What Is The Difference Between The CCNA And CCNP Certifications?

Cisco is a major producer of routers and switches that are employed in setting up a dependable and efficient network. To help the clients to choose the personnel who are capable of working with their hardware, it has established a set of certifications for those who pass their tests. Cisco offers the certification program in two paths, mainly, design and certification. The CISCO Systems awards both dedicated and general certifications. The general certifications are classified into four expertise levels in seven varied paths. The four expertise levels the certifications are awarded are the CCENT, CCNA, CCNP and CCIE. Among these certifications, CCNA and CCNP are the most important ones. The CCNA certification needs to be earned before earning the higher level CCNP certification.

The demand and importance of CCNA is growing day by day. Therefore, advance your career in the IT industry with a CCNA training course.

The Difference Between CCNA and CCNP Certifications Are As Follows:

#1. Basic Certification:

CCNA or Cisco Certified Network Associate is a very important certificate to obtain as it forms the basis to acquire other higher levels of certifications, such as CCNP. Only after acquiring the CCNA certification, a person is qualified to acquire CCNP. Thus acquiring this certification is harder than CCNA. Being CCNP certified means that the holder of this certificate is capable of doing all the tasks of the CCNA personnel, on a larger scale.

#2. Exams required To Be Taken In Order to Acquire Certifications:

In order to earn the CCNA certification, the following exams should be taken:

• The 200-120 CCNA is the composite exam: This exam tests a candidate"s knowledge and skills needed to operate, install, and troubleshoot, medium size and small enterprise branch network.

• The 100-101 Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 (ICND1) exams: This exam, tests the candidate’s skills and knowledge needed to successfully operate, install, and troubleshoot a small branch office network. This exam includes the topics on the Operation of IP Data Networks, such as Network Device Security; Basic Troubleshooting; IP Routing Technologies; IP Services (DHCP, NAT, ACLs); LAN Switching Technologies; and IP Addressing (IPv4 & IPv6).

• The 200-101 Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 2 (ICND2) exams: The exam covers topics on Troubleshooting; WAN Technologies; IP Services (FHRP, Syslog; SNMP v2 and v3); LAN Switching Technologies; This exam tests the candidate’s skills and knowledge needed to successfully operate, install, and troubleshoot a small branch office network.

On the other hand, the CCNP certification is a step above CCNA. In order to acquire this certificate, the candidate has to pass four more exams in addition to the above-mentioned exams, which are required to earn the CCNA certification. In order to earn the CCNP certification, the following exams need to be passed:

•          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

#3 Areas Of Expertise:

A person holding the CCNA certification should have the expertise to install, operate and configure the enterprise level routers and switches. The CCNA certified candidates also can implement the connections to the remote sites like the WAN, while making sure that the network is secure from all malicious attacks. They are also capable of detecting and fixing all the common problems cropping up from these networks. From this CCNA certification, a person can specialize in other branches, such as voice, security and wireless networking. These courses delve deeper into the topics and boost the capabilities of the candidates, taking up them.

On the other hand, a person certified in CCNP should have the ability of doing the tasks of a CCNA certification holder and on a larger scale. They also have the expertise to work on the networks that have nodes between 100 and 500 and beyond. This is certainly a much bigger task and more skill is needed as the networks need to be connected in a way to achieve maximum data speed and prevent choke points from appearing. 

#3. Jobs with The Certifications:

• The CCNA certificate is ideal for the network administrators, network specialists and network support engineers.

• The CCNP certificate is ideal for the support engineer, systems engineer, network engineers, and other networking professionals, who have 1 to 3 years of IT networking experience.

Due to the ever growing demand of the CCNP and CCNA certifications, learn CCNA and take your career to new heights of success.