Tshoot - 5/10/2010

Nuul

TSHOOT became available last Friday so I've scheduled my exam for one week from today. I've used the two books from Cisco Press that are available plus the "Video Mentoring" disc. The labs on the video mentoring taught me nothing; I'm hoping that means that I'm ready to kick this tests @#$ and not that the disc was a complete waste of money. Wish me luck.

peanutnoggin

Good luck on your test!!! BTW... what other labs have you used as practice? Or do you have a lot of real world experience?

Nuul

Thanks.

90% of it has been work experience, I'm a network admin by trade. It's not a huge network, but I have about 700 remote sites (BGP & MPLS) plus the HQ I have to watch over. About the only time I lab something up is if it's new technology to me or if I disagree with something printed in the Cisco Press books.

Selfmade

Good luck my friend

Cyanic

How were the flash cards and quick reference?

Nuul

The quick reference isn't so bad, it only 50 pages so it only takes a couple hours to read. As for the flash cards - they felt like a recap of the material from 642-812 and 642-901. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with them, but I wasn't impressed.

aldous

Nuul wrote: »

The quick reference isn't so bad, it only 50 pages so it only takes a couple hours to read. As for the flash cards - they felt like a recap of the material from 642-812 and 642-901. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with them, but I wasn't impressed.

from experience with the beta the material will only help with first lot of multiple choice q's it was no help for the sims. especially as the cert guide is fulll of "learn this debug command" and it doesn't work in test :P

anyone know when beta results would be out i'd thought we'd know by now

Cyanic

aldous wrote: »

especially as the cert guide is fulll of "learn this debug command" and it doesn't work in test :P

The good news is when the command is not listed, you are typically looking the wrong direction. I can see how that would be frustrating though.

Cyanic

Nuul wrote: »

The quick reference isn't so bad, it only 50 pages so it only takes a couple hours to read. As for the flash cards - they felt like a recap of the material from 642-812 and 642-901. Maybe I didn't spend enough time with them, but I wasn't impressed.

Thanks, I am getting a free book from Cisco Live and I was debating on that one or the exam cert guide. Too bad there is not a self study guide for TSHOOT yet.

Ryan82

There is a self-study guide for the TSHOOT exam:

Amazon.com: Troubleshooting and Maintaining Cisco IP Networks (TSHOOT) Foundation Learning Guide: Foundation learning for the CCNP TSHOOT 642-832 (Self-Study Guide) (9781587058769): Amir Ranjbar: Books

Although, I find it odd that the self-study guide and the exam certification guides are both exactly 552 pages. Still I guess I will read through both before taking the exam since I have Safari access.

TenisuBaka

More overall detail in the Study Guide, a lot of show command output in the Cert Guide.

Although maybe a bit too concise, Wallace's style is definitely more readable than that of the Study Guide. That guy's English could use a little work.

I am also finding the videos not so useful and the flash cards even less so. Haven't read the quick notes yet though.

Cyanic

Ya they are not offering any of the CCNP self study guides to NetVets, just the cert guides and portable command guides.

That is good to know Tenisu as readability is just as important as content, IMO.

LOkrasa

Ryan82 wrote: »

Although, I find it odd that the self-study guide and the exam certification guides are both exactly 552 pages. Still I guess I will read through both before taking the exam since I have Safari access.

That's really odd.... The Study Guides usually contain much more content. That has to be a typo....

Nuul

Failed miserably.

*I wasted a lot of time moving windows around, the screen is simply too cramped.
*The layer 3 diagram is labeled horribly. The first couple tickets I wasted 20 minutes trying to figure out why an interface was unpingable. Turns out they had it labeled weird and I should have been pinging 10.1.X.9 instead of 10.1.Y.9. But when you only put a .9 by the interface how the hell would you know that.
*I was severely limited on time due to wasting too much time on the issue above. Consequently I had to rush through the remaining questions.
*The material currently available is woefully inadequate for what you are tested on. You might as well not use it.

Cyanic

That sucks.

I found this, the unofficial TSHOOT resource guide. I have no idea how helpful it is, but will use it when I start my studies for TSHOOT.

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-6561

chmorin

Nuul wrote: »

Failed miserably.

*I wasted a lot of time moving windows around, the screen is simply too cramped.
*The layer 3 diagram is labeled horribly. The first couple tickets I wasted 20 minutes trying to figure out why an interface was unpingable. Turns out they had it labeled weird and I should have been pinging 10.1.X.9 instead of 10.1.Y.9. But when you only put a .9 by the interface how the hell would you know that.
*I was severely limited on time due to wasting too much time on the issue above. Consequently I had to rush through the remaining questions.
*The material currently available is woefully inadequate for what you are tested on. You might as well not use it.

I had a hunch this would be the case for the TSHOOT exam. Its a great concept, but if not presented properly its not a fair assessment.

mikej412

Nuul wrote: »

But when you only put a .9 by the interface how the hell would you know that.

By familiarizing yourself with the PUBLISHED TSHOOT Topology before taking the exam
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/10965

Going through the Demo also gives you an idea what to expect
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-6738

Nuul

mikej412 wrote: »

By familiarizing yourself with the PUBLISHED TSHOOT Topology before taking the exam
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/10965

Oh man, you could have been my savior with that a few days earlier . Honestly, there needs to be a sticky with that PDF in it. Thank you, that will help a lot for attempt #2.

The resolution must be 800x600 or something, I could only see about 1/3 of the L3 diagram at a time and you can't minimize the instruction window so it's always in the way. I wasted about an hour on the first two tickets because I misread what IP was what. That threw my chi off for the rest of the lab. I pretty much knew by ticket 3 I was going to fail, I was simply too far behind and too frazzled. I'll get it next time but I hate **** away $200.

Cyanic

I had seen the demo, but missed that topology document. Just memorizing it at a high level of would be a huge time saver.

mikej412

The Exam Tutorial and Demo link is on the TSHOOT Exam Blueprint Cisco Learning Network web page -- and that page (after the Tutorial/Demo part) tells you to familiarize yourself with the topology.

Before attempting the TSHOOT exam, please familiarize yourself with the TSHOOT network topologies and exam instructions. These are the network topologies that you will be tested on.

TSHOOT Exam Instructions
TSHOOT Exam Topology

It's always a good idea to keep on eye on the Exam Blueprint in case they make a small change. And in the TSHOOT case it seems they fixed a couple of typos on the original Topology diagram -- so make sure you're always working from the latest/greatest Topology Diagram.

Chipsch

Dang man that stinks, thought you had it in the bag. Yeah those little monitors with the topologies, term screens, trouble tickets...extremely cramped. From what I hear though get used to it for the CCIE if you are like me and plan on taking it at RTP since it is only a few hours away. I do recall having issues with the way the ip's were displayed.

My biggest discrepancy was that you are severely limited in the commands you are allowed to use although what is available will get you through it.

The topology Mike linked is nice also and can be a big help. Sorry for not mentioning it in my earlier posts about passing. Good luck on the next go around, we're rooting for you.

jovan88

I've built the exact topology at home so I'm hoping it will help come exam day.

AlexMR

OP, define "miserably", please. What was your score? I will take both BCMSN and BSCI in the next couple weeks and I am really concerned about the few TSHOOT preparation materials. To the point that I am considering attemptingboth ICSW and ONT instead of waiting for more study material to become available or, worse, failing a few times before passing it.

Even after having read some of the ONT material, i dont think i could pass the old 4 exams before july 31rst. The lack of study materials for the ont has made me think about the CCDA (which is pretty much in the bag with BSCI and BCMSN and SWITCH covered/learned) and CCDP just to allow other vendors to come up with some decent training.

What a dilemma!!

aldous

AlexMR wrote: »

OP, define "miserably", please. What was your score? I will take both BCMSN and BSCI in the next couple weeks and I am really concerned about the few TSHOOT preparation materials. To the point that I am considering attemptingboth ICSW and ONT instead of waiting for more study material to become available or, worse, failing a few times before passing it.

Even after having read some of the ONT material, i dont think i could pass the old 4 exams before july 31rst. The lack of study materials for the ont has made me think about the CCDA (which is pretty much in the bag with BSCI and BCMSN and SWITCH covered/learned) and CCDP just to allow other vendors to come up with some decent training.

What a dilemma!!

i'm looking at icsw stuff atm (doing same as you with icsw an bcmsn) and if you've done any of the ccna:sec stuff you should be ok, quite lucky in that i've been doing ccna:sec stuff and some mpls at uni this year and so iscw looks like a hodgepodge of ccna:sec,mpls and a bit of new stuff.

i found ont really easy and thought the exam was more like ccna:qos so if you want to nail both i'd say its possible if you can devout the time but imo ont and iscw are the easiest of the 4

Nuul

AlexMR wrote: »

OP, define "miserably", please. What was your score?

656, I needed a 790 so I wasn't even close. There were only 2 of the 14 tickets that I couldn't figure out at all. The rest I knew where the issue was and what technology was causing it...or at least I thought I did.

DPG

Nuul wrote: »

656, I needed a 790 so I wasn't even close. There were only 2 of the 14 tickets that I couldn't figure out at all. The rest I knew where the issue was and what technology was causing it...or at least I thought I did.

656 = 50.8%

790 = 70%


You will get it next time since you now know what to expect.