r/ccnp

A few nights ago I got to the bgp section in the enarsi ocg book. I thought to myself “wait a minute, I’ve never used ospf, eigrp, bgp at my work so why am I learning this?” I looked at other Ccnp paths which align more with my learning objectives and found ensld. The book just came in today and it’s not even 500 pages. I skimmed through some of the material and it doesn’t seem that difficult or anything that I don’t know already.
For anyone who took it how was your experience?
Are the questions on the ensld just complete mf’s that it warrants being its own certification path? Are there any essay questions ?

What software is appropriate for DCCOR, do you use CML paid and how long does it take for the devices to boot in the virtual lab? ​

I've recently been studying for the CCNP Encor exam through the use of INE (I will also be reading through OCG, after I complete the INE course).

I'm currently going over the OSPF section, and the course instructor went over how to use frame-relay with OSPF for over 25 minutes. I don't see frame-relay anywhere in the exam topics and as someone working in network support the last 4 years, I haven't touched or heard of anyone that still uses frame-relay.

Is INE really the best course there is? It seems that the instructors cover a lot of topics that are obsolete and they still use a lot of older technologies (such as ethernet hubs) that are simply not in-use anymore. Covering these things just seems like a waste of time.

Great news for anyone wanting/needing XR for labbing, XRd is now included on the new CML 2.10. repfplat. It also works like charm in Containerlab!

Hi everyone,

I am currently preparing for CCNP ENCOR and ENARSI, and I am trying to decide between INE and CBT Nuggets as my main study resource.

I have read a lot of good things about both platforms, but I can only afford one subscription right now, so I want to choose carefully.

I am not just studying to pass the exams but also I want to build strong practical skills and really understand networking deeply for real-world work and troubleshooting.

For those who have used either (or both), which one would you recommend for:

• Deep understanding of concepts
• Hands-on labs and practical learning
• Troubleshooting skills
• Staying engaged and motivated
• Preparing well for the exams

If you had to choose only one for both ENCOR and ENARSI, which would you pick and why?

I would really appreciate any honest advice or personal experiences. Thanks!

Hi Guys i am thinking of doing CCNP, but i prefer reading than watching vidoes, any recommendsion for good books that cover CCNP ENCOR AND ENSARI?

note i am only looking for books for my theory not videos.

also out of the option for labs, which is the better option eve-ng, cml or what ever the other option is, I am in the UK so money is that much of an issue but i want the experieince of learning to be easier so happy to spend, so long i get better learning experieince.

many thanks.

Passed the SCOR exam last week and my head is still spinning. Took a bit to gather my thoughts. It was my 3rd attempt (Was definitely prepared by my 2nd but more on that later). I started studying in September of last year, with some months of intense study and some with none at all. Ramped up significantly the last month or so as I was really motivated to finally get it done. Some thoughts:

Exam

Can be very unfair if you get a bad test bank. My 1st attempt i thought the questions were straightforward enough by Cisco standards, so on my 2nd attempt I knew I was ready based on the questions I got from the 1st attempt but still failed.

The bank I got the 2nd time was outrageous. Filled with questions that straight up weren’t in the exam topics or covered in any material. Many questions with 2 right answers, no right answers but you had to choose the most correct, and questions worded in a way that felt intentionally tricky. Like they weren’t trying to test understanding of the topics, but rather trying to mislead you into choosing wrong. Felt very discouraged after this attempt. Despite this, i scored slightly higher than my first attempt even though my understanding of the topics was *significantly* better.

I passed my 3rd attempt less than a week later with only 1 additional day study which demonstrates how your test bank can influence the outcome.

Resources I used

Cisco e-learning 6/10
Covered everything in the exam topics. Some in enough depth, some not enough. Thought it was very good as a primer of everything you may see, but it did fool me into thinking i was ready for my 1st attempt when i very much was not.
Not bad at all if it’s paid for on your behalf but i’ll never buy Cisco e-learning out of pocket again. Price compared to INE is simply not worth it at all.

INE 9/10
I HATED watching videos. Very much a book guy but when I locked in they were fantastic. Can’t say enough how good they are. I bought it once before right after my CCNA to study for ENCOR, but never took advantage of it and let it expire without really studying for ENCOR at all. Got it again for SCOR when I realized i needed another resource.
It has everything you need and in enough depth for the exam. What I did rather than go through the SCOR learning path is go to each specialty path, (SVPN, SISE, SNCF etc), so that I could get certain topics explained deeper than what the SCOR would require. My thought process was I refuse to lab EOL products like the Ironports so I need to understand the real life relevant topics to a point where I get NO questions wrong for them on SCOR to make up for the useless topics I refuse to get deep on.

Boson exsim 7.5/10
Very good to test your understanding of the exam topics. Almost to a fault. Like I said previously, the exam felt purposely misleading and Boson is not. It’ll tell you if you know the topics but not if you’re ready to pass the exam. Not their fault but it is what it is. Would recommend.

Labs 10/10
I labbed everything on the exam that I felt was most relevant irl. ISE, RA VPN, site-to-site VPN, FTD. None of the cloud stuff, endpoint or ESA/WSA. This was crucial to my understanding of each topic. Unless you have extensive real life experience with several topics, you need to lab to pass period.

I often see people ask if the exam has labs. It doesn’t. But that’s not a good thing. Imo, i feel people ask this because they believe multiple choice makes an exam easier than PBQ/labs. It doesn’t. A good engineer knows that to support a network irl you need to deploy configure and troubleshoot platforms, which i learned how to do while studying.

If the exam had labs and less misleading questions, i’d have passed my 2nd attempt and saved myself 400 bucks.

Conclusion

I learned so much from this journey and it feels good to be done. Not happy about the money I spent but I genuinely feel like the process made me a significantly better engineer.

Please feel free to ask any questions. I gained so much information from this sub that helped me pass so I want to do what I can to give back.

I am currently working as a Desk-side support engineer for more then 2 years with some exposure with Layer 1 and Layer 2 network troubleshooting and configuration of access switches on an enterprise environment.

My passion is really to be a Network Engineer. Due to high expectations in the job market today, I am having a hard time applying for a network engineer role. Even Junior Network Engineers needs a qualification of 3-5 years of experience, with SD-WAN, Cloud, SD Access knowledge. I really want to break into Network Engineer which is why I have decided to level up my skills with CCNP ENCOR alongside EVE-ng labs which would give me deep understanding of Networking without taking CCNA. However, I used to watch Udemy courses by Neil Anderson to study for CCNA just to grasp fundamental knowledge about network. But now, I'm preparing myself to CCNP ENCOR with CBTnuggets' course.

Would these suffice to pass CCNP ENCOR and would it help me land a network engineer job?

I need your insights about this.

Will appreciate your kind responses!

To make a long story short, I was making around $40k working at the help desk. After earning my CCNA, I landed a role as a network administrator, making 70k. Then I completed my CCNP Security and was promoted to Network Engineer with an initial offer of $79k. I countered at $85k, and with a little help from my supervisor explaining the value of the CCNP to nontechnical C-level execs, it was accepted!!

Hard work, consistency, and good relationships have changed my life in a matter of 2 years!

The journey continues... I'll be back on Reddit after passing exams for enterprise to become 2x CCNP. Gotta love the journey

Hi All,

I’m building a CCNP lab in EVE-NG and want a simple, lightweight solution for:
- NetFlow traffic analysis
- Syslog collection
- Easy deployment on Linux or VM
- Good for Cisco router/switch labs
- Beginner-friendly but useful for real troubleshooting

What do you recommend?

Hi All,

I’m building a CCNP lab in EVE-NG and want a simple, lightweight solution for:
- NetFlow traffic analysis
- Syslog collection
- Easy deployment on Linux or VM
- Good for Cisco router/switch labs
- Beginner-friendly but useful for real troubleshooting

What do you recommend?

Hello,
Apparently, products like FMC, FTD, or ISE are less integrated in the standard CML workflow.
Is it correct or just Internet noise?

Hello folks,

I passed my CCNA a few years ago and was fortunate enough to land a Network Engineer role, working with technologies like BGP and IS-IS and many more

What would be a good place to start this journey? This is what i found so far so please correct me if i am wrong

So far these are the resources I’ve looked at:

• Kevin Wallace — seems very solid, but also quite expensive
• CBT Nuggets — used it for CCNA and Junos exams helpful, though I still had to supplement with other resources
• Neil Anderson — also used for CCNA good overall, but I still needed outside resources at times (probably because CCNA covers such a broad scope)
• Jeremy’s IT Lab — really liked his CCNA content, CCNP course is still incomplete
• OCG book (CCNP and CCIE Enterprise Core ENCOR 350-401, I don't understand why it states CCIE in the book title?

I would like to get a pointer on what would be the best route for learning CCNP? Thanks

Hello everyone !

I've seen some posts regarding the 31 Days Before your CCNP, but they were kinda old, compared to the latest minor update from ENCOR. So, has anyone used the 31 Days Before your CCNP ? And how good or bad it was compared to the actual OCG (2nd edition) ? Is worth still buying it ?

Hey everyone, long post but I really need an outside perspective. I've been feeling stuck lately and want to know if I'm thinking about this the right way or just venting into the void lol.

I currently have my A+, Net+, working on Sec+ to renew my other certs, CCNA (good until summer 2027), and a Bachelor's degree. My plan is to spend the next 6 months studying for the CCNP ENCORE, then go after a concentration exam after that. My day-to-day is pretty hands-on with switch configurations, IP reservations, AAA server, and working with vendors on port and address requirements for new devices in our OT networks. I submit Jira tickets to our Enterprise team for firewall changes and DHCP scope additions, but I do have read access to the firewall. The work is fine, but the deeper stuff like routing changes and firewall configs always gets handed off via ticket. I want to actually own that work someday, not just request it.

I've tried reaching out to people here for mentorship and guidance and I basically get crickets. Nobody seems interested in helping others grow. And from what I can see, certs and technical skills don't really get rewarded at this company. It feels like the people moving up are the ones playing the corporate game — talking the talk in meetings, working the politics — not necessarily the ones with the deepest technical skills. To make things worse, my company is now switching to Extreme Networks which seems super GUI-focused. I'm worried that moving away from Cisco CLI is going to hurt my resume and slow down my growth long-term. At this point I'm pretty set on getting the CCNP and then starting to look elsewhere — somewhere that actually values technical growth.

Is 6 months a realistic timeline to be ready for the CCNP ENCORE, or am I setting myself up to rush it? Also, am I overthinking all of this, or is this a solid plan?

I feel like I'm doing the right things but just stuck in the wrong environment. Would really appreciate any advice from people who've been through something similar. Thanks!

Howdy Friends.

I'm sure this question has been answered in a manpage or even in a forum post in some manner in the past, but I'm pretty dense and usually require direct instruction. Also I'm lazy.

I'm wondering if I use tshark or editcap for this and need some help putting together a script or .bat file that can do the following - let's say I have 100 captures that were unfiltered.

I need to generate 3 files from each - one containing tcp, one containing udp and icmp, and one containing all traffic that's not either of those. I know how to open each file individually, apply display filters and export the files I need. But that's going to take hours. I'm hoping there's a way to automate this - does anybody have any insight? I've already used editcap to manipulate the snaplen of all the captured packets - that's pretty easy. I just need to speed up the production of the filtered files.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hey everyone,

I'm prepping for the CCNP Enterprise on a Lenovo P15 Gen 1. On paper it should be more than enough:

• Intel i7-10850H (6C/12T)
• 64GB RAM (4x16GB)
• EVE-NG on VMware Workstation Pro with 48GB and all 12 threads assigned

In practice? It's struggling.

My target topology is a full campus: 2x Cat9k, 2x Nexus 9k, 2x FTD, and a couple of C8k edge routers. The problem is the Cat9k images alone default to 18GB RAM each, just spinning those two up pushes memory to 90% and I start getting OOM errors before anything else is even online.

I'm weighing two options:

1. RAM upgrade : (~$400) , swap the 16GB sticks for 32GB and go to 128GB total
2. CML subscription : pay for Cisco Modeling Labs, get up to 20 nodes, and hope their optimized images are lighter on my current hardware

I keep seeing people online running massive multi-site topologies and I genuinely wonder what they're running underneath. Are they all on dual-socket EPYC workstations with 256GB+ sitting in a home lab rack?

Has anyone actually pulled off a full CCNP campus lab on a laptop, or is that just not realistic? And if you've used CML , do the images actually run leaner than what you'd pull from CCO?