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Switch Down, onto Route!

pham0329

Passed SWITCH this morning with a 923!! Got 100% or high 90's on everything except for the L2 security implementation topic. In my defense though, there was only like 2 security related questions

Exam was a little annoying at times with really stupid questions like

Is a toyota a
a) car
b) sedan
c) truck
d) suv

or questions that were worded so bad that made me comment saying whoever wrote the question should be fired.

The SIM were also pretty annoying as some of my show commands didn't work. The "no" command didn't work when I needed it to, and there was an instance where I did Show spanning-tree, and no interface were listed under the vlan. Spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out what I did wrong and finally gave up and assumed that the sim is quirky, like PT.

All in all, exam was OK. Now, onto Route. I'm hoping Route is a bit more focused and not all over the place like SWITCH was with its various topics (vtp, vlan/trunks, hsrp/vvrp/glbp, stp, etc..)

Edit: Actually, I take that back. There were some questions that I was stumped on in the exam so I'll probably use the rest of August to go over the FLG again. Start Route in Sept and hopefully get that done by October/November, then TSHOOT by the end of the year!

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Comments

jwashington1981

Congrats on the pass!

Chris_

Congratulations, Switch really is a ***** of an exam. Good luck in your Route studies, it is more focussed and has some fluid progression through the subjects. However, there is more to learn and, in my opinion, the subject matter is technically harder to grasp than switch - the exam is better though as you pass based on your technical ability as opposed to your ability to understand gibberish (switch)

Netwurk

Congrats on the pass!

ROUTE is next for me also. I passed the old switch exam (BCMSN) but the new one sounds a lot harder. Anyone still studying for it should check out Dave Hucaby's site Ponder the Network (and other things)

Hucaby wrote one of the Cisco Press SWITCH books but has a lot of material on his site that the book didn't cover. Worth a read.

pham0329

That's a pretty cool site, thanks!

To be honest, I'm expecting ROUTE to be a bit easier. I didn't like how the CCNA books only briefly covered EIGRP and OSPF so I was actually using CCNP books/videos to study for the CCNA routing topics.

I hate it when books would go into something, then say "this is out of the scope of this book..", like when the CCNA books started talking about LSAs, then just stopped half way.

I'm also a bit more excited for ROUTE since I'll be able to lab with GNS3, whereas I had to rely to PT and my 3 3550s for SWITCH which limited what I could do

MrBrian

Congrats on SWITCH! I'm currently going through ROUTE and it's fairly enjoyable lol.. I don't know.. just the way the routing protocols operate and maintain neighborship is pretty cool. And I'm finding ospf to be pretty cool with the stub/totally stubby and not-so-stubby-area(nssa)/ totally nssa areas and how they operate.

SWITCH will be next for me (after I pass route, which still may be another month).. I sure do hope it's alright. It seems like everyone says they like route more than switch. Or maybe that's only because of the way the exam's written...

Netwurk

pham0329 wrote: »

I'm also a bit more excited for ROUTE since I'll be able to lab with GNS3, whereas I had to rely to PT and my 3 3550s for SWITCH which limited what I could do

I have a pretty big lab but still use GNS3 as I can experiment with things without erasing configs and/or rewiring my routers and switches.

Had a lot of problems with GNS3 crashing, but since I've switched to using a 2691 image it never crashes. I can now use the cloud feature to connect it to my real lab and not have to worry about an overnight GNS3 crash.

CCIEWANNABE

Congrats on the pass. IMO Routing is alot more fun than switching. You will come to either love or hate BGP. Personally, it is my favorite protocol. OSPF is a close 2nd

ehnde

Grats on the pass

I wonder if the bugs people are seeing in the exam have anything to do with L2IOU?

andy4tech

congrats on the pass,best of luck on route

SharkDiver

CCIEWANNABE wrote: »

You will come to either love or hate BGP. Personally, it is my favorite protocol. OSPF is a close 2nd

Wow, I never heard that one before. BGP is your favorite protocol.

CCIEWANNABE

SharkDiver wrote: »

Wow, I never heard that one before. BGP is your favorite protocol.

Yeah, some people hate BGP because of its complexity, however that is what makes it such an awesome protocol. There is so much you can do with BGP.