How to become a CISCO CCNP

Thinking about earning your Cisco Certified Network Professional certification? 

Congrats for your decision to take the emerging career path. I must tell you that Cisco certification is both financially and personally beneficial.

To earn your CCNP, you must first earn your CCNA certification. Then you will have to take with a decision – for the three-exam CCNP path, or the four-exam path?   They’re both quite demanding, so let’s take a look at each path.

The four-exam CCNP path includes the Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks Exam (BSCI), the Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks Exam (BCMSN), the Building Cisco Remote Access Network (BCRAN), and the Cisco Internetworks Troubleshooting (CIT) exam.

The three-exam path combines the BSCI and BCMSN exams into a single exam, called the composite exam.

I am often asked in what order do I recommend taking exams. After earning your CCNA, I recommend you to start studying for BSCI exam immediately. You will find that the fundamentals you learned in your CCNA study will be of great help to you in this exam. When it comes to OSPF and EIGRP, you’re going to add quite a bit to your CCNA knowledgebase, as well as being introduced to BGP.

I have no preference between BCMSN and BCRAN exams, but I recommend that you take the CIT exam as the last. You will use all the skills you learned in the first three exams to pass the CIT. It’s a very difficult test, and it’s a little hard to troubleshoot techniques you haven’t learned yet!

CCNP is both financially and personally satisfactory. Once you finish your CCNA studies, take a breather and then start your CCNP studies. The more you know, the more valuable you are in today’s changing IT job market.