I’ve just returned from completing my Cisco CCNP training at Firebrand’s flagship training centre in Wybotson Lakes, Bedfordshire.  Thankfully I have emerged from the experience unscathed, and with the CCNP qualification as a tremendous bonus.

As I mentioned in my previous post the course was structured intensively, aiming to get through what would traditionally be four one-week courses in just thirteen days.  A rather ambitious task you might feel, and you would be correct.

Wyboston Lakes is a dedicated training and conference centre in Bedfordshire.  The accommodation and training suites are all in one site and provide an immersing experience, ideal to provide the setting for intensive training.  There was no worry about transport or organising meals, just turn up and learn.  The facilities were great – modern equipment, clean, well decorated classrooms, nice lounge areas, a bar, a great looking golf course, a restaurant, free coffee/tea/soft drinks/biscuits/fruit – all good stuff.  Not that there would be any time to enjoy these lovely surroundings….

The four courses involved in CCNP are BSCI, BCMSN, ONT and ISCW, and we tackled them in that order, beginning with BSCI on Monday February 16th.  BSCI is the routing course – OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS, RIP, BGP and all that jazz, with a bit of IPv6 thrown in for good measure.  The pace of this was extremely intense, non-stop from the morning of day one until the morning of the exam on Thursday three days later.  BGP is an enormous topic and highly complex, but incredibly powerful.  The others are all fairly straightforward once you’ve looked at them for long enough.  For the first three nights I don’t think I was in bed before midnight once, staying up to complete labs or review the day’s activities or do practice tests.  Thankfully I was fortunate enough to make it through the exam.  Tests were scheduled for 5pm, so after dinner at 7 we had a night off from studying.

BCMSN is the switching course – spanning tree, VLANs, gateway redundancy, multicast etc.  This was two full days of lecture with the exam scheduled for Sunday, and again very highly paced.  The content was harder to swallow in some places as you have to learn about deprecated protocols just because it is still on the test, but it was very interesting with lots of labs.  Having passed BSCI there was a little pressure to pass the BCMSN.  Some others were due to be taking the composite exam in the morning anyway having missed out on the first test (you can either sit BSCI and BCMSN separately or take the composite – Firebrand recommend taking the separate tests initially so that you have another chance if you fail either of the first two), so in a way the BCMSN result didn’t matter a great deal, although of course everyone wanted to do their best.

I failed the BCMSN test by one point, and was a little annoyed to say the least.  What annoyed me more than failing was that having come so close to the mark I had clearly not absorbed as much of the material as I had hoped – I would have been disappointed to have passed by one point, but probably not quite as much if I’m honest.  Failing meant that I had to get up with the others and take the composite when I had had my fingers crossed for a lay in (and on my birthday too!).  Thankfully I passed the composite with a good score and was back on track to the begin the ONT course later that morning.

The ONT is the smallest course, lightest on material, but heavy on memorisation.  There are no practical elements to the exam, whereas the others all contain simulation items.  ONT concentrates on VoIP, QoS and wireless technologies.  There is some bizarre exam content with some questions asking what can be found on certain tabs on Windows wireless clients, which is quite irritating (my first thought was “I don’t know, show me and I’ll tell you”).  The tutor wasn’t very keen on these strange inclusions, but of course if they are on the test you need to know them.  I definitely found this course to be a much more relaxed pace than the first two.  I also found the content very interesting: QoS and VoIP go hand in hand and wireless is here to stay and we need to implement measures to reduce risks and secure it.

ISCW was last, and again much more gently paced than the first week.  It covers security technologies such as IPSec and IPS, and MPLS.  Again the content is very interesting and very much applicable to today’s large networks (except the stuff on Cisco homeworker links – hands up if you have a Cisco router at home to connect you to the office?).  Thankfully I managed to finish up having gotten through the last two tests ok, and so finished with my CCNP.

Overall it was a fantastic experience.  The other guys on the course (no girls – sorry girls) were all great to spend the two weeks with and the tutor was absolutely first grade, he knew the subjects in a depth that was truly impressive.  I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about the whole thing if I had not come away with the certification, but I’d hope that I would say the same.  It is very hard work, and you have to be prepared to cut yourself off from the world for two weeks and work late every single day you are there, no weekends off or early finishes (except maybe on exam days when you might get to finish at 7 after the test).  It is definitely something I would repeat, and absolutely recommend.  If you do though, you have to be prepared to work for it.

I’m now away at a training centre in Bedford, a long way from home.  I’m here to do my Cisco CCNP course, but not in the conventional manner.  I’m here on a boot camp style training course – 13 days solid training, 14 hours per day.  Usually the CCNP is done over four, one week courses.  There are four exams to pass, which here are built into the course structure, but usually are taken in your own time once you have completed your week and had time to revise.

I’m very much excited, but also quite anxious about underachieving.  I am fairly knowledgeable on the subject matter and work in a job that this is useful for, but I currently have little applied practical experience, mostly I deal in theoretical practicalities.

I completed the CCNA in April 2007 and managed that relatively comfortably (although had to re-take due to missing a whole chunk of questions on a multi-question page and failing my first attempt by 0.1%), and since then have had further exposure to different technologies, so I’m hopeful that I’m at a level where I won’t get left behind.

I’m doing the training through Firebrand and this course is based at Wyboston Lakes.  Although I’ve just arrived and haven’t really look around properly yet it would seem to be quite a nice place.  Let’s hope I still feel the same way in two weeks time when I’m finishing up…

Sadly I won’t have any real opportunity to update my blog or Twitter while I’m here as I think the 14 hours each day will take it out of me, and I’m going to need all the energy I can save to help me through the experience.  I’ll give an update though when I’m done, and give some feedback on the boot camp experience and the quality of the course so folks thinking of giving it a shot have an idea of what to expect.

See you in two weeks…..