CCNP Bryant Advantage

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Has anyone used Bryant Advantage for CCNP? Looking to expand my study material beyond the OCG and FLG and looking for some good material. I also find that CBT Nuggets, while good, just doesn't cover spanning-tree or High Availability as much as I'd like (SWITCH).

Turgon

reloaded wrote: »

Has anyone used Bryant Advantage for CCNP? Looking to expand my study material beyond the OCG and FLG and looking for some good material. I also find that CBT Nuggets, while good, just doesn't cover spanning-tree or High Availability as much as I'd like (SWITCH).

Thats very disappointing to hear about Bryant. The guy makes his living from instruction and switching is what it is all about not routing. When you host, you switch. Bryant should be world class on switching and spanning-tree as he makes his living from instruction.

To be fair to Bryant, in my experience, layer 2 instruction in books, practice tests and every which way has poor from every possible source. In production, if you meltdown, bad things happen. I fear too many people putting material out there have not experienced this reality. This disconnect between instructors and operational reality is truly scary these days.

mattau

i used bryants stuff for ccna and I thought it was good, straight to the point stuff you needed to know. as for ccnp i am not quite sure. assuming it will follow suite. Id agree with you, CBT nuggets doesnt provide anywhere near enough detail so i never bothered with that. For CCNP you need details and alot of it. Personally I chose INE, brian mcgahan is fantastic imo and everything about them is professional.

Shanman

I have also been look at bryant, IPExpert, INE, and CBT Nuggets. I used bryant for my CCNA as well but I am think about going with INE. Simply because IP Expert seems very expensive and I have heard that CBT Nuggets lacks detail. Do you get audio for the car on the way to work along with the videos?

RickRandhawa

I have the Bryant Advantage stuff...its written in the same way as his CCNA stuff. It does seems like the CCNP stuff is slightly more rushed than the CCNA material, but not to the point where it affects clarity or lacks information.

Bryant's videos are almost identical to his study guides....personally, I'd get the study guide from him, and videos from either INE or CBT Nuggets.
(The INE videos are more in depth than the CBT Nuggets, but the CBT nuggets are a lot easier to understand the overall concepts first time around.)

Also, you'll want to pick up the CCNP Lab guides. They're very helpful.

For my prep I used:
CBT Nuggets for overview
Bryant advantage study guide for concise/clear explanations
Lab guide to lab everything
INE videos to review/solidify everything (Could also use the Official Cert Guide for this step)
I did this topic by topic...Should take about 100 hours total per ROUTE/SWITCH exam.

vinbuck

Turgon wrote: »

Thats very disappointing to hear about Bryant. The guy makes his living from instruction and switching is what it is all about not routing. When you host, you switch. Bryant should be world class on switching and spanning-tree as he makes his living from instruction.

To be fair to Bryant, in my experience, layer 2 instruction in books, practice tests and every which way has poor from every possible source. In production, if you meltdown, bad things happen. I fear too many people putting material out there have not experienced this reality. This disconnect between instructors and operational reality is truly scary these days.

I may be wrong but I think he was saying that CBT was lacking in detail and not Bryant but I agree with you about the disparity between real world operations and cert instruction. If you've never had the higher ups standing behind you while you are trying to restore service to the core and thousands of customers then it's difficult to relate the importance of accuracy and attention to detail to real world ops. It's those kind of experiences that make you a better and more balanced engineer because you understand the impact beyond the technical realm. Being able to impart that kind of knowledge is invaluable and there aren't many authors/instructors out there who convey those kind of lessons (Gary Donahue - Network Warrior, is one of the few I can think of that frequently contrasts technical vs. real world impact.)

mattau

you dont get audio no, but you get all the vids available for download and i just put them all on my iphone to watch on my way to work. quite handy

davenport

Not sure if you're still in the market or not, but just wanted to drop my two cents. I've got a CBT nuggets subscription through work and use it very frequently. I took (and failed) CCNP Switch the first time using CBT nuggets as my only source of study, sould have used more sources but didn't. In my defense I did just barely miss it Anyway, I bought Bryant's NP switch video series, studied with it for a month or so, went back and knocked the exam down the second time with 40 mins left on the clock. I'm generally very happy with Jeremy's videos on CBT nuggets, but his Switch videos seemed a bit light IMO. To me it seemed like Bryant's switch videos covered the topics in much more detail. I started studying route recently and Jeremy really seems to cover the topics very well, much better than he did in switch. Back to topic, If I had to do it again I'd buy the Bryant videos every time. Theyre good stuff

furqanj

i need train signal link for ccnp route .please give me the link

veritas_libertas

furqanj wrote: »

i need train signal link for ccnp route .please give me the link

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=train+signal+ccnp

WillTech105

veritas_libertas wrote: »

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=train+signal+ccnp

Hahaha love it!

I find CCNP Bryan set is very detailed and informative. Granted little dry (he tries to make it fun) but very detailed. He also no longer has those long 1.5 hour videos and breaks them down into 30min chunks which is a relief.

QHalo

WillTech105 wrote: »

Hahaha love it!

I find CCNP Bryan set is very detailed and informative. Granted little dry (he tries to make it fun) but very detailed. He also no longer has those long 1.5 hour videos and breaks them down into 30min chunks which is a relief.

Thank God. I used his stuff for CCNA and CCNA:S and I was going to try on a lot of those videos they were so long.

reloaded

davenport wrote: »

Not sure if you're still in the market or not, but just wanted to drop my two cents. I've got a CBT nuggets subscription through work and use it very frequently. I took (and failed) CCNP Switch the first time using CBT nuggets as my only source of study, sould have used more sources but didn't. In my defense I did just barely miss it Anyway, I bought Bryant's NP switch video series, studied with it for a month or so, went back and knocked the exam down the second time with 40 mins left on the clock. I'm generally very happy with Jeremy's videos on CBT nuggets, but his Switch videos seemed a bit light IMO. To me it seemed like Bryant's switch videos covered the topics in much more detail. I started studying route recently and Jeremy really seems to cover the topics very well, much better than he did in switch. Back to topic, If I had to do it again I'd buy the Bryant videos every time. Theyre good stuff

That's really good to know. I too failed the first time because I was definitely not up to snuff on High Availability. This time I am better prepared, but I will look into Bryant's products for Route. I'm not really into losing $200 each time, lol.

SUBnet192

Used CBT Nuggets for CCNA + Odom books. Tried the same for CCNP Switch and it worked ok, however the CBT Nuggets (as mentionned by someone else) are much lighter on content for CCNP. Jeremy is a great instructor, fun to listen to, and an awesome motivational speaker but for route, I found the content way too light. So I'm looking at alternatives. I checked out a sample of INE and oh my is that guy boring to listen to.

Considering Bryant at the moment as the samples on his site sound interesting... There is also a new Train Signal out there... Anyone know if it's any good?

SharkDiver

I have used Bryant's ebooks for almost every Cisco exam I've taken (CCNA:V being the exception), and I find them to be great!

He gets to the point and teaches you what you really need to know.

ddcengineer

I used Bryant for CCNA (his practice exam Qs close to the real thing). He's great. For NP Route I read his study guide and watched a couple videos (the free ones). As much as I would like to use all of his videos, I just don't have a lot of extra $$ right now. I had to get CBT Nuggets for sure. I still might buy his Switch vids, but I will pass on his study guide. Reading OCGs cover-to-cover is a given.

harila

I like chris because the details last longer and is helpful both in and out of the exams.Just wondering if the 2007 videos
would still be of any help for the current ccnp.

Turgon

vinbuck wrote: »

I may be wrong but I think he was saying that CBT was lacking in detail and not Bryant but I agree with you about the disparity between real world operations and cert instruction. If you've never had the higher ups standing behind you while you are trying to restore service to the core and thousands of customers then it's difficult to relate the importance of accuracy and attention to detail to real world ops. It's those kind of experiences that make you a better and more balanced engineer because you understand the impact beyond the technical realm. Being able to impart that kind of knowledge is invaluable and there aren't many authors/instructors out there who convey those kind of lessons (Gary Donahue - Network Warrior, is one of the few I can think of that frequently contrasts technical vs. real world impact.)

Yes. Does the material cover 6500 in terms of failover and working with FWSM, SSL, CSM, ACE or other modules? I think likely not. But a latter day CCNP will be working with this environment at least or Nexus? It is hard for trainers to keep up with the field realities, but that CCNP badge could get you thrown in there..