I recently sat the JNCIP-ENT exam in person at a local test center. This was to recertify my JNCIE, so it’s about the third or fourth time I’ve done some version of this JNCIP exam.
Exam Overview
The exam is 65 questions long with a time limit of 90 minutes. Things do change over time so make sure you have a look at the current blueprint which you can find at https://www.juniper.net/certification.
There is a test exam you can take from Juniper’s Open Learning. It isn’t the most obvious link but go to https://learningportal.juniper.net/juniper/user_activity_info.aspx?id=JUNIPER-OPEN-LEARNING and look for “practice exams” under “Step 2.” You should then get a search of available practice tests. Note that you need a free login for the Learning Portal to get into the practice exam.
The practice exam is pretty similar in terms of the types of questions and the difficulty level of the actual exam. That said, I don’t recall if the practice test covered all of the blueprint sections, so make sure you study everything you need to.
Question Types
The exam itself is a mix of multi-choice questions expecting either a single answer or multiple answers (Pick two / Pick three / etc).
Quite a few of the questions have exhibits, The exhibits will usually be one of the following:
- A network diagram
- Some log output
- Some show command output
- Some configuration snippets.
A few exhibits combined both a diagram and some sort of CLI output
One thing I always tend to find annoying is having enough resolution on the exam screen itself to be able to see the whole exhibit and all of the answer choices.
Blueprint
The blueprint can be found on Juniper’s website. The current major topic areas are:
- Interior Gateway Protocols (IGPs)
- BGP
- IP Multicast
- Ethernet Switching and Spanning Tree
- Layer 2 Authentication and Access Control
- IP Telephony Features
- Class of service (CoS)
- EVPN
The topics on the blueprint change over time so you should always make sure you’re preparing your study from the latest blueprint.
It is also useful to look at the certification news https://www.juniper.net/us/en/training/news.html to see if they have announced any upcoming changes to the exam.
In terms of coverage, I felt like everything on the blueprint got tested. Importantly I didn’t feel that there were any questions in the exam from a topic that wasn’t on the blueprint.
Exam Experience
The exam experience overall was pretty smooth. I booked the test the night before through the Pearson VUE website. Signing in and out of the test center was the usual easy process.
As I’ve mentioned previously in how long to study for a Juniper certification, the JNCIP level tests are not simple. In this particular case, I ended up a bit short of time near the end and felt a bit rushed through the last 10 questions or so. I put this down to the study approach I took.
I probably spent too long on some “easy” questions second-guessing myself, time that could have been saved if I’d done just a bit more study on some of the IGP and BGP topics.
The questions didn’t feel designed to be tricky or misleading. Some were very straightforward, others were written in a way you had to apply your knowledge to get to the answer. For example, instead of a question that outright asks you how you do X, you may get a question that describes a situation, so you need to know that X is the right approach to use, and how to actually do X.
Several of the questions had log file output as an exhibit, so you will need hands-on experience to know what normal looks like, and what log entries are relevant to the question.
Study Materials
My study materials were pretty light, which in hindsight was not the best idea.
Since this was for recertification, rather than the first time I’ve done this, I didn’t really review IGP, BGP, Multicast, or CoS topics.
I searched the Juniper website to do some research on EVPN concepts and configuration and brushed up on some Layer 2 stuff I don’t often use.
Study Time
My study time for this was shorter than I would normally do, largely because I had a cert expiry date coming up and had started the study process later than I should have.
So overall maybe 20 or so hours spread over a couple of weeks, and relying heavily on existing knowledge and experience.
Recommendations
The main recommendation I have for this exam is to know the topics on the blueprint. That sounds like a simple and unhelpful answer, but the truth is that is all you need to do to pass. Know the material on the blueprint.
Know the concepts of how the topics work, how to configure them, and how to troubleshoot them.
Definitely lab stuff up if you haven’t worked with it before. Learn what it looks like both when it is working properly, and when it isn’t working. Make sure you look through log files of working and broken configurations.
As a more concrete example, let’s think about OSPF. Know the concepts of how OSPF works – all the LSA types, the types of areas, interactions between areas, how adjacencies get established, route redistribution, and summarization – just all the stuff about how OSPF works.
Then learn how to configure all the conceptual stuff you covered. How do you configure neighbors, areas, routing between areas, metrics, etc.
When it comes to troubleshooting – what do the show commands look like when things are working? How do they look different when things are broken? Same thing with log files. What do you see in the logs when things are good, what do you see when they are bad?
When you know all the topics on the blueprint to this level, then you’ll have an easier time in the exam.
Final Thoughts
The JNCIP-ENT is a hard exam, but it is very achievable if you put in the effort up-front.
If this is the first time you’re attempting the exam don’t cut corners. Remember the valuable thing isn’t the certification itself, but the knowledge you gain on your learning journey.
Study everything on the blueprint and lab all of the topics you can. The key is to learn and understand the material.
If this is a “re-cert” exam, then spend the little extra time and effort to review the basics, that perhaps you don’t remember quite as well as you think you do. Make sure you review the blueprint and brush up on topics that have been added or changed since you last took the exam.
Other than that – good luck and happy studying.