When it comes to study guides still Cisco Press titles are far superior to other publications.  The Cisco Press title “CCNP TSHOOT 642-832 Official Certification Guide” follows the typical Cisco Press approach, each chapters begins with “Do I know this Already?” quiz and then followed by the subject. This approach is good as it lets you know to determine the knowledge level of the topic; it gives a brief idea to plan out the approach for each chapter. The title comprises of 15 chapters and the final chapter deals with the final preparations for the exam.

The good thing I like about this title is the way how author “Kevin Wallace” presented the known topics from different perspective. Yeah he was quite successful in engaging with his readers and presenting the troubleshooting techniques. The inclusion of many case studies enhanced the author’s presentation and he was quite successful in reaching out the mass. Especially for those who passed CCNP Route and Switch exam they find not much in this title, but they will learn the troubleshooting and maintenance techniques for complex networks. The troubleshooting scenarios and methodology grabbed my attention and I like the way troubleshooting tickets were presented.

I have few suggestion to Cisco Press is to include the pdf version of the title with the CD. The CD also came with the Boson Exam Environment Engine (BEE), it was a huge disappointment for me as the practice exam failed to contain the simulated scenarios. The BEE contained only multiple choices, single choice, drag and drop style questions.

Overall the Cisco Press title “CCNP TSHOOT 642-832 Official Certification Guide” is a good source for anyone who is preparing for Cisco CCNP TSHOO 642-832 exams and a helpful guide for those who wants to master troubleshooting.

Cisco Press are helping hands by having a program called The Cisco Press Cisco User Group Program. Anyone who wants to set up a user group can create their Cisco Press User Group. In order to qualify your group should have

• Active membership of 10 or more people
• Valid and active website for shared information
• Regular online or face-to-face meetings

Cisco Press supports typically volunteers, not-for-profit organizations, or special interest groups focused on Cisco networking technologies or Cisco certifications by providing product news, discounted prices on products, and free review copies in exchange for reviews, marketing materials, and promotional giveaways.

The biggest use of creating the Cisco Press User Group is exchange of knowledge and ideas. Frequently we used to have small presentations for our members in our auditorium. Currently our group members are working on perusing Cisco certifications. Two of our group members Alamgir Khan passed CCNA and CCNP; Syed Zubair passed CCNA Security and CCNP Switch Exam, and using the Cisco Press materials provided by Cisco Press for group review and support.

I will encourage you all Cisco lovers to establish a user group they are many benefits apart from gaining technical skills for sure you will develop leadership skills. Check Cisco Press User Group home page for more details.

When you are preparing for the CCNP Switch (642-813) or BCMSN exam (642-812) there are quite a few topics which are important not only from the perspective of passing  the  “Implementing Cisco IP Switched Network” exam or BCMSN exam but also for the day to day network troubleshooting tasks.

One among the key topic is “spanning tree loop guard”. As the name itself suggests Loop Guard is a method used for ensuring no spanning tree protocol loops (STP) occurs in any network topology. Though STP loop guard feature can prevents STP loops as best it can, still chances of loops are there due to unidirectional link failure or congestions issues in the Cisco Switch. It’s always recommended, the loop guard feature to be used in conjunction with UDLD feature. I will cover about UDLD feature in one more article.

The basic function of loop guard feature is to prevent loops conservatively by preventing alternate or root ports from becoming DPs in the topology. If BPDUs are not received on a non-Designated Port, and Loop Guard is enabled, that port is moved into the STP loop-inconsistent Blocking state, instead of the Listening /Learning / Forwarding state.

Loop Guard operates only on ports that are considered point-to-point by the spanning tree, and it cannot be run in conjunction with Root Guard on an interface.

To enable Loop Guard on a Cisco Catalyst Switch, you can use the following IOS command in the global configuration mode

ITKE-3750-AS01(config)# spanning-tree loopguard default

Private VLAN (PVLANS) are really just sub-VLAN inside a VLAN, they basically allows you to split the VLAN domain into multiple isolated subdomains. When it comes to inter-VLAN routing we need a Layer 3 device to forward packets. The same analogy applies to Private VLAN (PVLANS). They need layer 3 devices such as Cisco Router or Cisco Multilayer Switch.

To make things much simpler, consider a Network environment in which the service provider need to connects servers belonging to different customers to the Internet. These servers must all be able to reach their first-hop router, but for security reasons, servers belonging to one customer must not be able to communicate with servers belonging to another. An obvious design solution for these requirements is to place each customer’s servers in a separate VLAN, which also requires the assignment of a separate IP subnet per customer (even if they have only one server).

By creating separate VLANs not only wastes the VLAN IDs but also IP addresses as well. To overcome this Private VLAN (PVLANS) were introduced as a more elegant alternative, allowing multiple devices to reside in the same IP subnet, yet remain isolated from one another at layer two.

In upcoming post we see what terminologies are used in Private VLAN (PVANS) and how they are distinguished.

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide is an amazing title, which can trust for Switch # 642-813 Exam. The author David Hucaby CCIE 4594 carries an honor of writing many titles for Cisco Press especially when it come to switching he is master.

The  CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide comes with seventeen chapters covering wide range of topics

The first chapter emphasizes on the importance of planning for CCNP Switch# 642-813 Exam. In this chapter Cisco Systems have made very clear what they are anticipating for the CCNP Switching and Routing professional and what skill he/she should possess to be CCNP R & S.

In this chapter the author talks about Cisco’s approach to the life cycle of the Network, it is PPDIOO

Prepare - organizational requirements, strategy, financial justification

Plan - network requirements, gap analysis with existing network infrastructure, project plan

Design- design specification created (used for implement phase)

Implement – network is built, additional components added

Operate – maintaining network health, day-to-day operations

Optimize – proactive management, potential to spir network redesign

Tips for the implementation plan

The implementation plan consists of several phases ( for eg : installation of hardware, IOS check, configurations,-over to production, etc.).  It is important to remember the following steps for each phase:

Description of the step

Reference to design documents

Detailed implementation guidelines

Detailed rollback guidelines in case of failure

Estimated time needed for implementation

When it comes to CCNP Routing and Switch Certification I personally prefer to start with Switch# 642-813 Exam. As switching exam should not be a hard exam for CCNA certified Network Engineer.  The Switch # 642-813 exam tests your skills on following topics.

ü  Network design, implementation, and verification plans

ü  Switch operation and port configuration

ü  VLANs, trunks, and VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)

ü  Aggregating switch links

ü  Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)

ü  Multilayer switching

ü  Enterprise campus network design

ü  Router and supervisor redundancy

ü  IP telephony

ü  Wireless LANs

ü  Switched network security

Now come the main question what resources you should use to pass the Cisco Switch#642-813 Exam, lot of resources are available, but when it come to self study guides Cisco Press is the leader and they come with pretty helpful titles.

To begin with you can start preparing with CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide which can be easily ordered from Cisco Press watch out for eBook of day deal too who knows you can own the book for just 9.95 dollars.  For non US residents no worries as Cisco Press ships world wide at very competitive shipping cost, seems that they have some deal with FEDEX as for the last four times when I ordered Cisco press titles they charged me 9 dollars for International shipping thru FedEx and it took 4 days to reach me. In upcoming posts I will try to review the CCNP Switch 642-813 Official certification guide in detail so that you folks can get benefited.

All CCNP Certification aspirers, who ever have purchased CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide new supplement content is available to cover up the additions made to the Cisco Switching Exam 642-813 after the above mentioned title was mentioned. You can directly download the additional contents from the Cisco Press page -look on the catalog page under “Updates”.

I went through the supplement content “How to prepare for the Planning Topics on the Exam”. The new supplement replaces the current content in the page 13 of the title CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide. It deals with how to prepare for the planning topics on the exam, when compared to the book I could notice some changes, Cisco is emphasizing on the CCNP certified professionals to know more about planning and documentation ,though the exam might not directly test you to create a plan.  But the supplement does guide you to come up with an implementation plan, it deals with the business requirements, business constraints and technical requirements.

Cisco expects you to be aware of creating plans for implementing a network, and you may get a scenario, based on the scenario you are supposed to figure out what specific features you’ll need, what steps you’ll need to configure for each feature, which switch you’ll have to visit to type in configuration commands, and so on.

Even as you work through a scenario on the exam, you should spend time creating a verification plan so you can test and make sure each feature you have configured actually works as it should. Otherwise, whatever you typed into the switch emulators might not be correct and might not earn you valuable points.

Do download these additional supplements which are quite useful for the CCNP aspirers.

I am always a great fan of David Hucaby; he comes up with pretty good titles, which can be easily used for achieving Cisco Certifications by self-study. His latest addition to the world of Cisco Certification is CCNP SWITCH 642-813 Official Certification Guide.  Thanks to Cisco Press and David to release this title so soon.

Thanks to Cisco Press and Jamie in especial for making this happen. I don’t believe that I have a CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title with me. As we all know Cisco came up with a new version of CCNP Certification which requires only three exams to pass compared to four in the prevision version of CCNP.

The current CCNP SWITCH 642-813 book is much lighter compared to the CCNP Switch 642-812 book.  It’s divided into 6 parts. I liked the way topics are distributed. This book is written in an easy way it covers all the exam topics and also provides some good troubleshooting steps especially I liked the VTP troubleshooting part.

Pic Courtesy: Cicso Press

A chapter dealing with Securing Switch access is amazing I liked the best practices used for securing Switches. The Author David Hucaby did a commendable job. The CCNP Switch 642-812 title come with 100 practice questions for the CCNP 642-813 exam developed by Cisco Press and delivered by Boson. The CCNP SWITCH 642-813 title is up to date and most of the info referred deals with the latest IOS versions.

Overall this entire book is an excellent source for preparing for Cisco CCNP 642-813 exams, my advice is to buy this book along with CCNP Routing and Switching Quick Reference  book. With these two, you should have everything you need! Best of luck to you all CCNP Certification aspirers.