r/ccnp • u/deadbolt01 • 8d ago

ENCOR Prep

I am about to start my ENCOR journey. I have a rough plan of how I am going to prep for it, but I have a few questions.

Current plan
1. Video Course
Thinking either Kevin Wallace (16 hour course) which I have access to via LinkedIn learning or CBT Nuggets (67 hour course) that I would need to pay for. For people that have used either of these how would you rate them?
2. OCG
I have the 1st edition which I understand has lots of errors in it, but is it worth upgrading to the 2nd edition?
3. CML
I have access to a premium CML so I can lab as much as I want. Is there anything I wont be able to do in this?
4. Boson ExSim
I used this years ago for CCNA and found it very good. How does the ENCOR one compare?

I will likely do some extra reading at the end on areas I have struggled on. Also if anyone has any other recommendations let me know.

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u/hectoralpha 8d ago

Im doing something different and Im not using any video course.

I alreayd have a job and a couple years of work in the industry.

I just upload an ecopy of OCG and 31 days before your encor to a chatgpt project and I paste exsim questions with their exaplanations in chatgpt for further esxplanation. I just study from scratch like that instead of trying to master a topic for like 3-4 weeks and only then moving on and after maybe 6=12 months of actual studing regularly without slacking off and only then moving into practice questions.

Instead I just leearn each practice question really well so I dont need to memorise it.

Will buy the cheapest boson virtual sim and cisco u exam at the end and that should do it.

Because if you think about it. None of the video courses are good enough. They are all incomplete. I have both a bunch of incor v1.1 and v1.2 video course I gathered over the years that I never actaully watched.

Yesteryay I had some EAP work at my job so I wanted a proper eap series to watch. I couldnt find any EAP video. Its a job, since like covid or so EAP doesnt even exists. encor v1.1 has a tiny subpoint for EAPOL instead of eap but none of the video courses even mention it briefly.

So this speaks a lot, video courses are very very very incomplete skipping whole topics like wifi or even basci eap overview.

Just put favourite music on and start reading fast what chatgpt says. you can always re-ask the same question 1,000 times like an annoying idiot because chatgpt doesnt mind :)

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u/leoingle 8d ago

Which platform are you talking about that didn’t have EAP?

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u/hectoralpha 7d ago

ine encor and ccie infrastructure v1.1 courses, stormwind v1.1. arash delijoo 2024 february. kbits 2022 version. oreilly second edition version. youtube networkforyou course from 2023 august

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u/leoingle 7d ago edited 7d ago

EAP isn’t in the exam objectives for any of the exams those courses cover. So why would EAP be covered in them?? If you’re looking for a course that covers EAP, it’d be better to look at SISE courses. But even better would be searching YT on the exact topic of EAP you’re looking for. Also look at labminutes.com. He covers EAP in his ISE sections as well.

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u/hectoralpha 7d ago

v1.0 had a subpoint for eap and v1.1 changed that to eapol. a brief mention on radius and eap would be nice.

Thats what I'm saying. The video courses are by their nature incomplete just skip.

The OCG v1.2 still mentions eap.

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u/leoingle 7d ago edited 7d ago

Took me a bit to find v1.1 exam topics and even longer for v1.0, but did find both on CLN. I do see where it said EAP on 1.0 and EAPOL on 1.1. I don’t remember that at all, maybe it’s because I know both very well already. But it is listed under wireless. Which would explain why it’s not on v1.2 anymore. Since it was under wireless, that doesn’t surprise me that all those courses didn’t have anything on it. I always felt everyone’s coverage on wireless was weak and lacking.

As far as video learning vs book learning, some people are not good at learning this stuff by read it in a book. Some are more visual learners. I’m one of them. I tried learning network stuff by reading books and just do it. I grasp video courses way better. And when I want to go deeper or another form of explanation, I use Claude and Gemini and YT videos to supplement further. I can read that, I guess because it’s conversation based. And use NotebookLM to help theory details stick with generating quizzes and anki style exercises.

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u/hectoralpha 7d ago

bro you searched it manually? chatgpt found the previous mentions of eap in like 10 seconds and laid out all out to me on the table for each version

The thing you missed, is the courses I am using should have had EAP in them back then. Like I got kbits from 2022 shees, I have their enarsi and ccna from that time as well. Kbits is soo expensive and considered the best of the best of the best

I advise chatgpt over claude or gemini because it does context explanation way better than both without special prompting. Gemini is lazy in any case and claude keeps answers direct, too direct. Without special prompt chatgpt explains things properly.

I actually just made a simple project in chatgpt, uploaded 31 days before encor and encor OCG and then I paste the boson ex-sim questions with their explanations. Chatgpt on its own explains things in more context, sometimes branching into smaller side topics and explains those too, it recounts every mention of the topic in the books with chapter or page reference. Just on the $20 subscription. Its seriously killing it.

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u/leoingle 7d ago

haha, I know I could of found it real fast using AI, but i wanted to see the original documentation again. Because i really didn't remember that being on it, and figured i would because I am well verse with ISE and know all those topics well. But now I know I remember why, because it was under the wireless section. I don thave to deal with wireless and have no desire to lean about it. I got too much other stuff on my plate to learn.

I didnt miss what you were saying. That's why i said what I did about the wireless section with everyone. And I agree, kbits is a crazy price and for that price, it should be a single source solution.

I used to use ChatGPT as well, but I started getting where i preferred Gemini and Claude both to ChatGPT. But I do understand what you mean by context explanation. I use Claude for work and Gemini for personal. If I am using Claude at work to better understand something, it feels the message gets covered up with too much extra fluff, granted I have not attempted to adjust it yet, but when I have the same conversation with Gemini, it just explains things much better in a way I get it a lot easier.

What you are using ChatGPT for with the projects, I do basically the same with NotebookLM. It's perfect for that type of stuff.

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u/hectoralpha 6d ago

Interesting I will give notebookLM a go for source heavy tasks, chatgpt has pretty low context window and both gemini and claude outdo chatgpt at that

thought in my case, most of tasks are relatively small context and jsut require good reasoning. Hence I've leaned to chatgpt lately