How to Take the ROUTE Exam
As of the publication of this book, Cisco exclusively uses testing vendor Pearson Vue ( www.vue.com ) for delivery of all Cisco career certification exams. To register, go to www.vue.com , establish a login, and register for the 300-101 ROUTE exam. You also need to choose a testing center near your home.
Who Should Take This Exam and Read This Book
This book has one primary audience, with several secondary audiences. First, this book is intended for anyone wanting to prepare for the ROUTE 300-101 VCE exam. The audience includes self-study readers—people who pass the test by studying 100 percent on their own. It includes Cisco Networking Academy students taking the CCNP curriculum, who use this book to round out their preparation as they get close to the end of the Academy curriculum.
The broader question about the audience might well be why you should take the ROUTE exam. First, the exam is required for the aforementioned CCNP and CCDP certifications from Cisco. These certifications exist at the midpoint of the Cisco certification hierarchy. These certifications have broader and deeper technology requirements as compared to the Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician (CCENT) and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certifications.
The real question then about the audience for this book—at least the intended audience—is whether you have motivation to get one of these professional-level Cisco certifications. CCNP in particular happens to be a popular, well-respected certification. Also, CCDP has been a solid certification for a long time, particularly for engineers who spend a lot of time designing networks with customers, rather than troubleshooting.
Format of the CCNP ROUTE Exam
The ROUTE exam follows the same general format as the other Cisco exams. When you get to the testing center and check in, the proctor will give you some general instructions and then take you into a quiet room with a PC. When you’re at the PC, you have a few things to do before the timer starts on your exam. For example, you can take a sample quiz, just to get accustomed to the PC and to the testing engine. Anyone who has userlevel skills in getting around a PC should have no problems with the testing environment.
When you start the exam, you will be asked a series of questions. You answer the question and then move on to the next question. The exam engine does not let you go back and change your answer.
The exam questions can be in any of the following formats:
- Multiple-choice (MC)
- Testlet
- Drag-and-drop (DND)
- Simulated lab (Sim)
- Simlet
The first three types of questions are relatively common in many testing environments. The multiple-choice format simply requires that you point and click on a circle (that is, a radio button ) beside the correct answer for a single-answer question or on squares (that is, check boxes ) beside the correct answers for a multi-answer question. Cisco traditionally tells you how many answers you need to choose, and the testing software prevents you from choosing too many answers.
Testlets are questions with one general scenario, with a collection of multiple-choice questions about the overall scenario. Drag-and-drop questions require you to left-click and hold a mouse button, move an object (for example, a text box) to another area on the screen, and release the mouse button to place the object somewhere else—typically into a list. For some questions, as an example, to get the question correct, you might need to put a list of five things into the proper order.
The last two types both use a network simulator to ask questions. Interestingly, the two types actually allow Cisco to assess two very different skills. First, sim questions generally describe a problem, and your task is to configure one or more routers and/or switches to fix the problem. The exam then grades the question based on the configuration that you changed or added. The simlet questions might well be the most difficult style of question on the exams. Simlet questions also use a network simulator, but instead of answering the question by changing the configuration, the question includes one or more MC questions.
The questions require that you use the simulator to examine the current behavior of a network, interpreting the output of any show commands that you can remember to answer the question. Although sim questions require you to troubleshoot problems related to a configuration, simlets require you to both analyze working networks and networks with problems, correlating show command output with your knowledge of networking theory and configuration commands.
The Cisco Learning Network website ( http://learningnetwork.cisco.com ) has tools that let you experience the environment and see how each of these question types works. The environment should be the same as when you passed CCNA (a prerequisite for CCNP and CCDP).
CCNP ROUTE 300-101 Study Guide
This section lists a general description of the contents of this book. The description includes an overview of each chapter and a list of book features seen throughout the
book.
Book Features and Exam Preparation Methods
This book uses several key methodologies to help you discover the exam topics on which you need more review, to help you fully understand and remember those details, and to help you prove to yourself that you have retained your knowledge of those topics. Therefore, this book does not try to help you pass the exams only by memorization but by truly learning and understanding the topics.
The book includes many features that provide different ways to study and be ready for the exam. If you understand a topic when you read it, but do not study it any further, you will probably not be ready to pass the Examcollection 300-101 exam with confidence. The features included in this book give you tools that help you determine what you know, review what you know, better learn what you don’t know, and be well prepared for the exam.
These tools include:
- “Do I Know This Already?” Quizzes: Each chapter begins with a quiz that helps you determine the amount of time that you need to spend studying that chapter.
- Foundation Topics: These are the core sections of each chapter. They explain the protocols, concepts, and configurations for the topics in that chapter.
- Exam Preparation Tasks: The “Exam Preparation Tasks” section lists a series of study activities that should be done after reading the “Foundation Topics” section.
- Each chapter includes the activities that make the most sense for studying the topics in that chapter. The activities include
- Planning Tables: The ROUTE exam topics include some perspectives on how an engineer plans for various tasks. The idea is that the CCNP-level engineer in particular takes the design from another engineer, plans the implementation, and plans the verifi cation steps—handing off the actual tasks to engineers working during change-window hours. Because the engineer plans the tasks, but might not be at the keyboard when implementing a feature, that engineer must master the confi guration and verifi cation commands so that the planned commands work for the engineer making the changes offshift. The planning tables at the end of the chapter give you the chance to take the details in the Foundation Topics core of the chapter and think about them as if you were writing the planning documents.
- Key Topics Review: The Key Topic icon is shown next to the most important items in the “Foundation Topics” section of the chapter. The Key Topics Review activity lists the key topics from the chapter and the page number where each key topic can be found. Although the contents of the entire chapter could be on the exam, you should defi nitely know the information listed in each key topic. Review these topics carefully.
- Memory Tables: To help you exercise your memory and memorize some lists of facts, many of the more important lists and tables from the chapter are included in a document on the CD. This document lists only partial information, allowing you to complete the table or list. CD-only Appendix D holds the incomplete tables, and Appendix E includes the completed tables from which you can check your work.
- Defi nition of Key Terms: Although Cisco exams might be unlikely to ask a question such as “Defi ne this term,” the ROUTE exam requires that you learn and know a lot of networking terminology. This section lists some of the most important terms from the chapter, asking you to write a short defi nition and compare your answer to the Glossary on the enclosed CD.
- CD-Based Practice Exam: The companion CD contains an exam engine, including access to a bank of multiple-choice questions. Chapter 18 gives two suggestions on how to use these questions: either as study questions or to simulate the ROUTE exam.
- Companion Website: The website http://kwtrain.com/routebook posts up-to-theminute materials that further clarify complex exam topics. Check this site regularly for new and updated postings written by the author that provide further insight into the more troublesome topics on the exam.
