Does anyone know where to start or which course to enroll. What are white papers? Isaw them mentioned on many threads.

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to take the ENCORE exam next week and wanted to ask if anyone has taken the Cisco ENCORE exam recently, perhaps within the last week. I’m curious to know if there were any new questions added or if the question pool has been updated.

Thanks in advance for your help!

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Hello, I had ine for Encore and thinking about buying when they have some deal, because it is too expensive for me right now. Anyone have any course that was good price and enough to pass the exam. Ofcourse I lab and also have the ocg 2nd edition book.

I’m studying for ENCOR right now using OCG & CML as well as white papers/cisco documentation & relevant youtube videos that help explain specific topics. With that being said I find myself feeling two ways.

1. That I feel like I know this stuff already (everything besides SD-WAN pretty much).

2. I also feel like from the studying I’ve been doing that ENCOR and likely ENARSI are teaching you the same CCNA level information with MUCH more depth into a technology or protocol.

Those two feelings have me confident on some days and feeling like there’s no I way I can retain all of the tiny details ENCOR seems to want you to know on other days.

I’d really like to see if anyone else has felt this way and how they pushed through it or maybe any info on whether or not ENCOR is truly that testing you on a micro level.

Thanks to everyone who contributes! :)

Hey guys,

I launched an ASA in CML, and went to the CLI. But every time I access the CLI via the Console, I get prompted for either: 'inserthostname-here>' or a password. I have absolutely no clue what this would be. Does anyone know what to do here?

Hey everyone,

I’m CCNA-certified and currently preparing for my CCNP. I’d love to teach CCNA students in my free time to share my knowledge and make some extra income.

Do you know any platforms where independent instructors can offer networking courses, especially for the CCNA?

https://u.cisco.com/paths/288

Learn about the essentials of deploying, migrating, and operating AI solutions on Cisco data center infrastructure. Free until March 24, 2025

Wondering if anyone here has taken this exam and what their thoughts are about it. I am only considering this exam because the company I work for is starting to move some things to the cloud and I am hoping the study material for this will prepare me to make the correct connectivity choices. Was this exam helpful to you or is it just a Cisco sales pitch?

I am also looking for study material. It does not look like there is a lot out there. I currently have a Cisco u subscription (through the company I work for) and plan to use that but I have not be extremely happy with Cisco U. It is just Okay. The only other resource I found was CBT Nuggets which I will mostly likely end up using. Anything else out there of note?

Hello,

I’m currently studying Arash Deljoo's ENCOR course, which is quite intensive, especially since it heavily relies on concepts from his ENARSI course for everything related to routing. Right now, I’m focusing on the BGP section, working through it step by step with extensive lab practice.

At the same time, I’ve decided to tackle other topics in parallel, such as the virtualization section, which aligns with my daily work. Additionally, I’m planning to start exploring Python and Ansible for automation—both of which I’m eager to master and deepen my understanding of, as they genuinely excite me.

Do you have any resources you’d recommend for hands-on practice in these areas?

Hello everyone, I'm wondering if there's a way to replace the as path with my local AS.

This is required in my network, since my ISP is only accepting routes from my public AS, while some of the prefixes i have, are advertised from a different public AS

As i understand it, the only solution is by creating a route map and using the following command "set as-path replace". i tried to do it in my virtual lab, but the images that i have don't support this command. Is there another option? And would this command fix my issue

I did the exam today, but can’t find the result, can’t find the status, is this the case for everyone?

Hi all,

I've a doubt about the difference between master and boundary ports in MSTP.

A master port is always a boundary port? and viceversa?

Thanks :)

Hi guys. I started to study for my ENCORE exam about a week ago. I am currently using Kevin Wallace study materials + cert guide. Is it enough? In order to pass the exam what other things I can use? Thanks 😊

Hey awesome folks, hope you're all doing great! I'm looking for recommendations!

I've just started preparing for the CCNP SD-WAN exam and was wondering which images to use for labbing in EVE-NG. Any recommendations on images and setup would be greatly appreciated, especially from those who have already passed the exam or are currently preparing. Looking forward to your insights!

Now is a great time to check out the latest updates in ServiceRadar https://github.com/mfreeman451/serviceradar/releases/tag/1.0.8. Massive improvements in the network scanner, service dashboard, and more.

Setup monitoring for your network in minutes.

Hi all,

Let's focus on the following topology:

https://preview.redd.it/dud8tu6hgjfe1.png?width=1176&format=png&auto=webp&s=0395d39919060a37b9b34f57f4339261a0327b19

Let's suppose to consider VLAN46 which is defined in all the switches in the LAN.

VLAN46 is in MST Instance 4 (MSTI 4) in Region123 and in Instance 2 (MSTI 2) in Region456.

Let's configure a SVI on SW1 in VLAN46

SW1(config)# interface vlan 46

SW1(config)# ip address 192.168.46.1 255.255.255.0

Let's do the same on SW6:

SW1(config)# interface vlan 46

SW1(config)# ip address 192.168.46.2 255.255.255.0

Now, since the VLAN - Instance mapping is different I would expect that ping does not work.

However, ping does works!

It may depend on the fact that MST Instance are only LOCALLY significant?

Thanks

Just recently passed ENCOR about a month ago. Want to study ENARSI as I still have most of the material in my head. I was thinking 2 months of studying hard would do it. For those of you who recently passed, what recommendations would you give for the exam itself, and what resources would you recommend? Right now I already have the 101Labs book and want to buy the OCG and BOSON and use white papers. Of course I have CML for labs as well. Would you guys recommend anything else or swap out the materials I listed for something else? Thanks!

I am currently using Pnetlab to prepare for the ENCOR exam and I am interested in diving into network automation as well. Can anyone recommend a good resource where I can setup Netmiko on Windows. There are a lot of videos on YT but I've noticed most of them missing a step even the instructions I found in google seem to be missing a step.

Hi everyone,

I’d like to ask a question about MSTP. In Jeremy's IT Lab video titled "MSTP Regions," he states: "In MSTP, only the IST instance sends BPDUs. The BPDUs sent in the IST instance include the necessary information for other instances too."

However, this doesn’t align with what I’m observing in my lab.

Specifically, what Jeremy says is true for the CST, but within a single region, the root bridge for each instance generates BPDUs and forwards them on its designated ports. Therefore, it’s not accurate to say, as Jeremy claims, that only the root bridge for the IST instance generates BPDUs—this is true only for the CST.

In general, within a single region, each root bridge for every instance generates BPDUs.

Do you agree with me?

Thanks :)

Hi all,

I am making this post because I would like to share with you what I have understood about the MSTP protocol. In particular, if anyone needs it I am happy to help and if anyone finds errors or inaccuracies I would like them to correct me.

An MSTP region is a group of switches sharing the same MCID (MST Configuration ID). This ID consists of a configuration identifier format selector, region name, a revision number, and an MST configuration digest. Within each region, MSTI instance 0 (known as the Internal Spanning Tree or IST) is the default instance. The switch with the lowest priority for MSTI 0 in the LAN becomes the CIST Root Bridge. The Regional CIST Root Bridge is the switch within a region that has the lowest external root path cost to the CIST Root Bridge. In case of a tie, the switch with the lowest priority in the region is selected. If a region contains the CIST Root Bridge, that switch also serves as the Regional CIST Root Bridge.

The CST (Common Spanning Tree) interconnects all MST regions and treats each region as a single logical switch. The logical switch acting as the CST Root Bridge is the region containing the CIST Root Bridge. The CIST (Common and Internal Spanning Tree) is a combination of the IST (within regions) and the CST (between regions). Port roles for the CST are determined based on the IST.

For additional MSTI instances (e.g., MSTI 1, MSTI 2), each region identifies a root bridge locally. These root bridges are significant only within their respective regions. The usual rules for determining port roles apply, with priorities specific to each instance. However, CST port roles remain consistent across all instances, with one exception: when the CIST Regional Root already has a Root Port (which is a boundary port: a port that connects to a link in another region). In this case, the boundary port transitions to a Master Port.

Finally, when VLAN-to-instance mappings differ between regions, the affected instance becomes isolated. In such cases, the CIST Regional Root’s CIST Root Port, instead of becoming a Master Port, transitions to an inactive state for those VLANs (not active in the management domain). Hence, those VLANs don’t flow in the trunk connecting the two MSTP regions.

Have a good day!

Thanks :)

Attempted an exam in the last week or so? Passed? Failed? Proctor messed it all up? Discuss here! Open to all CCNP exams, don't forget to include the exam name and/or number. We are now consolidating those pass-fail posts under here per prior poll of the community and your feedback.

Remember, don't post a score in the format of xxx/1,000. All Cisco exams have a maximum score of 1,000, so that's useless info. Instead, list the required score to pass, as this differs from exam to exam, and can change over the lifetime of the exam.

Payment of passes in PUPPY pictures is allowed.

Whelp there's a first time for everything I guess.

Using APIs - 55%

Cisco Platforms - 50%

Application Deployment and Security - 65%

Infrastrucure and Automation - 50%

Software Development and Design - 50%

Figured there's not a whole lot of detailed exam experiences shared compared to the more popular exams like ccna, encor and enarsi. Figured I'd at least make something productive for anyone else looking into it but not knowing what to expect.

Overall felt like a fairly technical test. I didn't really experience the issue of having questions thay depended on api path memorization. Biggest strugglw was tbe time crunch, more than half the questions were parsing decently-size code blocks and filling in multiple drag n drops to fix, which were eating minutes at a time for me. USC had a bigger presence on my exam than I was expecting or prepared for.

Study materials was the kindle official studyguide by Mohorea, lab environment, and having leveraged some of this stuff at my job, so probably a little underprepared on my front.

I would also reccommend not using any sort of color coding in your development environment, since the code block questions are all black and white, it can be tough to parse whats important if you're used to the quality of life in Visual Studio or even notepad++ being able to parse your code at more of a glance because they keywords, variables and functions are all color coded. At least that will be my plan for study follow-up.

Tldr key takeaways:

-Practice reading blocks of code for quickly parsing through a script and where each key reference(square brackets) should go in a json data call.

-Don't sleep on UCS. You might barely see it, you might see it as much as I did.

-know your docker linux commands. I focused a whole lot more on understanding dockerfile commands and flow, and a lot less time trying out different docker run or docker build arguments and options. I don't think I got a single dockerfile question now that I think about it(thats not to say it won't appear on the test)

-Be prepared that there will be no quality of life when reading code blocks on the exam. I'm pretty sure they're just notepad screenshots.

-Know the methodology, philosophy and lifecycles of software development covered in part 1 of the blueprint. I thought I had this down but took too many hits on questions that should have been easy wins because I depended mostly on working knowledge and industry experience that I already had while focusing my studies more on technical parts of the blueprint.

-Know the ins and outs of Ansible, Puppet, Terraform, Chef, Docker, AppDynamics. Not just how to use them(what I focused on), but the theories and sales pitches behind them, why you use one over the other, who's push, who's pull, how they work together, how they differ. Again, took hits on easy wins because I can configure a device with Ansible or deploy puppet or docker in a bubble, but how orchestrating them in tandem is also very important.

-One more shoutout to Mohorea for their study guide. My spread would be much worse on the first go around without their very comprehensive and hands-on study guide.

All and all, I don't want to say I underestimated the DEVCOR as an exam but more on the leaning of I overestimated my ability in the subjects. I leaned heavily on the fact that I wasn't approaching most of these topics as a blank slate and the fact that I use Python and other automations that I built in my daily worklife that I thought that while difficult, my programming ability ajd industry knowledge would carry me past the goal posts.

Oh well, time to have lunch, a lunch beer, reschedule the exam and hit the lab and books hard this time.

Hi everyone! Just recently passed ENCOR and looking for some advice on which concentration exam I should take. I know ENARSI is probably the most useful as far as day to day network engineering. However, if I’m just looking to get my CCNP as quickly as possible maybe I should for ENSLD since it’s “easier”? But when it comes to just pure subject matter though the ENCC probably interests me the most as I’ve always been interested in learning cloud concepts. I guess I’m still not sure which exam would be most beneficial. Any advice is much appreciated.

Hi guys, i wanted to learn SAN, and wanted to start with Cisco MDS 9000 Series Switches (DCMDS)
But as far as i know this exam is already retired.. so any course/exam road-map on how i can learn to manage san switches?

Hi all,

I've been labbing MSTP for a while and I've obtained the following points:

• each root bridge for each instance generates BPDUs every Hello Interval and forwards them out of its designated ports for that instance (designated ports depends on the specific instance since their position depends on which is the root bridge for that particular instance).
• The downstream switches receive these BPDUs on the root port and forward those BPDUs (after changing, the BID, PID and root path cost, same as legacy STP) out of their designated ports.
• Each BPDU is all-encompassing and includes the information from all MSTI instances (IST and all MSTI).

Now, my question is...

what's the point of each root bridge for each instance generating BPDUs? Wouldn't it be enough if only one root bridge generated them, for example, the root bridge of instance 0 (IST or MSTI0)?

Where am I going wrong?

I know this is a very deep question but that's a ccnp sub :)

Thanks!

Hi all,

when a link between two switch SW1 and SW2 goes up, let's assume both ports move to forwarding state. Which one will generate a TC BPDUs? Both interfaces?

TC BPDUs are forwarded out all non-edge designated and root port, right?

Thanks

Hi all,

In case of a L2 TCAM entries we are looking for an exact match. Hence, the Mask value would be 0000.0000.0000 or FFFF.FFFF.FFFF, Because on INE they say the first one while Jeremy says the latter on his SDM video on youtube (in the quiz part).

Thanks :)