Scott from US just failed 300-101 new member

Hello to everyone!

Today I took the 300-101 and failed pretty badly. My scores and study tools are posted below. I am here because I have been told this is the place to go for in-depth knowledge of Cisco R&S for an amazing price. So hopefully with Rene’s and this communities help I will pass the 300-101 next time around! Below is my weak points, scores, and study tools. Any tips or help at all is greatly appreciated! Good luck to everyone on their studies.

I have a list of things I would like to study hard:
PPPoE
DMVPN & the phases
EVN
Frame Relay
OSPF LSDB
and much much more lol

Scores
Network Principals 50%
Layer 2 Technologies 17%
Layer 3 Technologies 74%
VPN Technologies 33%
Infrastructure Security 57%
Infrastructure Services 54%

Study tools
CCNP 300-101 official cert guide
Cisco CCNP Route Lab Manual version 7
101 Labs for the CCNP (I like the labs but I sometimes have a hard time understanding the tasks the author lays out for me. Perhaps it is just me)
Chris Bryant and Laz Diaz videos on udemy
GNS3 w/ cisco 7200 images (c7200-adventerprisek9-mz.152-4.S3)
I have 5 1841 routers w/c1841-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M4

Hello Scott,

Welcome on board! Sorry to hear you failed the exam. Did you have a lot of questions that you weren’t sure about what is was about or did you have trouble with the commands / show outputs?

You have plenty of guides and equipment.

With all these topics, here’s what I usually recommend:

  • Read up or watch some videos to get a basic understanding to learn what the protocol is about.
  • Make a mindmap in your own words. For example, for DMVPN add all the different phases and for each phase, add how to run each routing protocol on top of it. This gives you a great overview.
  • Lab up everything: don’t just copy/paste things but try to configure it yourself. Try show and debug commands, test things. Make notes in an app like Evernote and store snippets of configurations.
  • Review everything. For example, set a goal for yourself to configure DMVPN phase 3 with OSPF and see how far you get. Use your own notes for this. If you do this a couple of times you’ll notice that things will sink in and you get a lot quicker at it.

If you do the exam and you fail, once you exit the test center , do a braindump and write down everything that you were unsure about or use a voice recorder (I love on Braintoss on Android). When you get back home, look up everything so you know the answer next time.

Rene

Wow Rene thanks for all the great advice! I think I had trouble with both the questions and the lab sims. I really like all of your ideas especially the mind map one! I can’t wait to give them all a shot.