CCNP Journey- The Jedi

Chitownjedi

Yo,

I'm currently aiming for this CCNP, as I am a stay at home dad and wanted to maximize this opportunity of being able to study almost full-time (when I'm not pulling the kid off the ceiling.)

I am studying the Simplified Series: Bryant Advantage Series: CBT Nuggets. I hope that these resources will be enough, as well as the learning network and using the knowledge that is the Internet to piece together and holes that may present.

I have a home lab set up with 6 routers (2610s 2610xms 2620's 2620x) as well as 2 3550 Switches and a 2950.

I've been and will continue to use GNS3 for most of my labbing during my studies as its simply faster and easier to implement quick configs and tops for labbing a topic from the books.

I am wowed at how much in depth they go into EIGRP, I am probably going to finish this chapter today, as I took last week slow to ease back into the routing concepts and I just past the CCNA Sec, and hadn't been involved in Cisco concepts for over a year. Surprisingly I have not forgotten as much as I thought, I think I retained half of the information, as there was nothing that made me so "wow really?" everything was just like 'Yeah, that's right!"

I'm putting in about 6 hours a day, minimum so I'm aiming for about 200 hours of study for each exam before testing. I'll check back in.

Chitownjedi

My Approach:

I am going to tackle this one the same way i've done every exam up to date.

Cover the material at least 1x from two separate resources, with an overall review of all topics within the last 10 days of the exam.

When video training is available I also cover that as a secondary form of stimulus and retention in the vain that the brain learns and absorbs more when you give more sensory stimulation.

From previous observations CBT Nuggets usually provides enough material to feel about 60% confident in the concepts needed for exam.

Usually 1 highly reviewed text is about 85-90% enough to cover the exam topics needed (If it's well regarded/reviewed and those who have used it can vouch for how much it prepares you)

2 Text that are well regarded is usually enough to cover all topics needed to pass an exam, and at that point it is up to me to lab the concepts so that they become second nature.

I use video training as a buffer into the text, to make the text more malleable and digestible.

I review the video again at the end of training to make sure that everything from the video seems like "child's play" as after reading 2 Books while taking notes anything from video training should seem trivial technically. ( This is my way see how far I've come in terms of topic knowledge)

Obviously with this exam labbing is crucial and will take equal or greater value to the reading aspects.

So far in EIGRP I've labbed:
Routing and Configuration of Eigrp networks
Feasible Distance & AD manipulation via bandwidth and delay configuration changes to view dynamic changes in Show ip route and show ip eigrp topology
Passive-interface and neighbor adjacencies
debug eigrp packets hello
wireshark to view packet headers and information
no auto-summary changes in Show ip route
offset-list
convergence times when FS route is lost
neighbor command and setting up static routes for default network
variance and having unequal load balancing test place across links that are 2x 5x 10x less equal.
setting bandwidth for % used on links, invariable affecting QoS in situations where voice or video may be given priority or a % of bandwidth on link.


Left to lab will be:
Configuration for stub routers
redistribution and split horizon setups over frame-relay to confirm routing advertisements
key-chain creation and securing Eigrp protocols

That will cover most of the topics that are presented that can be directly labbed. The rest of the theory based topics will be re-read and notes will be taken to cement and make quick reference to for review sessions. I.E "Hello- packets hold down timers- DUAL- Metric value for determining FD-and such.

Once I've completed all that I will give an update to what I think are the interested topics and little things that I've learned over the CCNA version of the coverage that separates it from the CCNP version- Like MTU not being used to determine metric, when I was repeatedly lead to believe that before lol.