SWITCH exam cleared... wowzas!!

Just got back from sitting the exam... holy cow that thing was BRUTAL! I don't deal with layer 2 switching a lot, at least on the enterprise side of the house so I was going in totally on theory and labbing alone. A lot tougher than the ROUTE exam for sure. In all, it was a very fair exam but not for the faint of heart. On to TSHOOT and CCNP.

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Comments

Trifidw

Congrats. And good luck with TSHOOT when you take it.

I wonder if the difficulty of the exam is inline with what you use at work. I do a lot of switching and bricking the route exam.

martell1000

Congrats.

where are you from that you are taking exams on a sunday or is it already monday in your area?

MrBrian

Congratz! So how long till you sit for TSHOOT.. I know some people say to go for it right after Route and Switch. You gonna read the book, or no?

Somnipotent

@Tri. I work at a service provider, so BGP, MPLS, etc. are really more my strong points. We only deal with switching when it comes to MetroEthernet.

@Martell I'm from the DC area... there's a testing center/vocational learning center, Nextec, in town that offers weekend classes and testing times. Pretty nice considering during the week I'm slammed with work.

@MrBrian... I'm planning one month of reading the OCG, doing the labs, and INE/CBT Nuggets. I'm gonna pretty much memorize the topology that's provided and brush up on the stuff i had difficulty with in ROUTE/SWITCH. My company pays for my exams but it's always a waiting game with them on getting the vouchers so basically I'm gonna grind until I get the voucher.

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Somnipotent wrote: »

@Martell I'm from the DC area... there's a testing center/vocational learning center, Nextec, in town that offers weekend classes and testing times. Pretty nice considering during the week I'm slammed with work.

Congrats on the pass! Just took Switch at that same testing center (Nextec) a couple weeks ago. Small world for sure.

SharkDiver

Congratulations!
Great job.

As for the TSHOOT, I took mine pretty quickly after the SWITCH exam (less than 1 month) and got a 1000. I scheduled the exam the day after I took the SWITCH and read the entire TSHOOT OCG before test day. It was great review. I also did all of the Boson Ex-Sim Max simulator practice questions repeatedly.

I would say to at least read the first few chapters of the OCG. They have some new material in them. After that, it's all review.

Good Luck!!!

vinbuck

Congrats man...that's a great accomplishment. Got any pointers for those of us still studying for SWITCH? What did you use to prep and what was the most helpful?

Somnipotent

I used the OCG, the SWITCH LAB MANUAL, the Cert Kit, and CBT Nuggets. My advice is to lab it up thoroughly, and focus on L3 routing and redundancy protocols. I got a real good mix of things on the exam so it was not like there was one thing that stood out. Like I said, I don't deal with enterprise networks on a daily basis so CE side stuff is not normal for me, so it was harder for me than ROUTE was. The Cert Kit probably the most helpful thing since it was straight to the point. All the commands right there at your finger tips without the fluff that went with the CBT.