CCNP ROUTE or SWITCH which class/exam to take??

[timlegend]

Hello

My CCNA expires in October but I will take a CCNP certification exam before then. I currently work in a NOC at a cellphone company but we're not using Cisco equipment. Therefore, my cisco skills are rusty. My question is: Which is the LEAST difficult exam to take, the CCNP route or CCNP switch? I would like to get both but my main objective is to be certified before my CCNA expires in October. Anyone with experience with these exams please help me out!! I plan on enrolling in the morning and want to give myself the best chance for sucess in a short period of time. Thanks!

[burleyman]

ROUTE would be your best choice to take first.

I took SWITCH first as I figured I knew more about that than routing at the time. I worked with switches far more than routers but what I did not take into consideration was the routing knowledge you needed to have to pass the SWITCH exam, remember for CCNP think Layer 3 switches...CCNA Layer 2 switches, I did not pass the exam. I was already scheduled to take the ROUTE class the following week after my SWITCH exam, that I thought I would pass, so I switched gears and focused on the ROUTE exam. After the first two days of the ROUTE class I realized what I had messed up on with the SWITCH exam and would have passed it if I had this information. So I would highly recommend taking the ROUTE class and then take the ROUTE Exam. Then go on to the SWITCH after that.

Also the most important thing, go to The Cisco Learning Network website and make sure you review the Exam Topics. Based on the Cisco books and instructors what for the lines that start with the word "Configure", make sure you can configure those topics.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Mike

[timlegend]

Thanks for the insight Mike! That makes sense. I appreciate the tip about going to the Cisco Learning Network site too.