Starting CCNP Journey

I am starting my CCNP journey and I need a few pointers:

Which switches would you guys recommend for the SWITCH exam? I am going to be doing SWITCH first.

Is it OK if I use GNS3 with custom IOS for SWITCH?

How hard are the CCNP exams? I have very little experience and am quite rusty.

Thanks a lot!

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Comments

ande0255

I haven't gone through switch yet, but I've heard two 3550's work fine. You may want to do ROUTE first, as it seems that the SWITCH has some concepts covered in ROUTE due to L3 switches.

wintermute000

You want some multilayers too. THey're not cheap unfortunately. 2x 3560 you can use the smallest ones if you can find them (8 ports).

f0rgiv3n

Like they said above, you'll need a couple of multilayer switches. I did mine last year with 2 3550s and was OK. There are a few things they aren't able to do like private VLANs, and GLBP but they worked for most of the labs. 3560s are so freaking expensive compared to the 3550s...

Anyways, i did two 3550s and two 2950s. GNS3 won't work on switches because they use ASICs which is hardware based. You can use the routing portion of the exams on GNS3 but all the real switching stuff is done in hardware.

Obviously the exam difficulties depend on your current experience levels. For me, the switch material was easy because most of my experience was in switching. The route material was very hard because it's detailed and requires a lot of labbing to truly understand it. Troubleshoot was fun after I studied & passed both switch & route.

I do recommend doing the hardest exam first though. The reason i say that is because starting out (right now) you have a lot of motivation. Towards the end your motivation might not be as strong. So to ensure you finish it off, tackle the hardest one up front. Good luck, and have fun!