The CCNP Tests

I took a break out session at Live on the new CCNP given by some of the test writers for Cisco.

It was interesting to get their take on the new exams, and why the old CCNP was structured the way it was and the reasons they changed the format.

Everyone here is correct in that one goal was to combat cheaters.

Here is the breakdown of simulations for each exam.
–In ROUTE, from 23% to 42%
–In SWITCH, from 33% to 52%
–In TSHOOT, 92%

They worked harder on the simulations to include more commands to make them more accessible, i.e allowing more then one way to do something, you should see less of the "command not implemented".

The things they dropped were dropped because they were now being covered in detail for other certifications and they wanted to focus more on core switching and routing in the enterprise.

Other than this the session went into some specific content on the exams, but really nothing of interest since that can be had looking at the blueprints and reading the press books.

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Comments

ColbyG

Sounds pretty cool.

fly351

I love it

TSHOOT is kind of scary to me though lol..

notgoing2fail

Good stuff, I agree with more sims. You are given a scenario and you either make it work or you don't.

Whereas with multiple choice, a reasonably knowledgeable person could get the question wrong just due to misinterpreting the question. It's not like you get to ask back, "ok so you're asking this...?"

I don't think multiple choice should go away, I think they are great for getting decent scores off you in terms of fundamental knowledge, but if Cisco really wants to up the ante and separate ALL their certs from other vendors, then more sims is the way to go.

burbankmarc

Well the difference between the TSHOOT and the sims are that you cannot trial and error on the tshoot. On the sims you can enter a command, if it doesn't work well then you gotta try something else. That's not the case on the TSHOOT, you either know the problem or you don't.

fly351 wrote: »

I love it TSHOOT is kind of scary to me though lol..

I wouldn't worry. From what I've seen you have pretty solid troubleshooting skills.

fly351

thanks

I need to improve though lol...

billscott92787

fly351 wrote: »

thanks I need to improve though lol...

I'm sure you will be fine. It isn't as bad as it seems. Honestly it just takes having some basic troubleshooting skills and paying attention to fine details, if you do that you'll be fine.

Fatbunny

burbankmarc wrote: »

you either know the problem or you don't.

Not to take you out of context but thats not to say I can't figure out the problem on the day in exam if I haven't come across it before, correct? I don't like to think that if I haven't come across the problem before I'm not going to be able to solve it on the day? I'm sure I can confirm if I resolved an issue or not through the commands on the sim itself.

In a real world situation, a problem arises, you fix it, don't want to think that this is impossible in the sim itself.

Hopes this makes sense and is ok to answer with violating the nda. Thanks.

burbankmarc

Fatbunny wrote: »

Not to take you out of context but thats not to say I can't figure out the problem on the day in exam if I haven't come across it before, correct? I don't like to think that if I haven't come across the problem before I'm not going to be able to solve it on the day? I'm sure I can confirm if I resolved an issue or not through the commands on the sim itself.

In a real world situation, a problem arises, you fix it, don't want to think that this is impossible in the sim itself.

Hopes this makes sense and is ok to answer with violating the nda. Thanks.

Oh yeah there were several problems I never saw before, but I was able to figure out. I'm just saying that on the sims you can try something and test to see if it works. On the TSHOOT you better have figured it out properly.

chmorin

burbankmarc wrote: »

Oh yeah there were several problems I never saw before, but I was able to figure out. I'm just saying that on the sims you can try something and test to see if it works. On the TSHOOT you better have figured it out properly.

Yup, it looks like the format for the tests in TSHOOT (going from their demo on cisco.com) allow you to run show commands but not actually fix the problem, and answer a series of questions on what you think the issue could be and what the BEST resolution should be.

Tough test, but exciting!