Passed BCNE 150-130

mistabrumley89

Passed by the skin of my teeth haha. It was more difficult than I thought it would be. Even though I work with Brocade devices, it was still pretty difficult. I would call it CCNA+. The only thing that makes it easy is the very low passing score.

coffeeluvr

Congratulations on the pass!

mistabrumley89

Thank you!

johnnyarks

Congrats on the pass, what did u use for study? I'm in a Brocade/foundry environment I'm interested in this exam.

Master Of Puppets

Congrats!

spiderjericho

johnnyarks wrote: »

Congrats on the pass, what did u use for study? I'm in a Brocade/foundry environment I'm interested in this exam.

I'm planning on taking test on Wednesday. If you purchase the CNE 250 course for $150, it'll provide you with a CBT/PDFs and labs. You can also take a practice exam for free.

The material is definitely CCNA v4+ and includes Concepts like POE, QOS, LAG, BGP, Port mirroring, etc.

johnnyarks

spiderjericho wrote: »

I'm planning on taking test on Wednesday. If you purchase the CNE 250 course for $150, it'll provide you with a CBT/PDFs and labs. You can also take a practice exam for free.

The material is definitely CCNA v4+ and includes Concepts like POE, QOS, LAG, BGP, Port mirroring, etc.

Ah, good to know, we use pretty much all those besides QOS (no phones). Thanks for the info.

GreenLantern

congrats on the pass, I actually took this test recently and passed. I'm glad I did, because it gave me an intro into a few ccnp topics. it also really showed me that I need to improve in the QOS area.

mistabrumley89

I'm in a mostly Brocade/Foundry environment as well. It was pretty difficult. I only studied the BCNE in a nutshell and BCNP in a nutshell. I didn't go through and read the whole thing. Just skimmed through it and read what I didn't know. The difference from this and the CCNA is just how the vendors write the questions and a couple of other protocols not covered in CCNA. I went into the BCNE right after I passed my CCNA expecting it to be very similar. I found the BCNE to be MUCH more difficult.

Sounds Good

mistabrumley89 wrote: »

I'm in a mostly Brocade/Foundry environment as well. It was pretty difficult. I only studied the BCNE in a nutshell and BCNP in a nutshell. I didn't go through and read the whole thing. Just skimmed through it and read what I didn't know. The difference from this and the CCNA is just how the vendors write the questions and a couple of other protocols not covered in CCNA. I went into the BCNE right after I passed my CCNA expecting it to be very similar. I found the BCNE to be MUCH more difficult.

I find it to be quite the opposite. I passed the BCNE with basic networking knowledge and ONLY reading the BCNE nutshell guide. Everything on the test is in the guide except for basic networking. I got a 73% on the BCNE reading only the nutshell guide on the morning of the test with no prior studies for it. The CCNA however, I've failed twice and think it's easily twice as hard as the BCNE. BCNE is entirely multiple choice and the there is nothing tricky about the format of the questions.

mistabrumley89

It wasn't the networking knowledge part that gave me a hard time on the BCNE, it was the hardware portion.

spiderjericho

I commented on this in the other thread. The test isn't difficult. The only thing you'll get hung up on are the things not included in the Nuthsell guide like the Foundary line of products, protocols and a few other concepts (like POE).

The test isn't difficult. I will say they should raise the passing score up to at least a 70%, so at least you set a decent standard.

evadlegne

I'm scheduled to take the BCNE this Friday. I'm a little nervous to be honest with you. It's been almost 3 years since I've taken the CCNA and I'm a little rusty on some topics I don't deal with on a regular basis. I've reviewed the BCNE Nutshell Study Guide but it seems it doesn't coincide completely with the practice exam. The study guide doesn't cover a few things that are asked in the test so I'm wondering if I am studying the wrong material. Basically, I've just been reviewing most of the topics covered in the exam (the topics covered in the Nutshell Study Guide) in as much detail as I can but I'm having a hard time memorizing the details about the different platforms. Do I really have to know about all the nitty gritty details about each device like the number of SFP ports, hot-swappable power supplies, etc.? Of course, without breaking the NDA, can anybody offer any advice? Is a good understanding of the items in the Nutshell Guide good enough?

pert

Restudy your CCNA notes, Read the nutshell guide, take the test. There are questions on there that are more complicated than CCNA, but the low passing score combined with a lot of freebie questions makes it too easy. I don't understand what the test is trying to be. Brocade should really get rid of the freebie questions and low passing score, or they should just remove the hard questions/concepts. Make it consistent one way or the other.

evadlegne

What do you mean by freebie questions? Just questions that are insanely easy?

evadlegne

Nailed it!

evarney

I have the BCNE next week on the 19th and the JNCIA in JAN15. Oh yeah, Dec 30th is the CCNA security although I may kick the can down the road and push it to FEB. We'll see.

I'm a kind of unable to test any other time of the year so now is the time to basically go all out. I was taking a Networking course at a local college for credits and already have the CCNA : R&S

My line of reason was, if I'm going to study, I may as well chain them all together because the basic networking theory behind a lot of this material appears to be all the same.

Command structure and model capabilities are the only things I would struggle with so I've made some notes and will just memorize all of that crap. I'm anticipating a lot of product placement in this test but I could be incorrect.

I place the switching kind of between CCNA and CCNP switch skill level. The routing in the study packet seemed to also touch on things that were absent from the last ICND2 test I took. All the OSPF area types never made it into CCNA book I ever read.

Routing appears to be OSPF centric.

Questions that pertain to commands will probably be there too. I realize the white knights on the forum will get upset if I say more than that. I honestly think that the BCNE in a Nutshell is going to be almost digested and parsed into a test. I don't know, I haven't seen practice questions for this exam but I am more scared of the Juniper associate exam than this.

Did anyone feel like they ran out of time on this exam?

pert

evadlegne wrote: »

What do you mean by freebie questions? Just questions that are insanely easy?

Yeah, some of the question are basically free points, easy to the point of the only people who got it wrong misclicked.

evarney

Test was exactly like I pictured it. Questions were very straightforward, didn't use double negatives, loaded words or innuendo. Diagrams were also straightforward and basic networking concepts were what will make you prevail.

OSPF-centric, CCNP level switching concepts with Network+ difficulty questions. Know what is Cisco proprietary and what is open-source.

Understanding discovery protocols and spanning tree is important. Routing wasn't overly difficult.

The product placement wasn't rampant like I feared...if you have a little experience with networking or brocade equipment and the packet BCNE in a nutshell you will pass.

mistabrumley89

Congrats. Maybe I was just unfortunate with the amounts of vendor hardware questions lol

sh run

The test is actually quite difficult if you don't study properly, but thorough study is made difficult by the fact that you can't get a study guide that covers everything without taking the CNE 200 training. The CNE 200 materials include a study guide that will prepare you for the exam, but without this study guide, you will need to gather a list of PDFs and relevant page numbers from this source: BCNE & BCNP 2012 Exams - Extended Study Material - Brocade Community

The test is only 60 questions, but they are very specific questions. You won't see a bunch of generic Network+ questions like 'at which layer of the OSI model will you find SSH?' Luckily the exam only requires a 58% to pass, which in my opinion is a ridiculous travesty that makes a mockery of the certification process.