January 2010 Archives

Okay, here's the scoop:

• CCNP will now be three exams, ROUTE, SWITCH, and TSHOOT
• Exam price will increase from $150.00 to $200.00 per exam
• ROUTE and TSHOOT courses (typically 1 week Cisco official courses) are now supplemented with e-learning material (nearly 8 hours for ROUTE and 9 hours for TSHOOT) which is exam material
• Classes / Exams are becoming even MORE real-world (TSHOOT class is 92% hands-on)
• New ROUTE and SWITCH exam is available in March, TSHOOT is available in April.
• BSCI exam can substitute for ROUTE or vice versa
  
• BCMSN exam can substitute for SWITCH or vice versa
  
• ONT and ISCW exams can substitute for TSHOOT until end of July (ONT/ICSW exams expire then...BSCI and BCMSN are no longer offered after July 31, however can substitute for ROUTE / SWITCH for their entire 3 year expiration period).
• New CCNP exams now prepare you more for the CCIE R&S
  

I think this update is awesome...anything that maps to a more real-world environment is great! Less exams are also a good thing. Cisco has removed much of the CCNP overlap with CCVP (QoS is virtually gone, which is all the ONT exam really was in the first place).

One of my CBTNuggets students forwarded this over to me. Freakin' amazing use of a Cisco 1900 series switch. Wish I could do something like this for my fish tank!

http://www.newtonnet.co.uk/catfeeder/

Okay, I've got more useless iPhone apps than I care to admit...but CBTNuggets just released their iPhone app and it's awesome. I was learning how to configure MS Exchange 2007 Storage Groups on the way to Pizza Hut last night. Nice!

...watching the demos does create quite the driving adventure though...