It’s scheduled. Nervous about this one big time, so I am posting it’s scheduled so I don’t chicken out.
Nearly 2 years of a procrastination, excuses and distractions and I am going for Route on the 7th of next month.
I don’t have a lot of real world routing experience so I have been supplementing in the lab for some time now. So I probably spent a lot more time in prep than most. I am guessing switch will go quicker since I often setup layer 3 switches.
Here is how I have prepared
1) 4 month community college class covering BSCI and the old switch exam
2) Official CCNP academy learning
3) Read BSCI foundations guide
4) Read BSCI Prep book
5) Trancenders testing for BSCI
6) BSCI lab book at least 4 times through
7) Deployed EIGRP and OSPF a couple of times now in production for smallish businesses
Worked through every example from Cbtnuggets BSCI
Then essentially I was consistently failing pretests and still just felt dumb. So I opted to delay until the current version of CCNP released. Since then…
1) Worked through every chapter of Network warrior
2) The new Route learning guide
3) Read the new Exam prep book, worked though everything a few times
4) Worked out some pretty complex GNS3 networks spanning multiple comps
5) Ran a project to re-IP a company and summarize them
6) Dual stacked and tunneled IPv6 for my company and one of our clients
7) Redid all the labs in BSCI lab book and started connecting the different protocols
Worked through every example in Cbtnuggets Route
9) Worked though every example in Video Mentor
10) Have every flash card down from the official flashcard set
11) I am getting 100% from every Q&A resources I can get (I sadly have them memorized at this point)
I still have to say I am feeling weak in BGP. I have never worked with it in the real world. I don’t even have a client I can look at, in terms of their docs. Or fooling around in the routers. So I am going completely off the materials above. I realize I have been at this on and off for nearly two years but I am still finding holes in my knowledge. I am just not sure what to do about it. Generally I think I should take the test and not worry about it.
Anyhow test is set for the 7th and I am seriously wondering what is the best way to prepare.
My plan is
1) Dedicate a day to each area of review
2) Hit my flashcard stack.
3) Work though BGP labs again
4) Work through distribution labs again
5) Read the Quick Ref guide the night before the exam
6) Watch the CBTnuggets videos on the train to and from work again. If I power through I can probably finish them in a week
Any other areas I should be considering?
