Passed CCNP ROUTE!!

Just to let everyone know that I retook my exam and passed with a really good score of 958. Last time I took it I failed by 12 points. I can't believe I passed so well considering what happened last week. I am very pleased and want to thank all of you for being so helpful and supportive in my endeavours to be a CCNP one day.

I think also I should mention a few things about the exam but I will tred carefully. I won't mention specific questions. The exam was OK but the simulations came up short again in my experience. Yet again they have errors and I had to be careful. I discovered that some important commands could NOT be undone with a "no.....". I have added a few comments in the exam so hopefully Cisco or whoever will take it on board.

Resources I used (but in no order of importance) were:
How To Master CCNP by Rene Molenaar. Very nice read and only 250 odd pages.
GNS3 Vault - Great labs
CBT Nuggets - Excellent
Chris Byrant. Very good especially on the VPN and BGP stuff.
My own notes
Steve Bowler. He helped me greatly especially with the foundations to the more unusual scenarios. His style really appeals to me and he is very thorough in how he configures and verifys things.
GNS3. I used this as I don't have any real equipment.

You will notice that there is no mention of any official Cisco book or Wendell Odom that's because I chose to stay away from them because in my opinion they are a hindrance rather than a help. I also heard some people saying that using one of their books was a necessity and I think I just wanted to try something else.

And now after 18 months of constant study, starting on my first A+ and going to route, I am going to hang up my boots for a short while. I do intend to go onto the remaining exams, SWITCH and TSHOOT, but not sure which one I should do? will i need to buy lots of switches for the switch exam? space and money is a problem so i'm wondering if I could do TSHOOT? or would i need to buy actual switches and routers for this? Which is harder in your opinion and what kind of time scale does it take with these?

Thanks

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Comments

4_lom

Congrats!

lordy

Congratulations.

I am currently preparing for SWITCH and just like my friend who is already a CCNP I think that SWITCH is easier than ROUTE. Since you cannot emulate switches in GNS3 (due to the ASIC chips) you should go out and get your hands on 2-3 switches. 3550's work pretty well for this.

I have two 3550's and one 3650 and I think that this is more than sufficient. 3560 is not required, just helpful for Private VLANs.

MrXpert

Thanks for the advice.

I had a look on ebay. WoW they are expensive.That's almost as much as it cost to take the route exam.
CISCO WS-C3550-48-SMI. 30 DAY WARRANTY! VAT INCLUDED! | eBay

Is there any particular IOS version i should go for? or will i need to upgrade it via tftp?

Roguetadhg

12.3 seems to be alright. 12.4 is mostly recommended from what I can scour up on google.

Congrats on the pass! Was there any thing in your studies that was foggy?

MrXpert

Thanks

EIGRP was the area that seemed to let me down quite a bit. I scored 70% on that. The rest 100%. Which is strange because EIGRP was always my strongest area. I'm not complaining just wish i knew where i went wrong on those.

Roguetadhg

Hmm. I'd like to try the test just to see what's on the test. I think I'd know EIGRP pretty well myself - within the confines of CCNP studies. I'm anxious now

MrXpert

Roguetadhg wrote: »

Hmm. I'd like to try the test just to see what's on the test. I think I'd know EIGRP pretty well myself - within the confines of CCNP studies. I'm anxious now

Good luck if you do! How far along are you with your studies?
I also think with the sims, not relying on your own memory of all the commands is a good thing because a lot is disabled. I took someones advice on my last thread about using the "?" mark more and that helped a lot.Sounds simple but it meant I wasted less time typing in stuff and having it tell me "this command is disabled" pop ups.

MrBrian

Congrats on your pass!

If you do plan on taking a break for awhile, I'd recommend keep doing occasional eigrp, ospf, redistribution, etc labs. You don't have to go all hardcore or anything, but enough to keep it fresh. I know for me, now that I'm deep into SWITCH, some of the ROUTE topics are hazy. It's one of those things where I think about a topic, but can't remember something exactly, and I can look it up and remember pretty quickly. But the point is that there are a lot of details from ROUTE, and these things will start escaping you if it goes too long. That may be just for me, but I'll just throw that out there for ya.

Also, why the break? Go ahead, jump right into SWITCH, the waters warm.. lol (not)

prtech

Congrats! You beat my score by 5 points. You'll need to buy actual switches for SWITCH but you can use GNS3 for routers. If you're broke like I am, try to get a job that has a lab and/or pays for training.

Roguetadhg

@MrXpert: I've had to put my studies on hold for now. Mostly because there were conflictions about having a CCNP without the experience. I made a thread about it - and that was the general conscious. Link. I'm in the process of job hunting, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I'll probably post a "Rate my Resume" sometime in the near future. I was through redistribution, eigrp, ospf, and going on BGP. Sweet stuff, too. New content is a refreshing thing

I've had my head in Security+ though, as hopefully getting a wider knowledge can make me more appealing. And I'm also trying to get back into the Air Force - so the Security+ will help either way. I'm not fond of putting all eggs in one basket.

@MrBrian: That's exactly what it is. If you don't use it, you loose it. It's not just you, it's generally everyone! Switching, for me is that way now. Going through past notes that I took for ICND1/2. Amazing when studying for the stuff it's all big and bad. Then when you look back on it - It's nothing.

It's a kick in the you-know-what when you realize that feeling of: "It's big and bad" really quite possibly is nothing at all and is just a tip of the iceberg. Wonderful!

MrXpert

MrBrian wrote: »

Congrats on your pass!

If you do plan on taking a break for awhile, I'd recommend keep doing occasional eigrp, ospf, redistribution, etc labs. You don't have to go all hardcore or anything, but enough to keep it fresh. I know for me, now that I'm deep into SWITCH, some of the ROUTE topics are hazy. It's one of those things where I think about a topic, but can't remember something exactly, and I can look it up and remember pretty quickly. But the point is that there are a lot of details from ROUTE, and these things will start escaping you if it goes too long. That may be just for me, but I'll just throw that out there for ya.

Also, why the break? Go ahead, jump right into SWITCH, the waters warm.. lol (not)

Thanks so much! i'll keep on top of things by doing some labs, reading my notes. I may go and do some switch stuff too on packet tracer just so I can play with STP a bit. You're right about forgetting stuff. It has been nearly 6 months since I configured VLANS, VTP etc and i think i need a refresher with that before I embark on switch.

I feel i need a break because since January last year i have been non stop studying, whether it was a CompTIA or Cisco exam, i have just constantly gone on and on but my health has kinda gone downhill. My other half is very concerned. So have decided to take a break for a bit. We plan to go on holiday soon(just for a few days) so that may help also.

mattau

mr xpert, congrats to bounce back like you did. I havent gone through that myself and dont know how i would face up to passing so soon after a fail. so hats off to you!

I spent a similar amount of time to you on route so can understand how you would be feeling at the moment.
from my personal experience I went on to switch pretty much straight away and am about half way through. But I can tell you it has not been easy and have thought about giving it all up many a times - mainly because of burn out and a few other things

I think a break would do you good ( if you can keep away.. - i am the sort who generally cant keep away lol ) and I noticed my health has gone downhill since starting this cisco venture. I have taken steps to moderate my study so I can also get time to get fresh air and keep fit. But if you work full time and try study as well then its quite difficult.
but like everyone said just dont go for too long. even through switch you get to some topics on it and are like so how does eigrp work again but a quick refresher makes it all clear again since to pass route you generally have put in the hard hours of core study on those topics.

equipment for switch?
depends i guess. for me I tend to go over stuff alot and like to have the equipment theree on hand to go on whenever i want.
If you were going to buy switches I'd recommend to build the lab based on cisco's switching topology of the standard 2 distribution and 2 access layer switches.
I guess if you really read up on the commands and stuff prior to any labbing you might be able to spend less time at the cli and do lab rentals

NetworkVeteran

For SWITCH, I went with a 1-month rental of four switches for around $30. I'm allergic to spending unnecessary money or time preparing for certification exams.

GNS3 emulates the Catalyst IOS well enough for TSHOOT.

mguy

u da man!

j.petrov

Congrats on the pass and great score.

Cerebro

Congratulations Mr X!

vinbuck

Congrats! ROUTE is the biggest test to get under your belt IMO. I spent a year on it and I still found the exam difficult.

I would take SWITCH next and knock it out. There are a lot of people that found SWITCH more difficult, but I thought it was a little easier than ROUTE since the volume of material is not nearly as vast as ROUTE.

For lab on SWITCH, I used GNS3 and 2x2950 and 2x3550.