After a weekend of being sick AND battling a bloody nose (I haven't had one of those in many years) in the parking lot before my exam AND a tropical storm blowing through...whew...I took my ROUTE exam this morning and completed my CCNP.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, I started my CCNP back in 2009 and completed the ONT and ISCW exams in the first year, then after a year, I took BCMSN, and all I had left was BSCI. Well...I procrastinated because life got in the way and the exams changed, meaning I now had to do ROUTE to complete my CCNP. I finally made that last push and completed ROUTE this morning, which is a very good thing because my CCNA and all my NP exams were set to retire and require recertification on June 1st!!!
What I noticed, from my perspective, was that the ROUTE exam was a lot more focused than the BSCI was. There was less in-depth on BGP, although it still heavily covers BGP, just not to the point I was nervous about from my BSCI studies. IS-IS is, thankfully, gone. IPv6 is strongly represented and the material on EIGRP and OSPF is very in-depth. I thought the labs were fair as well as the questions. I used CBT Nuggets, a GNS3 lab, and the Cisco Press Certification study guide (not the exam guide) as well as Routing TCP/IP volumes 1 and 2.
I passed with a respectable score of 895, which considering I have a fever, I'll definitely take!!!
What's next? Maybe a couple of CCNA specializations and some R&R.
ACTUALLY...TSHOOT is next.
I just went online to verify everything was good with my previous exams and...apparently, I took my ISCW and ONT in 2008, not 2009...so they have aged out. I now have to take TSHOOT on Thursday or else my BCMSN ages out.
Lesson learned - Keep an eye on those certs!!!!!
Any tips as I CRAM, CRAM, CRAM for TSHOOT? I think I should be in pretty good shape having come off of Route and having had extensive experience in switched networks.
