Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification is a Professional level Cisco networking certification. A CCNP certification indicates that the respective individual is well equipped with networking and troubleshooting knowledge and skills. They will be experts at installing, troubleshooting and configuring the WAN”s and LAN”s, of large as well as small business enterprises. The CCNP syllabus includes a large number of very useful networking concepts and includes specialized subjects like security, Quality of Service (QoS), converged networks, broadband technologies and virtual private networks.

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Only CCNA certified candidates will be eligible to take the CCNP certification exam. So, all those who are interested in becoming CCNP qualified, will have to first clear the CCNA certification exam. CCNP certification involves about four exams. But, the candidates get to choose the exam routes i.e. the candidates can either opt for a route wherein the candidate has to give four individual CCNP certification exams, or opt for the other route that requires the candidate to give 3 exams.

Route 1 comprises of the following four exams:

642-901 BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks)
642-812 BCMSN (Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks)
642-825 ISCW (Implementing Secure Converged Wide Area Networks)
642-845 ONT (Optimizing Converged Cisco Networks)

Route 2 comprises of the following three exams:

642-892 BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks) & BCMSN (Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks
642-825 ISCW (Implementing Secure Converged Wide Area Networks)
642-845 ONT (Optimizing Converged Cisco Networks)

The only difference between these routes being that, route 2 has an exam with two exams clubbed or combined into one. The candidate can opt for any route as per his studying patterns and convenience. After the exams, every candidate receives a report that gives the total score of the candidate. This way, a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses can be gauged easily.

A CCNP certification stays valid for a span of three years, after which, the candidate will have to resort to re-certification, if the candidate wants to stay CCNP qualified. For re-certification, the candidate can either write any of the ”642” professional level exams or can take up the CCIE exam.