Voice was dropped from the new CCNP exam and Wireless is lightly touched on, but we will get into why you might still want to learn these technologies later in this article We have built modular style selections that make it easy for anyone to find a kit that matches both their budget and their goals. We understand that people have budgets and thus we give you choices for all price points.
The upper end CCNP kits add in more G2 routers all the way up to XE routers. Obviously, as the price goes up, you can experience more of the features throughout the Cisco Academy labs. As you go from one level of the kit to the next, we try to strike a balance between the cost of the kit and the features you will be able to experience in each kit. We even have a kit that is an updated version of the old four router and four switch topology in case you want to play around with expanding past the new smaller topology for “bonus points”. What we try to do is provide you a few different levels of CCNP kits from the Super Economy CCNP kit all the way up to the Titanium CCNP kit. This directly builds on the skills and curriculum from ENCORE and you will even see some overlap from what you previously learned. This is the most similar concentration to what we saw on the previous ROUTE, SWITCH and TSHOOT exams and teaches you to install, configure, operate, and troubleshoot an enterprise level network. This is the “Implementing Cisco Enterprise Advanced Routing and Services” concentration that completes CCNP Enterprise. The vast majority of candidates move directly to CCNP ENARSI 300-410 at this point. Then you pick a concentration exam to complete your certification. Now with building your Cisco CCNP lab, you will start with CCNP ENCORE 350-401 as your core requirement. The CCNP ENCORE 350-401 exam is also now the pre-requisite for CCIE, so you’ll have the building blocks in place to move up the certification ladder after completing your CCNP! This is also definitely a lot less than the price of attending a Cisco CCNA training class or boot camp and you will get to keep the equipment to practice on for as long as you like, even after you certify! This is also key because a lot of the real deep learning truly begins when you can tinker with your own lab, on your own time and at your own pace. So, you can now build a CCNP lab for considerably less than ever because you only need three routers and three switches as your core topology. The same is now true of the new CCNP exam! Where the previous version of CCNP required a larger four router and four switch topology, Cisco has reduced that down to the same device count as CCNA. When you are building your Cisco CCNA lab, it is pretty easy as three Cisco router and three Cisco switches will put you in a pretty good position at a pretty reasonable price.