101 Labs - Cisco CCNP Enterprise: Hands-on Labs for the CCNP 350-401 ENCOR 300-410 ENARSI Exams

This is the v3 of the original book. Most of the concepts covered haven't changed much since the last edition but the presentation format is well-tested and dependable for hands-on practicing of thematic CCNP concepts. IMHO, it pays to have the most current edition of such a battle-tested compilation, which is prominently featured in my personal library. I have a print copy of the still-useful previous edition but purchased the kindle version for the current updates. Good book. Get it. You won't regret it!

This is a great lab manual for the new CCNP Enterprise but if you have the one released last year this is the same book and you will not need this one.

I appreciate that most people going for CCNP these days will go the ENCOR & ENARSI path, but that's not everyone's plan. I am not planning to take ENARSI as my concentration exam, so filtering through the labs to find only the labs and tasks that apply to the ENCOR exam is cumbersome. I would love it if the labs were labeled on which exam they apply to, and specifically which exam topics the lab covers.

Read all the theory you want. Use those flash cards for memorization. If you're not DOING, however, that's not going to help. This book is filled with labs that give real hands on practice. Highly recommended!

Frame Relay is not on the ENARSI exam outline, but many of these labs require it. CML doesn’t emulate Frame Relay connections, so you’re probably going to have to get some old equipment. I’m assuming they’re using Frame Relay because it’s the easiest way to set up a point-to-multipoint network. It wouldn’t be so bad if they gave you the Frame Relay config and left it alone for the rest of the lab, but at least one of the labs I’ve completed requires you to mess with the Frame Relay configuration to meet an objective. Since I’m not fluent in this protocol, I don’t know if some bug in the network is occurring because I’ve misconfigured something with routing or if I’ve messed something up with Frame Relay.That aside, the format of the labs is excellent. It doesn’t just hand you the configs but tells you what it expects the result to be and tells you what will happen if you’ve configured it correctly. Sometimes the instructions will prohibit the use of some feature (no static routes, no route filters etc.) in order to force you to think of an alternate solution. It DOES give you the configs at the end to check your work, though.

I've come across a few typos that have caused some unnecessary confusion. The majority of the issues I've come across are with GNS3. I've spent more time troubleshooting GNS3 than doing any of the labs. But when GNS3 wasn't an issue, the labs were good. I've learned a lot thus far.

I would have given this product a higher rating had it not been marketed toward the 300-410 ENARSI exam. While overall it's a good lab book that covers several core ENCOR topics, there is a very core topic that is missing from this book if you are preparing for the 300-410 ENARSI exam. This book has no DMVPN labs. If you are sitting for the ENARSI exam, then you already know from Cisco's exam blueprint that you need to know DMVPN phase 1, 2, and 3 like the back of your hand. The reason this is so vital is because there is so much material to cover with DMVPN such as all the phases, running IGPs on those phases, DMVPN dual hub dual cloud, DMVPN IPv6 over IPV4, and DMVPN over IPsec. These are must know topics that you have to lab to really understand. I really wish this book would have included some. I own this new edition and looking through it, there are labs on IPv6 tunnels, IPV6 GRE tunnels, and some other IPV6 tunnels labs but no DMVPN. As previously mentioned, overall this is still a solid book for labbing other core components from the ENCOR and ENARSI exams but I feel that DMVPN is too much of a core topic to leave out especially if youre marketing this lab guide for the ENARSI exam.

This lab manual is terrible. They obviously did not employ a technical editor because every other lab has a mistake. He uses way to many frame relay topologies for a technology that is dying. Stay away if you want to keep your sanity.