Michael Aldridge Over the past 15 years I have taken many certification exams and created practice exams for many of them. If I had to choose one, the Cisco 642-832 TSHOOT exam would be my choice. It is part of the Cisco Certified Network Professional track Routing and Switching.
TSHOOT is likely to be more similar to the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert lab exam (CCIE), than the two other CCNP exams ROUTE and SWITCH. You will be given traditional questions such as drag-and-drop and multiple choice, but you will also be given troubleshooting labs that can diagnose problems using a unique trouble ticketing system not found in any other Cisco exams.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the TSHOOT trouble tickets will test you ability to troubleshoot complex network topologies. While the topology will remain the same for each ticket, configurations on routers and switches may change from ticket to ticket. An interface might be closed on one ticket, but OSPF may be misconfigured in another, and IPv6 may be misconfigured in a third. The troubleshooting scenario may look the same for all three tickets.
The same three questions will be asked on each ticket. I cannot disclose what I saw during the live exam because of the Cisco Certifications and Confidentiality agreement I signed at the time I took the exam. Cisco’s TSHOOT exam demo only asks three questions per ticket.
Which device is the fault condition?
Which technology is responsible for the fault condition?
What is the solution for the fault condition?
These questions are interesting because they are organized in a tree-like manner. This means that your answers to the first question will affect the choices available for the second question. Your answers to the second question will impact the choices available for the third question. Pretty cool, huh? If you answer that the problem exists in R1, the second question will include choices that relate technologies that are available on R1. If you answer that the problem is related Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol, the third question will include choices that relate to solving EIGRP issues.
Here’s an example taken from the Cisco ExSim-Max 642-832 TSOOT practice exam. The first question on every trouble ticket is always “Which one of the following devices is the cause of the problem?” The second question is similar if you choose R1.
Which one of these technologies is the problem?
A. NTP B. NAT C. BGP E. OSPFv3 F. redistribution H. Layer 3 security I. layer 3 addressing
If you go back to the first questions and change your answer to DS1, then the options for the second question will change.
Which one of these technologies is the problem?
A. NTP B. HSR C. OSPFv2 E. Layer 3 Address F. STP H. Etherchannel H. VLAN Configuration I. interface
One of the most frequent bugs I receive on our ExSim-Max TSHOOT practice exam software is that the correct choice isn’t listed. Consider two devices that won’t establish an EIGRP adjacency. Each device is configured using secondary IP addresses. EIGRP won’t use a secondary address to establish a neighbor relationship. EIGRP or Layer 3 address? If both devices can communicate over IP, then EIGRP is the problem, not Layer 3 Addressing. If you don’t see the correct answer to the question, you can go back to the previous question to choose another device or technology that may be related to your answer. It might be listed there.
You can see the TSHOOT tree at work by taking our ExSim-Max TSHOOT practice tests.
