BCRAN exam

[lerdalt]

Ok, so I know I was trying things out of order, but I had a couple of bogus dates in my head, and for whatever reason thought I'd try CIT before BCRAN. Not certain if it was a good idea or not, but I'm changing gears a little bit and starting to get ready for BCRAN (probably going to work on both BCRAN and CIT at the same time, just need to pick up a couple of things to get through CIT).

Anyways, suggestions for the BCRAN? Areas to focus on, areas to not spend a ton of time on, etc? I'm working off the Self Study material and am going to go through part of the notes I have for CIT.

 

[helpdeskdan]

My favorite book to prepare for this exam was the EC2 book. Read my review of it on amazon.com. ISBN: 0789730200

I would also invest in the Cisco book.

Eh, what the heck, here's my review from amazon - read the whole thing, there's a big hint about the test hidden in there:
(3 stars)
Don't get me wrong, between ExamCram2, Cisco, and Sybex, this was my favorite book. It is unfortunate that there really is no good one choice for studying for the BCRAN and, though opinions vary, I found it to be the hardest of the three tests I have thus far taken.

The Sybex book is organized in a strange fashion which I found to be a bit confusing. I read it once, and rarely picked it up again. While browsing through it just now, on the top of page 95 I read "config title." Title?! Sybex's chapter on VPN was absolutely horrible. However, having said that, there were a couple things I liked in the Sybex book, such as the tendency to (sometimes) include complete configurations shown from start to finish.

Cisco's book was full of good and useless information. A portion of the book was spent on useless things such as choosing WAN equipment. Though very useful in the field, this information is completely worthless on the test; there are other Cisco books published for this purpose. This book claims to be an "Exam certification guide" hence it should cover what is on the test, not what the author thinks a CCNP should know. I also found the author's unneeded discussion of the 700 series commands to be annoying. The author also tended to get a little too deep into theory which, although interesting, is not on the test.

The EC2 book was my favorite and I found myself referring to it more and more as exam grew near. I could not understand how to configure VPN till I looked at EC2. It gets right to the point, it tells you how it works, shows you how to configure it, and moves on. Skimming and reviewing this book is very easy due to careful organization. Nevertheless, I could have given this book a higher rating if it weren't for the errors (which I have tried to report with no success).

Let's name a few mistakes just for fun. Pg. 208, bottom, second to last sentence only, should say "never DEactivate the line." Pg. 73, question #6, no, chap never sends the password in clear text. (or at all, it sends a HASH) Perhaps there is an undocumented feature but, if so, who cares? We'd use Pap. Pg. 114, I don't care if you are right or wrong, Cisco always refers to the D channel as 16kbs framing and signaling. Remember, on the exam, the right answer is ALWAYS the Cisco answer. 233, CBWFQ, Bit bucket?! Refer to Cisco for a better explanation of CBWFQ. Page 124, HUGE MISTAKE - dialer load-threshold is a NOT a percentage, it's 1-255. Another huge mistake, page 146, dialer pools, the correct command is dialer pool-member 1, not dialer pool 1. Pg. 214 - OSPF does NOT do unequal load balancing!! Do not mess with the metrics to make a 128 isdn think it is 10bt. If you can't tell me why equal load balancing between ISDN and Ethernet is bad, you need to retake the CCNA. Page 122, dialer-map is an INTERFACE command. Also, why are they talking about dialer-group under dialer-map? Dialer-group should have been talked about on the previous page under interesting traffic.

I am sure I could find mistakes in the other two books as well if I had studied them harder. (I found about as many mistakes in Cisco's BSCI book, not including the ones noted by Cisco in the errata) It is a shame that there is no one good book one can review to pass this particular test. My advice would be to buy all three, or at least EC2 and Cisco. To say thanks for reading my long review, I will give you one last gem. On Cisco's site, one can find the "Career Certification Paths" which give a pitiful list of topics that will be on the test. I wish I could tell you that if it isn't on the list, it isn't on the test. But, that simply isn't true. However, if it is on the list, it is almost certainly on the test - no matter what any book says. A simple review showed me that WRED, RFC 1483/2684 bridging (hint - in relation to dsl), and dialer watch were not explained in any of the three books! Google them. As this list is changed without notice, I would highly advise reviewing it yourself. Good luck.

 

[lerdalt]

Thanks.

 

[helpdeskdan]

Hope that helps, Lerdalt.

One final tip that got me through the BCRAN was practice. At the time, I didn't have access to any routes. I didn't even have a simulator. So, I picked a few basic configs from the book, pulled up notepad, and practiced typing them in from memory. I did this over and over till I could configure things like ISDN completely from memory. For me, this worked surprisingly well; without it, I would have never passed the test.

 

[lerdalt]

Yes that does help. I've got access to some routers and planned on running through some labs if at all possible.

Right now I'm going through the courseware from ThompsonNetG. Getting myself more comfortable with everything as the course moves on, but I know I need to go back through the section on VPN and IPSec. My hope is to feel ready enough to make an attempt at the test by Dec 1. I'm fortunate enough right now that I have time at work to go through the material, so I'm getting a lot of time to focus on studying up.