Passed CCNP ROUTE 300-101 at Cisco Live 2018, Orlando, Resources, Tips

Maybe this will help someone:

I passed CCNP ROUTE 300-101 Sunday. Here are the details of what I used and a very short review of each:

It will mean more to you to understand my background a little, so here you go.

I have a long successful career/history with IT/Networking/Cisco that I won't go into detail on but I will give you the very short story. Working for a small ISP (17 years when I left, the last 10 years in IT) I had a CCNP that expired Dec 20th 2005. Not too long after that I moved to another small ISP (6 years total) managing the Network Dept and Tech Support Dept. I was happy happy with my salary at the time and stayed very busy even outside of normal hours and wasn't too concerned about my certs/education, especially being 60% management and 40% or less hands on. Then in 2016 I moved to yet another small ISP as a Network Tech/Engineer. I've been here 2 years and have been fairly slow in re-certifying but now I'm on the highly motivated fast track. I'm married, 45yrs old, with 3 kids from 13-17. This should give you a paragraph introduction to understand me.

If you would like more details I'll be glad to share my LinkedIn.

In 2015 with my previous company I went to Cisco Live in San Diego and took ICND1 since it was free and passed.

April 10th 2018 I took ICND2 and passed

60 days later, June 10th 2018 at Cisco Live in Orlando I took CCNP ROUTE and passed

Resources used/tips:

• As always, pay very close attention to the Cisco CCNP ROUTE Exam Topics, especially these key words: Identify, Describe, Configure, Troubleshoot, or other similar words.

• CBT Nuggets - Overall good value for the money.
  • Jeremy's 300-101 Course - Excellent teachings and explanations. Jeremy keeps it fun and interesting but fairly shallow content on some topics. Hard to re-produce his labs since pre-configurations aren't shared (I know they aren't meant to be re-created).
  • Keith's 300-101 Lab Course - These labs are fantastic to go along with Jeremy's course and help a lot. There are a couple aggravations such as the files given are a mess with no standard labeling or order.
  • One thing I love is that he shows the network diagram of the lab while executing the commands for it. For me this is a must.

• Udemy - Chris Bryant's CCNP All-in-one Boot Camp - Hands down best value for the money. I mean $10 for all, come on!
  • I have a few pet peeves with his content:
    • He goes into way too much detail on some topics such as BGP and maybe VPNs. Again before you start a topic, review the official Cisco exam topic description.
    • Prob personal opinion here, but I HATE the hundred+ (literally) of videos. I'd much rather them be longer videos than 5-10 minutes each. Maybe 30min to an hour max (roughly).
    • I wasn't particularly fond of him basically reading his pre-written document, but I got used to it I guess. I tend to like a whiteboard, but that could be just me used to CBT.
    • He didn't show the network diagrams near enough therefore his more complex labs were very hard to follow and understand exactly where he was at and what he was doing, and impossible to re-create without spending a lot of time filling in the gaps. When he shows the diagram, take a snapshot (Windows 10 use the snipping tool) so you can refer to it later.
    • His pronunciation of "con - fig" was killing me, I would laugh every time, geesh.
  • Despite the gripes above this is def the best value for those on a budget! The time he spent on this is amazing and covers most everything you will need to pass the exam! Still, don't ever use just one resource to study from.
  • You can download all videos which is very tedious since there are a lot, but it allows you to play them on a plane or listen to them in your car, put them on your Plex Media Server, etc.
  • The Udemy app is pretty great also for streaming and downloading to a phone/tablet.

• Global Knowledge CCNP e-Camp with Boson exams - Unsurprisingly this has the best content but of course was the most expensive. If you have CLCs through the company you work for it's well worth it.
  • It took a little getting used to as they have short videos and text/images to go along with a lot of hands-on. The labs are fantastic. Very well thought out and extremely helpful for learning the content.
  • Not sure why since it's official Cisco training, but they also seemed to go into way too much detail on some topics such as BGP.

• Official Cert Guide for 300-101 - I only skimmed maybe the first 3 chapters. This is my first test where I didn't read at least one entire large book. I know the OCGs aren't reviewed well but I've always liked and read them, except for this time.

• I used the resources above and took separate notes for each one. I only noted things that I thought were important that I thought I needed to know, and that I didn't already know.
• For labs I exclusively used an ESXi GNS3 VM so I can easily open and continue with the same labs at home, work, or my laptop. Labs are very important after listening to theory/concepts. It helps drive them home. Make the time to lab, lab, lab, until you remember commands without looking, and until you completely understand the concepts.

My memory is terrible so the only way I can learn and remember is with a lot of repetition. I studied almost every day 2-5 hours total. At work when I studied when I had time (maybe 1hr to 2hrs max) and at home after work. Saturdays I didn't study much because I had other tasks to do around the house.

I studied fairly aggressive to try and make good use of the free test at Cisco Live. I told myself I wasn't going to be that aggressive for switch and t-shoot, but man Cisco Live with pump you up, especially when you pass a free test.

I plan to take this weekend off and go straight for SWITCH in another 60 days or a less, then TSHOOT in another 60 days or less. I won't take it though until I feel ready. Then I plan to go straight into CCIE R&S.

Hopefully this post will help someone! Take care fellow networkers...