smcclenaghan wrote: » The Boson labs did me a disservice, I feel, because the ? was reliable and shortcuts (like interface range fa0/1-3) worked. Those don't work in the exam. Useful commands like 'sho arp' or 'sho cdp nei' are enabled in Boson labs but arbitrarily disabled in the CCNP exam so you have to dig for something that's implemented in order to get a MAC or IP you might need.
smcclenaghan wrote: » i read the cisco cert guides several times and practiced with the pearson practice exams and the boson practice exams & labs. ... i'm a little discouraged. i really felt like i knew the material and i just don't know where to begin except to read the whole damn book again.
fredrikjj wrote: » Your studying process seems pretty weak to be honest. When you read the book, take notes that make sense to you, and then refer to those notes later on in your preparations. Leave some room on each page where you can fill in additional relevant information from other sources later (easier to do with digital notes, obviously). Alternatively, make a mind map or something of that nature. The point is that you need to condense the textbook material into a more manageable form, and then only go back to the textbook for clarification if something in your notes doesn't make sense. Then there's the issue of lab practice. I haven't tried those Boson simulations, but I can't imagine that it's comparable to actually sitting down with a proper lab environment and configuring everything that's on the blueprint in various ways. A good additional resource is the configuration guides for the access layer switches. I'd also stay away from practice exams because if you need those, you probably don't know the material well enough. The exception would if you use them to expose some kind of weakness, but I feel like you should probably know that just by looking at the blueprint. Anyway, if you scored 790 just doing what you describe, you'll probably pass pretty easily if you study better.
