Finally passed ROUTE

lrb

After about 2 months of solid study for this exam, I passed with an 866. Fairly tough exam, but very fair.. there was nothing that was totally out of left field or anything.

Score breakdown was:
EIGRP 80%
Multi-area OSPF 72%
eBGP 80%
IPv6 80%
IPv4/IPv6 redistribution 89%
Layer 3 path control 86%
Basic teleworker and branch services 100%

I used:

• ROUTE CBT nuggets - fairly helpful and a nice intro to the topics but definately wouldn't have passed based solely on this
• ROUTE official cert guide - this was my primary study materials.. Wendell Odom is the king of cert guides!
• ROUTE foundation learning guide - I only really skimmed over a few chapters of this and only when I didn't think the official cert guide covered the topic well enough
• gns3 with 2691's running 12.4
• Cisco.com and this forum

I'm sitting the BGP exam in a few weeks so I'll return to finish off the CCNP in a month or so

Good luck to anyone doing this...

Ps. anyone going to Cisco Live! in Melbourne, Australia, this year?

lrb

Also, has anyone ever tried out Safari books? I'm debating whether I want to keep buying 2-3 books everytime I study for an exam, or whether I should just pay the monthly subscription. I could imagine for the CCIE exams this could be quite helpful as the recommended book list is massive

peanutnoggin

CONGRATS on the pass! Good luck on the BGP exam.

Safari is great because I have a subscription through my employer. I'm not sure of the monthly subscription fee, but I would imagine it is a lot cheaper than buying each book out right. Just a thought!

-Peanut

mikej412

Congratulations!!

I still buy the books -- but I jumped on a $30 a month (for a year) unlimited Safari option when they offered it.

lrb

Well.. just going on my book costs for ROUTE alone:

• Official cert guide = AUD $60
• foundation learning guide = AUD $50 (I actually bought this book in the library pack which cost me $150, so im simply dividing by 3 for this)

If I had bought it, I wouldve used the quick reference guide to.

Maybe I'll subscribe for a month and see how much I use it.. I can always cancel after that

Dakinggamer87

Congrats!!

wirerat

Congrats on the pass!

bermovick

How necessary do you think the Foundation Book was? I see you mention you really only needed it when you felt the OCG was insufficient but how often did that happen?

I ask because while I see both books being recommended here in the forums, every time I buy multiple books for an exam, the 2nd book (Toddy's ICND1, Paquet's CCNA:S) never seems that great of a deal, considering how little 'new' material I pick up from it.

Also: CONGRATS! Only TSHOOT left and I hear that's not too bad if you've got your SWITCH & ROUTE down well.

Netwurk

Very cool, congrats!!!

earweed

Congrats on a job well done.

tomaifauchai

Congratulation!

lrb

bermovick wrote: »

How necessary do you think the Foundation Book was? I see you mention you really only needed it when you felt the OCG was insufficient but how often did that happen?.

To be honet, not that much. I think the OCG covered BGP better (although the exam outline states configuring/verifying eBGP, but the book has quite a bit on iBGP and manipulating path attributes) than the FLG, but the FLG covered IPv6 maybe a bit better than the OCG. I don't want to say don't get the book because everyone learns differently, but I personally didn't get that much out of it. Wendell Odom really is an awesome author; the ROUTE OCG is ten times better than the SWITCH OCG and TSHOOT OCG (which i'm about half way through) which are both written by different authors.

Yahel

Congrats I guess it feels great


How hard was this exam related to ccna ? Because this time, you really need to understand how does eigrp,ospf,bgp works

lrb

Yahel wrote: »

How hard was this exam related to ccna ?

Pretty big step up I thought.. especially OSPF. Understanding all the differnet area types, network types, and LSA types, virtual links, etc, took a little while but doing a lot of OSPF configuration at work helps tremendously with grasping the concepts. Lab up everything in gns3, especailly IPv4 redistribution between EIGRP and OSPF, and understand whats going in by looking at show/debug output and you should be sweet as.

In comparison, the SWITCH I thought was only a small step up from the CCNA stuff.. if you studied/labbed hard on VLANs, VTP, DTP, etherchannel, etc, there isn't really that much more to learn for the exam.

Netwurk

peanutnoggin wrote: »

CONGRATS on the pass! Good luck on the BGP exam.

Safari is great because I have a subscription through my employer. I'm not sure of the monthly subscription fee, but I would imagine it is a lot cheaper than buying each book out right. Just a thought!

-Peanut

My employers once reimbursed us for the $19.99 per month Safari subscriptions, but the company that bought us out frowned on educational expenses (sad but true). So I switched to the $9.99 per month deal (because I'm cheap - lol) when I had to pay for it myself. Even then, you still get 5 books a month so I am all for recommending them.



And congrats again to the OP - I hope to pass ROUTE myself soon.

lrb

Netwurk wrote: »

My employers once reimbursed us for the $19.99 per month Safari subscriptions, but the company that bought us out frowned on educational expenses (sad but true). So I switched to the $9.99 per month deal (because I'm cheap - lol) when I had to pay for it myself.

Yeah I just saw that they have a '10-Slot Bookshelf' subscription for USD $22.99/year which doesn't look too bad... you would be a machine if you were to read more than 10 tech books a month! I really want to read the CCNP Security book rough cuts though which aren't included in that package .

vinbuck

lrb wrote: »

Pretty big step up I thought.. especially OSPF. Understanding all the differnet area types, network types, and LSA types, virtual links, etc, took a little while but doing a lot of OSPF configuration at work helps tremendously with grasping the concepts. Lab up everything in gns3, especailly IPv4 redistribution between EIGRP and OSPF, and understand whats going in by looking at show/debug output and you should be sweet as.

In comparison, the SWITCH I thought was only a small step up from the CCNA stuff.. if you studied/labbed hard on VLANs, VTP, DTP, etherchannel, etc, there isn't really that much more to learn for the exam.

Congrats! I'm working on ROUTE right now but in the reverse order. I'm working my way through the entire FLG and labbing it all out in GNS3 and then I'm going to go through the Official Cert Guide by Odom.

Yahel

Thanks for the info

mj53151

congrats on the pass! I just started studying for the ROUTE a couple weeks ago. Thanks for posting the advice too.

I'm another one that's using Safari and love it. I've used it over the last year for A+, Net+, CCENT, and CCNA. Great deal in my opinion. I've also used the CBT and Train Signal vids and highly recommend them.

I used Boson Netsim for the CCNA and it was great. Has anyone used the new 8.0 version for CCNP? I haven't seen many reviews yet.

Good luck!

lwwarner

lrb wrote: »

Yeah I just saw that they have a '10-Slot Bookshelf' subscription for USD $22.99/year which doesn't look too bad...

Actually, that's $22.99/Month or $252.99/Year...

clikcspeed

Congrats! Thanks for the info regarding study material, I have the CBT Nuggets and waiting for my books to be delivered, hopefully next week. Just from watching the videos, ROUTE is definitely a big step from CCNA. I hope to take the exam end of March.

By the way, if you take 2 months to study for ROUTE, roughly how much time are you likely to spend on SWITCH and TSHOOT respectively (I know it depends!)

Congrats again!!!!

lrb

Umm i spent about 2 months studying for the SWITCH too, but i felt prepared for the exam a lot quicker as the step up from CCNA to SWITCH is not nearly as big as CCNA to ROUTE (imo).

When I hopefully clear BGP next week I will go full steam ahead on TSHOOT until the end of March, but like like Mike on this forum recommended, I started studying for this exam the day I opened the SWITCH book

lrb

Not worth starting another thread for this but I just passed the BGP exam today with a 911. The exam was very easy I thought, nothing was really asked in any great depth. I left the exam breakdown sheet at work, but from memory my worst area was route reflectors

I have studied been studying for this simultaneously with ROUTE, but I actually did the course for this exam at the middle of last year. So my exam preperation materials were:

• Official course materials (workbooks, lab books, etc)
• Internet Routing Architectures (awesome book)
• gns3 with 2691's
• Cisco.com

Off to have a few weeks holiday before jumping back into TSHOOT

mikej412

lrb wrote: »

passed the BGP exam

Congratulations!!