CCNP ROUTE 642-902 Cert Kit: Video, Flash Card, and Quick Reference Preparation Package (Video Mentor) [Paperback]

Some people like learning from speech and demonstrations, others prefer a traditional book. You can get either approach to use to prepare for the Switch certification exam from Cisco. In fact, Cisco publishes several books on the Switch exam. For me the book has a lot more detail and is what I need when I'm actually working on a problem. On the other hand, sometimes I get so involved with the details that I forget the overall view. A video like this one gives you a quick (if you call six hours quick) overview of the material you'll need for the test. If you go through the video first, you can grasp the overall view and then I'd suggest you read one of the more detailed books on Tshoot. If you check Amazon, you'll find that David Hucaby the author/performer on the video has also written on of the books. If you like his style you may consider getting his book. If you want a different approach that talks about the same things but uses different words you may want one of the others. Good luck on your test.

After taking the 642-902 exam, using this as my primary study material, it's more suited as a supplement to other more thorough material - good to help you either get a basic understanding to start off studying or as a pre-exam review. It does provide a great summary of the different features, tables and charts that help you understand the topics better, but those are only a part of what you need to pass the exam. You need an emphasis on recognizing and interpreting output in order to pass the exam, which this does not provide.

Rather than trying to be a traditional book-type test prep solution, this package goes the Video Instructor-Led Training route. There is a 128-page Quick Reference guide that serves as a helpful review and reinforces the material presented in the videos. This guide serves as a good overview for the material and helps you target the areas you'd like to watch -- if you aren't planning to watch all 6 hours in order. The Quick Reference is available as a 156 page PDF on the DVD as well.

The DVD provides fat clients for Windows and Mac machines and there is an HTML page that requires Adobe Flash 10.0.12.36 or higher and can be used with Linux machines. I tried them all and didn't have any problems with any of the access methods. For other OSes, they're just FLV files and something like VLC should work fine. It was helpful to have the PDFs for each 'Lab' available in the interface, and those included the relevant IOS configuration commands for that section.

The certflashcardsonline.com material is nice because it is web-based and can be accessed while I'm on the road or sitting at a coffee shop -- no need to put the DVD into my laptop and pop on my headphones. These flashcards serve a similar role as the quiz/testing engines included with other products. Although it does rely on you grading yourself rather than scoring your responses for you, I found it valuable to have instant feedback during studying: "oh, right, I forgot that BGP worked *that* way." I found it is helpful to be able to create customized sets of cards that can be used to stress certain areas while excluding questions on areas where I am already comfortable with the material.

I can't speak to any differences in the material vs. other offerings since the last CCNP Route courseware I went through was 10 years ago, but this appears to follow the current official curriculum and exam prep guide. I haven't taken the exam yet, either, but feel about as prepared as I did after going through the official Cisco training for their FC switching exam.