After reading and re-reading my post I want to add a little disclaimer. Even though I was pretty frustrated with the overall experience, I do recognize that Cisco Learning and Cisco Press are in a weird spot with wireless right now. They had to include two very different ecosystems in the exam and books when it was created over two years ago. They had to somehow figure out a way to assess engineers within those ecosystems with just ~60 questions. That’s a tall order. Yes a bunch of stuff on the exam is EoL and yes it is frustrating having to focus so much energy on platforms most of us have removed from our environments. I’m not necessarily upset with the content creators or the exam writers. They are in a tough spot due to the current product lineup. Now, on with my rant/experience writeup.

In mid-December I finally passed the ENWLSI 300-430. I sat for it the first time back in August of 2021 and bombed the thing with a 754 (back when we were still getting scores). I pretty much swore off the exam at the time and stepped away from certifications for a while. It was a frustrating experience to say the least. Fast forward nine months: My CCNP was expiring in March of ’23 and I already had some continuing education credits. I decided to put aside my pride and get back after it. I took a couple of the free Cisco Learning courses to get enough CECs to put me over 40. All I needed was a specialist exam for the remaining 40.

I did a lot of poking around on Slack, Discord, Twitter, and Reddit and the consensus was that the Cisco Press Official Certification Guide does a pretty terrible job of preparing you for the exam. Agreed. I’m not sure exactly what happened with that book but it was a huge miss which is a bit odd because the first half (ENWLSD) was great. The overwhelming advice was to pick up the CCIE-W v3 book and dig through it. I had recently deployed my first pair of 9800s and we had DNA-C in prod so I had real world time on both platforms. I figured that would help quite a bit since I didn’t have that experience the first time around the previous summer.

I got my hands on a copy of the CCIE book and started working my way through. It’s a great resource, especially if you still have a lot of AireOS in your environment. I was also reading the config guides on the 9800 and in the fall the Understanding and Troubleshooting Catalyst 9800 WLCs book came out so I picked that up too (another great resource, not just for the test). Then I saw that Network Dojo had just released their ENWLSI course and labs. I highly recommend this course, Jeff and the team really put you through the paces. At this point, not only did I have a ton of book knowledge but countless hours on IOS-XE as well as a few years of experience on AireOS. I was ready.

At the end of November, feeling very prepared, I sat for the exam. Result: Failure. Incredibly frustrating but this time I knew I was close. I got my score report back and saw that I had missed pretty badly on Advanced Location Services. I doubled down on CMX/MSE over the next two weeks and took the exam again. I brought that section’s score up which was enough for a pass. Honestly, some of the questions in that category were worded so poorly it was difficult to even understand what they were asking. I hope they read the question comments. I will say this, the 2nd and 3rd attempts really felt like a 1st and 2nd attempt. When I had originally taken the exam a year and a half ago I was woefully underprepared. I had always found that the OCGs mixed with some config guides and command references were enough. After all, that’s how I achieved my CCNA, all three CCNP R&S exams, and the ENWLSD. That just wasn’t the case for the ENWLSI.

Takeaways

There’s a great movie out there called Burn After Reading. The last scene in the movie goes like this:

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?

Palmer: I don’t know, sir.

CIA Superior: I don’t f***in’ know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

Palmer: Yes, sir.

CIA Superior: I’m f***ed if I know what we did.

Palmer: Yes, sir, it’s, uh, hard to say

That’s kinda how I feel after this one. If you’ve taken this exam you know exactly what I mean. I don’t really know what the exam was trying to do and I definitely don’t want to take this version ever again. Obviously I’m not going to break the NDA here but that exam is in serious need of an overhaul. It looks like the CCNP Enterprise track is going to get refreshed sometime in late 2023. I certainly hope the ENWLSI is part of that. When I went over the blueprint I admittedly looked past some key items and focused too much on the Catalyst WLCs and DNA family. My biggest takeaway here is to focus ONLY on what is included in the blueprint. Even if a topic takes up a ton of ink in the OCG, if it’s not on the blueprint ignore it. All that said, I really don’t feel like the exam does a good job certifying that an engineer is qualified to deploy and run Cisco’s current wireless ecosystem. At the end of the day, that’s what these exams are supposed to do and why we, as engineers, spend so much time and money certifying. Unfortunately the current ENWLSI misses the mark when it comes to that goal.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn