SWITCH vs ROUTE

Which did you find harder? If the number of pages of the books are anything to go by, SWITCH seems to have about half the content ROUTE does (although of course, that's no way to judge the difficulty). I didn't find anything in ROUTE to be overly difficult, just took a few different explanations to get my head around certain topics like OSPF LSA's, IPv6 addressing, BGP etc...certainly nothing like the difficulty of learning how to subnet at CCNA level!

Which did exam did you find harder? And which topics in SWITCH would you say were the most difficult?

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DevilWAH

I found switch quite stright forward there seems to be more topics but not quite as much depth as Router.

Route seems prety much

EIGRP
OSPF
BRP
REdistrubution and Patch control
IPv6

all basically the same thing (routing)

In switching you are jumping around a bit more
VLAN,
Spanning Tree
Redundancy
port security
Network design and structure
...
...

the topics I did not feel where in as much depth just more diverse and you are expected to know how they work together.

However I have more of a back ground in Switching than Routing so this might be another reason I found it easy as about 70% of the topics I had worked on to levels beyond the CCNP material before I started to study. Where as for routing I have only worked in any depth on EIGRP so all the OSPF inner workings is new to me.

Eildor

DevilWAH wrote: »

I found switch quite stright forward there seems to be more topics but not quite as much depth as Router.

Route seems prety much

EIGRP
OSPF
BRP
REdistrubution and Patch control
IPv6

all basically the same thing (routing)

In switching you are jumping around a bit more
VLAN,
Spanning Tree
Redundancy
port security
Network design and structure
...
...

the topics I did not feel where in as much depth just more diverse and you are expected to know how they work together.

However I have more of a back ground in Switching than Routing so this might be another reason I found it easy as about 70% of the topics I had worked on to levels beyond the CCNP material before I started to study. Where as for routing I have only worked in any depth on EIGRP so all the OSPF inner workings is new to me.

I have no knowledge other than CCNA (and now CCNP ROUTE), so based on the amount of content I guess it shouldn't be THAT difficult. Which SWITCH topics would you say are the most challenging/difficult to get your head around (if any)?

DevilWAH

I didn't find the topics them selves difficult, as like I say I had set them up in working networks before.

What I did find is the exam expected you to know how it all works together.

So a question might throw together 3 modes of STP and redundant devices in a way no sane person would ever think to configure it, and then ask what would happen if link X goes down.

So its no good knowing each topic, you need to know what happens when you stack them together, the Foundation guide does not go in to this, you need to lab it out for you self. I would suggest you build a net work that contains every thing in the Switch sylibious and then break and reconfigure each topic in turn to see how it fits together.

Route = Few semi in depth topics with little over lap (redistribution is a well defined cross over point between the topics)
Switch = More topics a little less in depth but more over lap in there applications, you need to know how they interact and what effect this can have.

Switch Topics

VLANS
Switch Operation (CAM TCAM and other switch tables)
CEF
VLANS
STP (all modes)
STP enhancements like BPDU guard and ULD detection.
Ether channels and port channels
Multilayer switches
High availabilities (redunder router and redundent supervisors)
IP telephony
Wireless
Securing switch devices
Port security
ACL's
Vlan ACL's
Private VLANS
QOS
and the list goes on....

As you can see more topics and more diverse, book smaller but that does not mean easier.

I think STP had the most info in it and you need to know how the different versions up date the network when a link goes down. Think of the differences between RIP and OSPF updating the network. same job different methods. STP the same, common STP and Rapid STP have different packets and topology structure for keeping the network loop free.

Eildor

DevilWAH wrote: »

I didn't find the topics them selves difficult, as like I say I had set them up in working networks before.

What I did find is the exam expected you to know how it all works together.

So a question might throw together 3 modes of STP and redundant devices in a way no sane person would ever think to configure it, and then ask what would happen if link X goes down.

So its no good knowing each topic, you need to know what happens when you stack them together, the Foundation guide does not go in to this, you need to lab it out for you self. I would suggest you build a net work that contains every thing in the Switch sylibious and then break and reconfigure each topic in turn to see how it fits together.

Route = Few semi in depth topics with little over lap (redistribution is a well defined cross over point between the topics)
Switch = More topics a little less in depth but more over lap in there applications, you need to know how they interact and what effect this can have.

Switch Topics

VLANS
Switch Operation (CAM TCAM and other switch tables)
CEF
VLANS
STP (all modes)
STP enhancements like BPDU guard and ULD detection.
Ether channels and port channels
Multilayer switches
High availabilities (redunder router and redundent supervisors)
IP telephony
Wireless
Securing switch devices
Port security
ACL's
Vlan ACL's
Private VLANS
QOS
and the list goes on....

As you can see more topics and more diverse, book smaller but that does not mean easier.

I think STP had the most info in it and you need to know how the different versions up date the network when a link goes down. Think of the differences between RIP and OSPF updating the network. same job different methods. STP the same, common STP and Rapid STP have different packets and topology structure for keeping the network loop free.

Cool, thanks for the info mate! Gives me an idea as to what to expect. Will be starting on SWITCH shortly