Truth on CCNP Studies

RouteMyPacket

I think for those who have worked for years and decide to get certified will find that CCNP is where the certification guides are so full of garbage and fluff.

I could not imagine studying or reading CCNP material never have worked in networking before. You wouldn't know what is valid and what is fluff..hats off to those folks if you are out there.

I know R/S was fluffy in parts, especially ROUTE but FIREWALL is brutal with just crap on traffic inspection. Memorizing a bunch of timeouts and stuff isn't going to help in the long run.

/rant

ccnpninja

I've been told not to take all book stuff for granted, and it was a sound advice from a triple CCIE so most of the time I went to Cisco online docs and labbed a lot of stuff along the way.

Wass

Master Of Puppets

That's not good. I haven't checked out the guide yet but I was looking forward to FIREWALL and the others on the track with the hope of really learning some neat stuff.

dover

I agree with the Firewall stuff - but you need it for the test. There IS a ton of good material out there (in the NP books), but there is mindless 'Google-able' information that you really don't need to have committed to memory for a day-to-day job. BUT since exam books are geared for the exam-takers you know there will be questions regarding obscure default and time-out values, platform specific capabilities, etc.

Completely understand the rant.

SephStorm

Master Of Puppets wrote: »

That's not good. I haven't checked out the guide yet but I was looking forward to FIREWALL and the others on the track with the hope of really learning some neat stuff.

same here, i'd like to hear from some CCNP Security's on the topic.

dover

There is a ton of great, useful material in the OGCs and in the available supplemental documentation from Cisco. The trouble with exam books is that they are (naturally) geared towards the exam and have to start with the lowest common denominator as far as the foundational knowledge the books expect.

So for firewall you will start with basic traffic filtering, firewall types and methods. Anyone who has been in the business for a while doing this kind of work will already have a pretty firm grasp of the basic material, but that doesn't mean 1. you won't benefit from a refresher and 2. there are some Cisco-centric views that may likely be tested.

I loved the whole CCNP Security track. All of the books contain very useful background information and specific configuration guidance. I don't think you can rely solely on the OCG's. Supplement with freely available info on the net, CBT's if you have access to them and most importantly - lab, lab, lab.

I even enjoyed the IPS study and exam even though I don't use them in production networks. It was challenging to get enough hands-on experience with Cisco IPS but I thought some of their features were incredibly useful. Hopefully they take what is above average from the Cisco IPS7 and what is great from SourceFire and come up with a killer NG/IPS (that I probably can't afford to implement).

it_consultant

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

I think for those who have worked for years and decide to get certified will find that CCNP is where the certification guides are so full of garbage and fluff.

I could not imagine studying or reading CCNP material never have worked in networking before. You wouldn't know what is valid and what is fluff..hats off to those folks if you are out there.

I know R/S was fluffy in parts, especially ROUTE but FIREWALL is brutal with just crap on traffic inspection. Memorizing a bunch of timeouts and stuff isn't going to help in the long run.

/rant

There is a considerable amount of fluff in most certification tracks. Half of it is advertising their capabilities to the test taker so the newly minted CCN(whatever) can sound knowledgeable among other CCN(whatevers). I can't count how many times I have read "Cisco Proprietary..." in my CCNP studies. A manufacturer has the right and privilege to test on whatever they want. I feel like both Microsoft and Cisco test on small details of their products, in order to make the test more challenging, which have little bearing on what actually happens in networks/system.

JustFred

Maybe a bit off topic, but are the OCG/FLG books going to be updated soon?

Iristheangel

@JustFred - They tend to get updated when the exams are updated. I haven't heard any news about the CCNPs getting updated anytime soon so it's improbable that they'll make any changes which is sad for me. The CCNP Secure OCG book has some HORRIFIC reviews on Amazon. I was hoping for an update or an alternative book for that exam before I head that route but most of the specialties are lacking extra resources

@RouteMyPacket - There's a lot of fluff in almost any Cisco exam (i.e. spending what I feel is excessive amounts of time on frame relay, RIP, CCP, etc) so overall I agree with you, but sometimes you never know when you might use some of the more obscure things. For example, EEM applets are discussed in some detail in the Route Simplified book and I asked around if anyone actually used them in production networks. Most people answered no but one of my friends has used them to mitigate a Cisco IOS bug for a certain router that upon reboot would disable an interface. Cisco knew about the bug and were dragging their feet to fix it, said friend's company needed this version of IOS for some of the added features so downgrading wasn't an option. The solution? Creating a EEM applet that would automatically enable the interface again upon reload. Completely random and obscure and I'm sure most of use won't remember how to configure an EEM applet off the top of our heads but knowing that you CAN create one and how it works could help you out in the future.

JustFred

Thanks Iris,

Someone was selling the FLGs since he already has his NP and i was just thinking about grabbing them from him for my NP studies. I'm still a bit on the side of getting them new. Sad indeed, i was thinking perhaps the OCGs would be updated after the amazon reviews. Well there are always the CBTs which are quite good from what i hear

Iristheangel

The OCG for Switch was great but the OCG for Route is crap. Possibly lower than crap. Check out the "Simplified" series. I am reading through the CCNP Route simplified book and it's a monster but it's AMAZING. It digs right it and goes above and beyond the Route exam. I've also heard excellent things about the Switch book for that same series. They're written by the same guy so I assume they'll all be pretty awesome.

Master Of Puppets

dover wrote: »

There is a ton of great, useful material in the OGCs and in the available supplemental documentation from Cisco. The trouble with exam books is that they are (naturally) geared towards the exam and have to start with the lowest common denominator as far as the foundational knowledge the books expect.

So for firewall you will start with basic traffic filtering, firewall types and methods. Anyone who has been in the business for a while doing this kind of work will already have a pretty firm grasp of the basic material, but that doesn't mean 1. you won't benefit from a refresher and 2. there are some Cisco-centric views that may likely be tested.

I loved the whole CCNP Security track. All of the books contain very useful background information and specific configuration guidance. I don't think you can rely solely on the OCG's. Supplement with freely available info on the net, CBT's if you have access to them and most importantly - lab, lab, lab.

I even enjoyed the IPS study and exam even though I don't use them in production networks. It was challenging to get enough hands-on experience with Cisco IPS but I thought some of their features were incredibly useful. Hopefully they take what is above average from the Cisco IPS7 and what is great from SourceFire and come up with a killer NG/IPS (that I probably can't afford to implement).

Thank you for the clarification! I wasn't expecting to learn everything from a book as I do what is on the CCNP track day to day(without the IPS stuff) and this is why I wanted to get something more out of them. I think with some additional digging around and even getting a little sidetracked, it's going to be a lot of fun. And I do agree with Iris on the ROUTE ocg - I'm not quite sure why I even finished it.

JustFred

Iristheangel wrote: »

The OCG for Switch was great but the OCG for Route is crap. Possibly lower than crap. Check out the "Simplified" series. I am reading through the CCNP Route simplified book and it's a monster but it's AMAZING. It digs right it and goes above and beyond the Route exam. I've also heard excellent things about the Switch book for that same series. They're written by the same guy so I assume they'll all be pretty awesome.

Thanks Iris,

I have checked the simplified series on amazon and they are pretty cheap for the kindle. I will pick those up plus the FLGs since everyone here seems to love them so much .

Dieg0M

Yea, ROUTE was fluffy in parts. I swear they could of cut 100 pages of junk from the FLG. I was pretty happy with SWITCH FLG tough, it was very concise.

SephStorm

So, whats the best study material for CCNP Sec?

Master Of Puppets

If it helps, I'll be using the ocg, quick reference, CBT, as much labbing as I can and everything I find on the web.

Kreken

dover wrote: »

I even enjoyed the IPS study and exam even though I don't use them in production networks. It was challenging to get enough hands-on experience with Cisco IPS but I thought some of their features were incredibly useful. Hopefully they take what is above average from the Cisco IPS7 and what is great from SourceFire and come up with a killer NG/IPS (that I probably can't afford to implement).

I manage IPS in the production and I found the book to be pretty good. The exam on the other hand is terrible or at least the version of the exam I took since they change the questions so often. It felt like they were nitpicking with the questions. Like do I seriously need to remember the number of rules allocated to deal with a certain protocol? The worst Cisco exam I ever took.