CCNP/ONT 1

[pirateclem]

Sorry if this is a duplicate, the forum does not appear to be taking my posts.

--I am prepping to start my CCNP tests and have decided to do the ONT first. I have read the cisco press book and have been self testing against the questions. Any suggestions for additional test-prep that will help me out?

TIA!!

 

[burtsbees]

Replied to your other post.

Burt

 

[pirateclem]

Is there generally a simulation type question on the ONT test? Just trying to study the right way.

BTW, I have a ton of routers and switches available to me at work every day, that is no problem, it's what I do. However, taking a test where you are clicking little boxes answering questions to what are many times not exactly configuration items is considerably different. Thus, I am interested in input on TEST prep. Especially for the ONT....how many times have you had to configure a custom packet queuing mechanism for an ASIC? Not to sound snotty, thank you for the suggestion regardless but I don't have the equipment to build a home test lab and will not be acquiring it all any time soon.

 

[CiscoGuy33]

pirateclem,

Why you asked - and Burt has "BEEN THERE and DONE THAT" as he has his CCNP so he speaks from experience

Burt's suggestion is still a good one - I do not know many work places that let you "play" with the production equipment unless it needs to be worked on - from my experience with our Cisco equipment at the college (other then the student labs) you tend to "set it and forget it". You will see most of us will say practice, practice and more practice!

And I am not taking away anything you do on the job - I have been to 5 Cisco Networkers conventions and talked with many CCNPs and CCIEs especially about home labs (my students ask all the time about home labs) - They ALL work with it daily doing just as much and more; however they ALL had a home lab because and they all said it - your boss is not going to let you "play" with the production stuff - the kind of "playing" you need to do at that level!

Good luck!



E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[pirateclem]

I'm the lead operational engineer for a 600,000+ sub ISP. I have plenty of equipment to work on both in production and in the lab. I just have not messed with knocking out my CCNP and it's time to do so. Honestly, I don't think much of most certifications anyway. I've interviewed alot of CCNP's and MCSE's that didn't know a darn thing. I personally feel the ONT is a pretty silly exam and I'm not about to spend either corporate or my own money on some of the things required for this test (WLAN controller, LWAP). Nor do I have the time to decomission equipment to put it into the lab just so I can see the difference between autoqos voip and autoqos enterprise. So again, I feel bad about sounding a bit snotty but I am very much interested in test prep suggestions for the ONT specifically. The routing and switchign tests I will be working dilligently on hardware to prepare for, the ONT...not so much.

 

[burtsbees]

The ONT was definitely the easiest.Just know your debug outputs and show commands, and what the outputs mean.
I have set up different queuing strategies many times. How many VPNs have you set up and troubleshot? You'll need to know that as well. Also, how much layer 3 switching stuff have you done? HSRP? VLAN routing? Multicast? BGP? OSPF (like all different types of messages and area types)?

Burt

 

[lerdalt]

Having taken the ONT, I can tell you this, You don't need any of the wireless equipment. It was very straight forward. All I used for equipment was a pair of spare routers and simulated a point to point t1 across them to practice a little QoS. I found it to be the easiest exam I've taken, but also had a lot of work experience with QoS and wireless over the year prior to taking the exam.

BOSON has a great simulator for labs. But I still think nothing beats getting your hands on the real thing. I'm still building out my home lab, am constantly looking for deals on equipment for things I think I will want. I was fortuneate at the time of going through my CCNP tests, to have some spare switches and a lot of old 2500 series routers to play with.

Books, books are always a big topic it seems. For the CCNP there used to be (since the courses changed not 100% sure it's the same) 2 books for each test. The "self-study" and the "exam certification guide" from Cisco Press. I recommend starting with the Self-study books. These follow the official student courseware, almost verbatim and lay a great foundation behind a lot of the topics. The exam certification guides assume you already have the foundation, and I found were harder to read than the others.

The Exam Certification guides also came with a CD that had a pdf copy of the book as well as a little practice test engine. It was more just the end of chapter questions, but I found it nice to still have it copied onto my laptop so even at work I could take 5 minutes every now and then and do a few questions just to keep fresh at different times.

The other place to go is Cisco's website, I've put together an FAQ on here with a lot of help from Burt and others with a bunch of different links for extra information both from Cisco's website and other sites as we've found them.

CiscoGuy is right, we all say practice, practice, practice. I spent a lot of late nights at the office (because I didn't have my home lab at the time) building my own lab scenarios, running debugs, taking notes, diagramming, running packet traces. All to get a better inside look at OSPF adjacencies, Spanning-tree, EIGRP, etc.

I understand what you mean about selecting radio buttons for answers. Personally I'm not a test taker so I usually struggle getting through the exams. A co-worker and I both went through the CCNP process at the same time. He could read the books do a little practice and go take the test. I on the other hand would have to read the books twice taking extra good notes, and sometimes take the test twice....a couple 3 times. The bigger difference for us is after the test...not wanting to sound like I'm bragging here, but a lot of people around us recognize this too, and he's even said it. When there is a problem, I'm the one they want working on it. I'm able to navigate my way through it and understand better what is going on and what impacts will be. I've witnessed a few times where he has completely forgotten how 'moving this connection' will impact spanning-tree, causing a nice little loop for about 10 minutes.

 

[pirateclem]

have done plenty HSRP with pvst priorities, VTP, inter-VLAN routing, OSPF, BGP, EIGRP, RIP, IP-SEC and GRE tunnels (router to router, Router to PIX, 3000 series concentrator, etc.). A little multicast on a video network. But I don't expect any of that on the ONT. Thank you for the input, I really do appreciate it. No IS-IS ever of course, I will have to learn that for the routing test. OSPF I will probably have to brush up on stub's, super stubby, super duper mega stubby, etc.. all of the sub-area's that nobody uses any more. I will gladly take any other ONT studying advice that you have.

 

[pirateclem]

lerdalt - thank you very much for the input. I read the ONT cisco press exam cert guide at the end of last summer and just never took the test. Last night I took a couple free practice tests, and scored around 70-75% doing it cold. So, definitly need to brush up and that's what I am looking for. I will definitly dig up your FAQ. Any suggestion on a practice test bank software or a flash card set, etc? No I don't want a brain dump, just a good way to burn data into my head, which is mostly what the ONT seems to be. TIA.

 

[lerdalt]

To break down the ONT....2 parts, Quality of Service and Wireless. I'd say roughly a 90/10 split....maybe 85/15.

Sadly, everything you listed, you aren't going to see on the ONT. Traffic-Shaping, CBWFQ, policing, custom queuing, what DSCP is, why you need qos, creating acl, policy maps, and class maps are all things you will see things about.

My lab for ONT was pretty simple. 2 routers, with T1 between them, workstation attached to one and pinging a loopback to the other. I'd send pings of various sizes and setup policing to adjust how the packets reacted. Policing was the ONLY thing on the exam I had no real world experience with and needed to see it.

I forgot one HUGE tip. Use the exam blue prints from Cisco's website as a guide. That is probably most valuable tool out there.

 

[burtsbees]

I did have debug and show outputs for a failed IPSEC establishment. I think it was a site-to-site, and the interesting traffic was wrong. I also remember one question with a sh run---why would the layer 3 switch not route between its own vlans---no ip routing...lol

Burt