I passed the CCNP SWITCH exam on Monday morning at the second attempt :o)
With much relief I'm now having a couple of weeks off the study to catch up on jobs about the house before I crack on with TSHOOT and get my CCNP in bag.
So far as the exam was concerned I felt that it was challenging but not impossible. I believe people regard this as the hardest of the 3 exams and on measure I would say that it has been the toughest Cisco exam I've sat so far.
Without breaking the NDA, I'd say the exam tests a lot of the detail in a narrow spectrum of topics. The same areas kept cropping up in the multiple choice, multiple answer questions and also the labs/simlet questions.
For any one attending a Cisco Networking Academy, you can ignore multicast completely. If you've got the Cisco Press books you'll see that in the Foundation Learning Guide, multicast is present (chpt 7 I think) BUT in David Hucaby's Official Certification Guide it is not. I think Hucaby's book is more recent so this explains the difference. Also check the exam topics on the Cisco Learning Network and you'll note that multicast is not listed in the tested subjects either.
Other than that little bit of advice I'd recommend you watch your time very carefully. I got to question 49 of 50 and was presented with a lab! I was lucky to have sufficient time remaining and was able to calmly complete it working on the gamble that I wouldn't get a 5th lab ( yes I did get 4 labs) at question 50. I might have felt differently had I only had a few minutes remaining for the last 2 questions. So be warned.
Onwards and upwards.
