Brocade BCNE scheduled for this saturday

Sounds Good

Here is a review of my BCNE from another thread

So I was scheduled for the BCNE today and I passed the test with a score of 73%.

Here is the breakdown of my score

Layer1/Hardware Concepts - 100%
Brocade Hardware Platforms - 40%
Layer 2 Switching and Protocols - 82%
General Layer 2/Layer 3 Concepts - 100%
Routing Concepts - 70%
ACL Concepts - 75%
QOS Concepts - 67%
Network Security, Management and Monitoring - 50%
Troubleshooting - 78%

Difficulty - 5/10

The test has a passing score of 58% and the material covered is not large when compared to CCNA. I'd say the test covers 65% general networking concepts and 35% Brocade specific. Prior to registering for the BCNE, I was studying for the CCNA and was just done with my first run through of the material. The opportunity to take a free exam that is equivalent to the CCNA was just too good to pass up and I pushed my CCNA exam back several weeks to prepare for the BCNE.

During this time, I intended to study for the BCNE, but didn't as I became side-tracked with videogames and television. The last week arrives and I told myself I would study everyday, but didn't (Found the television series Spartacus and can not stop watching!). And so comes the day of the exam (today), and I haven't studied one bit for the BCNE nor any networking material from CCNA since about 3 weeks prior. I wake up and begin studying the BCNE in a nutshell exam guide at 11am. My test was scheduled for 4pm and I had to leave my house at 3pm to get to the testing center. That leaves me 4 hours to study roughly 60 pages of material (less when we factor in eating and general activities).

I finish going over all the material just in time and go and take the test. Throughout the test, I was surprised at how easy it was and was confident that I scored over a 58%. Some questions were difficult and some even poorly worded (or maybe I just didn't understand it), but it took me just under an hour for 60 questions and I was glad that I passed. This is a nice certification to add to my resume and will assist me in getting into the network engineering side of IT when I also add the CCNA into the mix.

For prospective BCNE takers, if you ONLY study the BCNE in a nutshell guide, you WILL be able to pass. Almost everything that was covered in the test is in that guide, however there were at most 5 questions on the test that wasn't covered directly in the guide.

Good luck to all and if any of what I said breaches the NDA, please let me know and I will edit it.

SG

To give an update, I'm further convinced that this test is way below CCNA standards as far as difficulty is concerned. I've taken the CCNA composite twice since I've passed the BCNE and failed both times with a score of 722 and 775 most recently. The BCNE left me with a false sense of security and the CCNA gave me a swift kick in the ass that still hasn't worn off.

spiderjericho

Sounds Good wrote: »

Here is a review of my BCNE from another thread

To give an update, I'm further convinced that this test is way below CCNA standards as far as difficulty is concerned. I've taken the CCNA composite twice since I've passed the BCNE and failed both times with a score of 722 and 775 most recently. The BCNE left me with a false sense of security and the CCNA gave me a swift kick in the ass that still hasn't worn off.

I'd say the BCNE is comparable to the CCNA, IMO.

The only "Issue" I'd say with the BCNE is the low passing score of 55%.

The CCNA has a pass score of 82.5% (unless they've changed that). I think the BCNE should have a normal passing score of 70 percent (like most vendors except Cisco). I don't think I'd take any exam seriously that only requires someone to answer a little more than half of the questions correctly.

Cisco also has a reputation of crafting difficult examinations.

Cisco exams include Multiple-choice, single-answer, Multiple-choice, multiple-answer, Drag-and-drop, Fill-in-the-blank, Simulation, Testlet and Simlet.

Also, Cisco has a tendency to be a little Richardish in their questions, whereby they intentionally try to trick you. They also have a tendency to include trivia pursuit for some questions. The simulations are usually simple.

But at the end of the day, a BCNE should be able to do comparable to a CCNA except for obviously the Cisco Propietary protocols/features. They can configure Static Routing RIP, OSPF, BGP, STP, RSTP, VRRP, VRRP-E, UDLD, VLANs, Virtual Interfaces, Physical Interfaces, Remote Management, SNMP, QOS, Multicasting, etc.

I have a few Cisco certifications and I'll say their exams were more difficult, but the capability of the certification holder should be the same.

it_consultant

I wouldnt consider one to be valid preparation for the other. If you did very well on the Brocade test, you would have no idea how to configure a Cisco router (Brocade doesn't need process ID's) and you couldn't tag a VLAN (only certain Brocade models do the "switchport mode access" etc and those aren't the ones you are tested on) on a Cisco switch. Additionally, at least when I took it, Cisco was very much interested in your knowledge of things like broadcast domains, what kind of cabling you use to connect to switches, setting up users and 'lines', none of this will exist on a Brocade test / and I don't think those things are necessarily germane to what most of us do as network engineers anyway.

I would like to see some simulations on the Brocade test, the VLAN, spanning tree, and routing are configured a little differently than Cisco and I think it is a valid test point to see if your candidates can do a basic configuration on the switch.

GreenLantern

I just took the BCNE a few hours ago and passed, I was originally on a CCNA Security, CCNP, CISSP path. I became sidetracked from that because my company asked to implement brocade fastirons in place of some 4503's that were being eol'd. I received a free voucher and decided that I would do some online lab simulations and read over the bcne nutshell. I do not feel that this test is more difficult than the CCNA. There are a few extra topics, link aggregation, QOS, Multicast, BGP, but there is also alot of info not on the BCNE that is in the CCNA. I think that taking the CCNA first really helped me with this test. So I would definitely suggest getting the ccna first if you want both. I also feel that this test is a good bridge between the ccna and the ccnp.

pert

I think people are confusing the difficulty of the exam with the passing score. The stuff this exam covers is way beyond CCNA and more comparable to NP route. If you just want to pass its not much different than CCNA. If you had to ace the exam though then there would be a huge difference.

tprice5

I just failed this test about an hour ago with a score of 38%. I do not have a background in networking, and although I had intentions to, I did not study.
Just wanted to throw my $.02 in.

evarney

I passed with an 81%. I am grateful to have been given a voucher for nothing.

That test was basically; "do you know networking on a enterprise level or not". I still feel its kind of a desperate move to try to push for more sales in brocade appliances but back in the day, the product beat cisco in terms of warranty and price and a lot of people who where running businesses with limited funds selected it when it was foundry. 58% is a very low mark to hit, and the test just lacked the brocade specific questions you would expect that would merit the passing score being so low.

Company isn't appearing to be hemorrhaging money..but i've had bad experiences with the forwarding plane killing the control plane when CPU usage goes way up on the old FastIrons. I wonder if they are making an effort to change that and accept a model that's more like juniper where the forwarding plane doesn't crater the control plane. I'll investigate...

Will brocade ever outdo Cisco. No. But a free cert is a good deal.