Cisco 350-401 ENCOR

The Enterprise Core Technology Core and also considered as a Specialist badge as well from Cisco, is the new ENCOR exam that not just considered to participate in 2 badges, but also is a requirement for the new CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure v1 from Cisco Systems.

350 401 ENCOR

this exam is actually jumping in the middle of the CCNP Certificate and labeling it as CCNP Enterprise throwing the old label of CCNP Routing & Switching with all its old 3 exams (Routing, Switching, and Troubleshooting). ALSO, interestingly it is replacing the old CCIE Routing & Switching Written Exam, with a new method of becoming CCIE and that is the CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure, that only requires this ENCOR as a prerequisite. so it is nice to pass the ENCOR exam and be involved on both CCNP Enterprise and CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure.

How Professional is CCNP ENCOR?

The first impression that you might take when you hear about an exam that replaces the old famous CCNP Routing & Switching, also replacing that difficult, expert-rate, 100+ written exam of the CCIE Routing & Switching. then you get either frightened of that exam's level, or brace you yourself for something so advanced and challenging coming, well, the truth is, it is not really, not saying that is not professional or disappointing, but lets elaborate this: The ENCOR exam is of the general Core and mandatory exam for the CCNP Enterprise certificate, so it is not carrying a label of "Routing & Switching" to be so deep dived in these topics, it quite the opposite.

What does the CCNP ENCOR agenda cover?

This exam is quite general, technology wise, the Cisco 350-401 ENCOR exam focuses on 7 different domains of knowledge, and introduces you to these 7 domains kind of as a beginner starting to know them, it does expect you to know the fundamentals of "what is a network" only, and it will carry beyond that level to show you many different areas of expertise that you can get to know, and perhaps later deep dive in. but why 7 different domains, isn't that a lot! maybe distracting?, no not really, all of these 7 domains do actually form a realistic Enterprise Environment, and a certified Professional Enterprise Engineer, should have some knowledge with each of these, which are?

Network Architecture
Virtualization Types
Infrastructure Technologies
Assurance and Monitoring
Network Security
Wireless Local Area Networks
Networks Automation

so you will get a good snack from everything in this open buffet, and then later go and concentrate on one of these techs to be more professional with:

ENARSI: Advanced Routing
ENSDWI: SD-WAN from scratch to high-level
ENSLD: Principles of Designing
ENAUTO: Automate Networks
ENWLSD: Design the WLAN
ENELSI: Implement the WLAN

Does the ENCOR go deep dive?

The ENCOR exam varies in how deep it goes from topic to other, and from protocol to other as well, for the design, wireless, and security, it doesn't do much really, tells you principles, shows you few protocols, design-wise, and ask you to implement couple of them. with Routing, Services, Assurance, and Automation it asks to LAB a lot, and varies protocol-wise, only theory for EIGRP!, only normal area LABs for OSPF, only direct peering for eBGP! strange right!?, but still asks to LAB a lot.

CCNP ENCOR Exam:

the ENCOR exam is of 101-103 questions, they contain MCQ's (multi-choice questions), DnD's (drags and drops), and sometimes a fill in the blanks. you will have to finish them in 129 minutes, plus 30 minutes for you if you were not a Native English language speaker. Backward navigation is not supported, so it is a straight-forward procedure towards the 100th+ question. upon finishing the exam you will get an immediate score result of either pass or fail, and score value is no longer shared with you.

Cisco CCNP ENCOR 350 - 401 Training

Cisco CCNP ENARSI 300-410 Training

Cisco CCNP Enterprise Bundle Training (Encor + Enarsi)

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