SNRS (old and new) and the Cisco Press web site -- and while the CCVP is finally getting the suggested books for the exams -- the CCSP seems to be losing them

Some of the VPN topics that were in CSVPN are shifting to the other exams -- but for something like the SNRS exam it hard to tell if the "old" Exam Certification Guide is still useful unless you already have it (or the table of contents) and compare it to the blueprint exam topics.

Unless you have access to the latest Partner eLearning or the Official Courseware, you're probably going to have to "over study" and grab the old books and pick out the important stuff using the exam blueprint -- and fill in the rest with the Cisco Documentation and White Papers.

The good news is that Cisco Press has those CCSP Reference Sheets available in PDF format. Hopefully they can get those updated faster than new books and at least give you an overview for the most important topics to study.

There are lots of good Cisco Press Firewall books, but they seem to have dropped the SNPA exam off the CCSP page for now and don't even have any of the old suggested reading listed on the complete CCSP book page. Sounds like the exam changes are also confusing Cisco Press.

jeffmikers

mikej412 wrote:

Check out the using 642-532 resources to study 642-533 thread for IPS suggestions.

I just checked the exam blueprints for SNPA and SNRS (old and new) and the Cisco Press web site -- and while the CCVP is finally getting the suggested books for the exams -- the CCSP seems to be losing them

Some of the VPN topics that were in CSVPN are shifting to the other exams -- but for something like the SNRS exam it hard to tell if the "old" Exam Certification Guide is still useful unless you already have it (or the table of contents) and compare it to the blueprint exam topics.

Unless you have access to the latest Partner eLearning or the Official Courseware, you're probably going to have to "over study" and grab the old books and pick out the important stuff using the exam blueprint -- and fill in the rest with the Cisco Documentation and White Papers.

The good news is that Cisco Press has those CCSP Reference Sheets available in PDF format. Hopefully they can get those updated faster than new books and at least give you an overview for the most important topics to study.

There are lots of good Cisco Press Firewall books, but they seem to have dropped the SNPA exam off the CCSP page for now and don't even have any of the old suggested reading listed on the complete CCSP book page. Sounds like the exam changes are also confusing Cisco Press.

I got the following email from someone at Pearson Education in early December when I started inquiring about this:

I wanted to get back to you regarding the CCSP texts you were asking about.

Because the CCSP exams are revising so often (more than once a year in some cases), we are not able to have current books readily available in the market on a timely basis. With that in mind, we will not be publishing printed books to these exams for the time being, but we will be creating Quick Reference electronic products. The following titles are all to the most current versions of their respective exams, and can be purchased at www.ciscopress.com.

I went ahead and bought the 502 version of SNRS and decided I should just "over study" like you suggested. Thanks for the reply.

BTW - Do you think you can cram any more certification abbreviations in your signature, before your emails starting hitting maximum size limit?