I have been working in the voice realm of Cisco for ten years as of this year. I have had heavy knee deep hands-on knowledge of VoIP technologies over that time span and consider myself competent to say the least when it comes to VoIP troubleshooting, maintenance, design, etc. Up until lately I never bothered with CCNP Voice because I had the experience to back up my resume claims. Additionally, I have a degree and CCNA Voice.
I felt compelled as of last year to obtain my NP Voice. Having already passed CVOICE and CAPPS I have three left to go. I took CIPT1 today, to me, after the books and study material I got from a training partner I thought I would have been good to go. Turns out I am either completely stupid and don't understand voice or the test just beat me down. I want to think it is the latter, otherwise I would have a load of customers upset at me over the years.
I took the exam today at 10:00am, having passed CAPPS extremely well I felt confident I could do the rest of the exams. I studied the topics I didn't know as well as I should since the exam tests you on things you probably will either never use or forget within weeks of passing the exam. Half way in I knew I was in trouble. Some of the questions were absurd or worded in a way that kind of pushed you to fail unless you 100% memorized that CIPT1 Cisco book from page 1 to the end.
I'm not trying to create excuses here of why I failed but I want to emphasize that this exam should be one of the easier ones for us CUCM guys but it isn't. I've installed about 30 CUCMs, setup from scratch as well as cleaned up about another 30 in my time. I troubleshoot CSS's and route patterns all the time but still somehow managed to fail this test with a 706 when I needed a 780 to pass. Assuming that all questions on the test are between 10-15 points, that would mean I answered 4-7 of them incorrectly and failed. I know some of them I legitimately didn't know, like remembering the e1 config for mgcp.
Bottom line is, if you think you are good and want a reality check, take CIPT1 or 2. Failing this Cisco exam today was the second exam I have ever failed, the first was CCNA oh so long ago. Really kind of makes you feel worthless but at the same time, at least you now know what you need to work on right? I will be taking this exam again next week, and I will pass it one way or another.
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