CCNP exam advice

nanga

ok here is the situation...am a fresher from college.....i have ccna and sscp ( associate). I was trying to get my hands in security but landed up having a basic network level job which requires me to update network diagrams and manage the pool of ip address with a isp.

I am thinking of doing ccnp so that would benefit my profile and can get a jump.

So what I am looking for is starting point for CCNP....what order should I go for these papers considering I am away from CCNA for a while now.

was wondering if I can collect ccdp on the way ...since there are 2 common papers. with NP an DP

gojericho0

Start with the BSCI. Depending on how long you have been out of touch with the CCNA material, you may want to do a quick review to regain some of the fundamentals. Everything at the NP level will build on top of the fundamental knowledge

nanga

great ,..thanks for the advice.

i am looking through the BCMSN book by david hucabay....

any suggestions for the BSCI and BCMSN books.

tmlerdal

what I found with the books was it was best to start at least with the Self Study books and no necessarily with the Exam Certification guides. I thought the Exam Cert Guides for the NP course were harder to go through than the others.

But, my experience was with the older material too.

I also would recommend getting some good hands on with some equipment. I had a few older 2500's that I used for a lot of the routing stuff just to practice on.

gojericho0

Cisco has some good material in their CCNP Prepcenter. Look over all your objectives for each exam and make sure you master all of them.

I would also recommend the Self Study Guide over the Exam Certification guide if you are not familiar with the topics. These thoroughly explain the information where as the exam cert help prepare you for the actual test.

Supplement your readings with a good lab. I have purchased the lab porfolio through cicso press for my examinations. They really help you understand some scenerios you may run into in a real production enviroment. Why doing your labs, write down any assumptions you make on how a particular configuration you are working with. Anything that caught you by surprise or you didn't know journal as it will make an excellent reference for review and the real world when its not fresh in your mind.

For example one of the things that surprised me during my CCNA studies was the recursive behavior with static route. This is definitely something that has helped me out with some real world designs and maintenance. Check out the link below

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800ef7b2.shtml

nicklauscombs

definitely choose the self study guides over the exam cert guides