CCNP anybody?

[SOUTHwarrior]

Any members currently have your CCNP or are preparing for your CCNP? Lets have a discussion about study methods and jobs we have in the field.

[manzir]

If u are in US, there are a lot of demand and positions available, I work in VOIP engineering, but I do not posses any certification!! Its all about what you know and how you implement it. I have interviewed hands full of candidates for junior IPT engineer/Tech who are fresh out of CCNA, CCNP certification who gives absolute BS answers to my technical interview questions.

 

Those certifications are only good for the recruiters to look into. If you don't posses the in depth methodology, you wont pass the 2nd round/technical interview

[SOUTHwarrior]

If u are in US, there are a lot of demand and positions available, I work in VOIP engineering, but I do not posses any certification!! Its all about what you know and how you implement it. I have interviewed hands full of candidates for junior IPT engineer/Tech who are fresh out of CCNA, CCNP certification who gives absolute BS answers to my technical interview questions.

 

Those certifications are only good for the recruiters to look into. If you don't posses the in depth methodology, you wont pass the 2nd round/technical interview

Thats what I dont like about some of the people I have talked to about their ccnp. They just read the crap and never had any real experience with the equipment, and when it comes to fixing something theyre lost. I know in my case I had to go out to a customer site to fix a switch that just needed a port trunked because he tried to trunk on one switch over to an access port on the the other one.

[manzir]

I always have fun in the interviews, we do a group a (4 of us talking the interview) interview session where 3 of them are managers who asks generic behavioral questions and some technical questions here and there, those three managers tries to give an impression that they have a very little or basic technical background. When the candidate figures that out that these interviewers are bunch of noobs and he/she can bullsh*t his way out answering the technical questions or gives an out of this world theory/explanation.... I just sit their silent and take notes (evil laugh inside..)....  I am relativity young so the candidate's don't really bother convincing me or put any effort thinking that I just be a HR assistant or someone in training.  Then comes my part... the HR/Department managers introduces my role and tell them I will be reviewing his/her technical answers.... if you only could see the look at their faces... 

[SOUTHwarrior]

I always have fun in the interviews, we do a group a (4 of us talking the interview) interview session where 3 of them are managers who asks generic behavioral questions and some technical questions here and there, those three managers tries to give an impression that they have a very little or basic technical background. When the candidate figures that out that these interviewers are bunch of noobs and he/she can bullsh*t his way out answering the technical questions or gives an out of this world theory/explanation.... I just sit their silent and take notes (evil laugh inside..)....  I am relativity young so the candidate's don't really bother convincing me or put any effort thinking that I just be a HR assistant or someone in training.  Then comes my part... the HR/Department managers introduces my role and tell them I will be reviewing his/her technical answers.... if you only could see the look at their faces... 

Oh my god

[Patyo]

Im currently in a high-school class aiming for my CCNA. So far from what i've seen those that have a real-world background experience going into the class do FAR FAR better. You can read all you want but at the end of the day theres no replacement for walking into a building and having someone say "It's broken, fix it"

[flexin1981]

I have the CCNP and it is really only effective to get you in the door of a company. Most companies are really good at finding the people that have just "paper" CCNP's.

 

I am really glad though that I got it as the number of recruiters that contact me to try to "poach" me has gone through the roof and that always equates to more money.

 

My advice is to steer clear of dumps just to get the paper and do it for real, If you can pass it without the dumps then you should see the benefit from it.

 

As for the study materials, I have a lot of the older books as I took the old versions of the route/switch/tshoot, but they would still be really good resources, I would also make GNS3 and packet tracer your friends.

 

If you guys have any questions thought from your studies please hit me up.

[SOUTHwarrior]

I have the CCNP and it is really only effective to get you in the door of a company. Most companies are really good at finding the people that have just "paper" CCNP's.

 

I am really glad though that I got it as the number of recruiters that contact me to try to "poach" me has gone through the roof and that always equates to more money.

 

My advice is to steer clear of dumps just to get the paper and do it for real, If you can pass it without the dumps then you should see the benefit from it.

 

As for the study materials, I have a lot of the older books as I took the old versions of the route/switch/tshoot, but they would still be really good resources, I would also make GNS3 and packet tracer your friends.

 

If you guys have any questions thought from your studies please hit me up.

Im studying for my switch now. My company has the lifetime membership for the actual tests and the main reason I like that is not to get the actual questions and answers on the test but to See the specific topics they are going to be covering that way im not wasting my time studying material I dont need. What I found is there is alot of outdated crap still on the tests they are still asking about like MST which is used by RPVST now and they had a good 10 questions on the material so far. But you are right theres no substitute for not having the experience of labbing it up  and doing it yourself. I like to use IOU and GNS3 with the web interface to lab all my stuff up, just  because I dont have all that much money to buy the L3 switches and routers.

[Sir Asvald]

Off topic (same really talking about CCNA ) I'm currently studying for CCNA 1 & 2 free from my college. I've got equipment at home, but the only thing we use is Packet Tracer at college. There's one guy in my class who is literally the definition of stupidity. I gave him a book that covers switching and routing (also the basic setup configuration), it took literally 30 minutes for him to reset the password on switch. 

[flexin1981]

Hey SouthWarrior,

 

I just wanted to touch on the comment that MST(multiple instance spanning tree) is the same as RPVST (rapid per vlan spanning tree).

 

These are two completely different protocols, yes they do use similar messaging protocols but you will find that MST is used in very large layer2 networks. These are not seen very much these days as Cisco has stopped recommending the 80% switching rule, and have now started to recommend 80% routing.

 

But the key point here is that MST allows you to have a much finer control of the amount of spanning tree instances that you have running on the switches  and therefore have better control over the resources on the switches. You can also (in very large networks) use the concept or MST regions (not covered in the CCNP) you can think of these as OSPF style areas. 

 

For me if you can master MST then all the other flavors of Spanning tree are easy.

[costin.buga]

In large networks it's much better to use routing, MPLS and L2 circuits and use switching only on low end leaf equipment. RSTP does the job very well in this topology.

[SOUTHwarrior]

In large networks it's much better to use routing, MPLS and L2 circuits and use switching only on low end leaf equipment. RSTP does the job very well in this topology.

Routing has a higher overhead than a switched network thats why in a company ideally 80% of traffic should stay local to the campus and the rest accessing the internet which is ideally why you have a layer 3 switch so you can do your campus routing there and if anything needs the internet it gets forwarded to the router. MPLS is not just layer 2 its layer 3 as well just depends on which service you want to purchase from the ISP. RSTP is a spanning tree protocol to prevent switching loops and a few other things. So im not exactly sure as to what you are trying to explain here.

[flexin1981]

Routing has a higher overhead than a switched network thats why in a company ideally 80% of traffic should stay local to the campus and the rest accessing the internet which is ideally why you have a layer 3 switch so you can do your campus routing there and if anything needs the internet it gets forwarded to the router. MPLS is not just layer 2 its layer 3 as well just depends on which service you want to purchase from the ISP. RSTP is a spanning tree protocol to prevent switching loops and a few other things. So im not exactly sure as to what you are trying to explain here.

 

In recent times Cisco has kinda reverted this rule they now believe that due to the upgrades in most routers that only 20% should now be local traffic and that routing should extend into the distribution layer of the three layer model. This lends itself to the idea that you should design everything as a block with a extendable core layer.

[Broseephus]

I used to work for Cisco Small Business Support and currently work for a pretty large telecom in an engineering role. The amount of people that have their NP that do not understand the basics/fundamentals of networking is astounding. The team I'm on currently (6 guys) has two guys that have had their NP for years and are studying for their IEs yet when we are running a site change they still make stupid mistakes that completely baffle me.

 

That being said I'm currently studying for the NP (switch test is scheduled and working through the route book) but I feel the only benefit will be helping me to get interviews over other people.

 

The books are available for free online. PM me for address and I'll be happy to share. Not gonna post it publicly cause it's not an official Cisco Source.