Why the AWS Advanced Networking Exam is the Hardest Exam
i wasted 3 months studying for this exam, dont be like me
Disagree with the title? then how the Domain Name System (DNS) works? If you can do that explain how Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) works. I would guess 95% of readers cannot off the top of their head.
Software engineers typically either know and love networking or they hate it and never want to think about it. That is unfortunately why the Advanced Networking exam has the smallest demand by far out of all of the AWS certifications. I typically do not recommend this unless you are or want to be a cloud network engineer, or a cloud architect specializing in networking, otherwise most of the knowledge on this exam is too esoteric to be valuable. If you are not sure if you want to be a network engineer, read a post i wrote on Network Engineering Mistakes:
AWS Advanced Networking Specialty
Networking fundamentals are often lost on most software engineers, somewhat similar to git skills. The networking exam is different than the other exams in that half of the exam is knowing different networking protocols like TCP, IP, UDP, BGP, etc. The only other exam that is similar to that is the Machine Learning Specialty exam, in which you must know popular frameworks and techniques. I personally think networking is harder because nowadays with everything having ML in it, a lot of engineers know some fundamentals. But if you dont know any fundamentals of ML or Data Science check out two other avatars: BowTiedRaptor and Hal.
This is one exam where you *need* to brush up (or learn) the networking fundamentals like the core protocols (Ethernet, TCP, UDP, and IP), DNS, and the 7 Layer OSI Model. If you dont hate yourself after that, continue with the exam, otherwise dont bother.
If you do end up taking it i would spend most of my time studying Direct Connect, VPC Peering, Transit Gateway, Route 53, VPN service, and Load Balancers.
The difference
A lot of the other exams have significant overlap to each other and it makes flowing between exams somewhat easy once you get rolling. Network has some overlap with Security specialty, but not much. This exam occupies its own space, in an area that most people struggle with. Overall this exam is much more difficult than others.
Just wanted to drop this hot take on you all, drop an add for some avatars, get a backlink built. Working on a paid post that’ll drop this week.