CCNP Enterprise Certification Study Guide: Implementing and Operating Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies: Exam 350-401

For ICND1, ICND2 and now CCNP, I've always used the Sybex books.This CCNP cert guide by Ben Piper has all of the material needed to crush the exam and is written in a clear and concise way.Don't let the very few "errors" in the book that people like to fret about steer you away from this book. If you are following along and are doing the labs, you will be able to spot and easily fix the errors.Highly Recommend this!

Appears to be a very good preparation tool for achieving CCNP certification.

The first question in the assessment asks what IP depends on. The answer given is Layer 2. This is not the answer most people would give as Layer 3 is a better and more accurate choice. TCP/IP is a layer 3 and 4 protocol suite, both of which were possible answers. Most people will read the question as what layer does IP use.In addition, in the networking model in Chapter 1 list IPv4 and IPv6 but not IP specifically. IP should have been specifically listed as it is in many network model charts that list protocols at each layer.I specifically bought this book because the editing of the official book is so bad. The errata for the official Cisco book does not contain many of the errors I found and is already 5500 words long. I am now concerned that the same level of quality may apply to this book. Given that it is half the length it should be edited to a higher level.Edit 8-6-2020Upped to 2-stars for the moment. I have read up to the first section of Chapter 4.Chapter 1 - Not really useful and far less informative than the official book's equivalent chapter.Chapter 2 - Seemed to be adequate for STPChapter 3 - Good job with explaining the different network structure types. Lots of diagrams helps with visualizing these layouts. Etherchannel and HSRP explained with just the needed details to configure and understand the differences so good for keeping the material succinct and useful.Chapter 4 (Part 1) - Good job explaining the wave properties of a wireless signal in a way that most people should be able to understand. Lack of diagrams related to explanations of signal strength, and minimal explanation, hurts understanding of radio signal degradation and interference. The official book did a far better job with lots of diagrams and examples.Edit 8-7-2020 - Added another star - The presentation of the material in the middle chapters than it was in the first few.Chapter 4 - after first section. Not much in supporting diagrams that could assist in understanding concepts. I felt that it was more of a listing of information than truly trying to educate.Chapters 5 and 6. OSPF and EIGRP. Both chapters show how to configure and give numerous readouts. I think these are well done and present the material in a way that is useful for learning.Chapter 7 - BGP - I will have to re-read this as I was too tired during the first pass. It was similar to Chapters 5 and 6 in how it was presented.Edit 8-10-2020This will be my last comments on the book. I am in Chapter 11 as of now. I am leaving my review at 3 stars.Chapters 7-10 largely are like reading a lecture with few visual aids. This makes the reading more difficult and the concepts hard to understand. I found the official book much easier to follow due to having many diagrams to view as each concept is presented. I think the second half of the book requires a person to be fairly knowledgeable of these topics or to have a secondary source as the presentation is not effective for someone like myself. Please note that I have read many dozens of technical manuals, have about 20 years in IT, and passed the CCNA less than two weeks ago, which was my 21st certification exam during my career.Also, I wish I could find the errata for the book. I registered and have access to the flashcards, test banks, and searchable glossary. However, I cannot find links in that site or the publisher site which shows the errata. I would like to see if they know of certain errors.

Prepared me for the exam

I'm being generous by giving it 3 stars, simply because I did learn some things from this. I bought this as a last resource after going through Boson, OCG, CBT Nuggets and still failing the exam twice. Figured maybe this would help fill in some holes. It has helped fill in a few holes but there are so many things that are just incorrect or misleading that it kind of makes you question everything else in the book. Feels like this book was hastily written and not reviewed at all. While learning you don't want to have to constantly wonder if the information you're learning is even correct.The practice tests are pretty terrible and also contain errors and weirdness. For instance, the explanation for one of the questions says "OSPFv3 works only with IPv6". Hmm...is it just me or is this blatantly false. Yeah it was designed for IPv6 but there's this thing called address families. The practice exams are ripe with stuff like this that just makes you more confused.EDIT: There is one other issue I forgot to mention, which has actually caused me to reduce to 2 stars. This book strays pretty dang far from the objectives. For instance, it goes into detail on configuring LISP and VXLAN. The objectives say "Describe network virtualization concepts: LISP, VXLAN". Now some people may not see this as a negative. But the breadth of this exam is massive. I could easily forget that I don't actually need to know any of X or Y and spend a whole bunch of time studying things that are not going to help me pass. Spending your study time wisely is imperative if you want to pass this in any reasonable amount of time. There are several other examples of this throughout the book and practice exams. As someone who has actually taken the exam I can confirm that they are very true to the objectives. If it says "describe", they mean describe. Not configure.

I am only a few chapters in and I can see already that important information is missing. For example, HSRP version 2 uses a different MAC and multicast address and it is never mentioned in the section, only version 1. They each also have a different amount of groups they can have which is also not mentioned.Do not use this as your only study source. I bought it because it was so much cheaper that Ciscos study guide and now I see why. I am glad I am using CBT nuggests videos as well as reading from the book.

I have read the Cisco CCNP offical cert guide, and then bought this book to supplement it before taking the CCNP 350-401 exam. There are so many errors in this book. Mostly I am utilizing the practice questions which have significant errors. I am constantly verifying answers with the Offical Cert Guide or Google when I can't find it with Cisco.One of the answers in the back of the book was about which protocol ESP uses. In the back it stated10) ESP uses protocol 4711) ESP uses protocol 47So the book did not have an answer for number 10 because it was for the wrong question, and when I Googled the question ESP uses protocol 50. GRE uses protocol 47. So they repeated the wrong answer twice, and once for a wrong question. If I wasn't quizing with a friend and we were just accepting the answers I would try and memorize bad information. This is not the exception, there are errors in almost every chapter quiz.

really good

Explanations are concise and clear. I love it!

Great content, little spelling mistakes but overall quality study prep for encor