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Prerequisites and Lab Requirements
The CCNA certification isn't required to attain the CCNP Enterprise certification. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend that you obtain your CCNA certification or the equivalent experience before embarking on your CCNP Enterprise journey. Refer to the CCNA exam blueprint (www.cisco.com/c/en/us/training-events/training-certifications/certifications/associate/ccna.html) for a full list of topics you should already be familiar with. Because the CCNP Enterprise is a professional-level certification, I don't review some of the basics covered by the CCNA such as subnetting, IPv4, and IPv6 addressing.
You'll need a virtual or physical lab, which you should already have from your previous networking studies. Your lab should be able to support at least eight routers and two layer 3 switches running IOS version 15.2 or later. You should be able to configure your lab on your own by looking at layer 2 and layer 3 diagrams. Topology diagrams will be included in each chapter.
If your existing lab doesn't meet the requirement, Cisco Virtual Internet Routing Lab (http://virl.cisco.com) includes virtual machine images for a variety of switches and routers. These images are virtual machines that run using QEMU and are light on CPU and memory, so you don't need a beast of a server to run simulations, although more resources always help. Other options, although not blessed by Cisco, are GNS3 (https://gns3.com) and EVE-NG (www.eve-ng.net).
How to Use This Book
Hands-on experience is crucial for exam success. Each chapter in this study guide contains hands-on exercises that you should strive to complete during or immediately after your reading of the chapter. The exercises are there to test your understanding, and not to cover every possible permutation of configurations. The exercises are your foundation, and you should build on them by experimenting with them, breaking things, and then figuring out how to fix them.
Each chapter contains review questions to thoroughly test your understanding of the services and concepts covered in that chapter. They also test your ability to integrate the concepts with information from preceding chapters. I've designed the questions to help you realistically gauge your understanding and identify your blind spots. Once you complete the assessment in each chapter, referring to the answer key will give you not only the correct answers but a detailed explanation as to why they're correct. Even if you feel comfortable on a certain topic, resist the urge to skip over the pertinent chapter. I strongly encourage you to carefully read this book from cover to cover so that you can discover your strengths and weaknesses—particularly the ones you may not be aware of. Remember, even though you can't learn networking just by reading a book, it's equally true that you can't learn without reading a book.
The book also contains a self-assessment exam with 36 questions, two practice exams with 50 questions each to help you gauge your readiness to take the exam, and flashcards to help you learn and retain key facts needed to prepare for the exam.
What Does This Book Cover?
This book covers topics you need to know to prepare for the CCNP ENCOR exam:
Chapter 1: Networking Fundamentals This chapter overviews the fundamentals of networking theory and network design.
Chapter 2: Spanning Tree Protocols This chapter covers Spanning Tree protocols, including Rapid Spanning Tree and Multiple Instance Spanning Tree. We also cover VLANs, trunking, and pruning.
Chapter 3: Enterprise Network Design In this chapter, you'll learn the advantages and disadvantages of different physical and layer 2 network designs. We also dive into EtherChannels and first-hop redundancy protocols.
Chapter 4: Wireless LAN (WLAN) This chapter explains the fundamentals of radio frequency, WLAN 802.11 standards, wireless security, and WLAN controller (WLC) design and deployment considerations.
Chapter 5: Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) In this chapter, you'll learn how to configure and troubleshoot OSPF adjacencies, authentication, route filtering, summarization, and more.
Chapter 6: Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) This chapter covers advanced EIGRP concepts, including redistribution, multipathing, and path control.
Chapter 7: The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) In this chapter, you'll learn all about BGP, including path selection, redistribution, summarization, and filtering.
Chapter 8: Network Address Translation and Multicast This two-for-the-price-of-one chapter gives you complete coverage of network address translation and multicast.
Chapter 9: Quality of Service This chapter covers QoS concepts, including queuing, policing, shaping, and classification.
Chapter 10: Network Virtualization This chapter dives deep into virtualization concepts such as server virtualization, network virtualization, generic routing encapsulation, IPsec, LISP, and VXLAN.
Chapter 11: Software-Defined Networking and Network Programmability In this chapter, you'll learn about Cisco's software-defined networking (SDN) solutions, SD-Access, Cisco DNA Center, and SD-WAN. You'll also learn about network automation tools such as Python, RESTCONF, NETCONF, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, and SaltStack.
Chapter 12: Network Security and Monitoring This chapter will show you how to implement infrastructure security best practices and wireless security configurations. You'll also learn about Cisco security products and how to monitor your network using NetFlow, IPSLA, debugs, Syslog, SNMP, and more.
Interactive Online Learning Environment and Test Bank
The interactive online learning environment that accompanies this CCNP Enterprise Certification Study Guide: Exam 350-401 provides a test bank with study tools to help you prepare for the certification exam—and increase your chances of passing it the first time! The test bank includes the following:
Sample Tests All the questions in this book are provided, including the assessment test at the end of this introduction and the chapter tests that include the review questions at the end of each chapter. In addition, there are two practice exams with 50 questions each. Use these questions to test your knowledge of the study guide material. The online test bank runs on multiple devices.
Flashcards The online text banks include 100 flashcards specifically written to hit you hard, so don't get discouraged if you don't ace your way through them at first. They're there to ensure that you're really ready for the exam. And no worries—armed with the review questions, practice exams, and flashcards, you'll be more than prepared when exam day comes. Questions are provided in digital flashcard format (a question followed by a single correct answer). You can use the flashcards to reinforce your learning and provide last-minute test prep before the exam.
Other Study Tools A glossary of key terms from this book is available as a fully searchable PDF.
