Cisco‘s older Routing and Switching credentials remain familiar to many networking professionals, but the underlying certification structure changed in February 2020. CCNA Routing and Switching, CCNP Routing and Switching and the legacy CCIE Routing and Switching written examination no longer exist as exams candidates can schedule. Cisco’s current tracks include CCNA, CCNP Enterprise and CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure paths, with their own active requirements. This distinction matters to anyone consulting older ROUTE, SWITCH, TSHOOT or ICND preparation material.
The retirement did not make routing and switching unimportant. VLAN design, spanning tree, IP addressing, OSPF, BGP, redundancy and troubleshooting remain central to operational networks. The useful approach is to keep the technical principles and update the certification destination. The following discussion traces the historical transition and the engineering skills that still matter.
What the old routing and switching labels meant
Previously, CCENT and the ICND series provided entry-level steps into routing and switching, while CCNP Routing and Switching required separate professional examinations including ROUTE, SWITCH and TSHOOT. The specialization reflected the dominant enterprise networking practices of its period: campus access, hierarchical switching, interior routing, WAN connectivity and structured fault isolation.
In February 2020 Cisco reorganized the tracks. The current CCNA exam code is 200-301. CCNP Enterprise follows a core-plus-concentration approach rather than the former ROUTE/SWITCH/TSHOOT trio. Candidates reading older course materials should not assume the titles map exactly onto present exams; consult the official objectives for the chosen track.
Build a current foundation with CCNA
A good foundation begins with IP addressing, subnetting, the behavior of switches and routers, and basic security controls. Troubleshooting should be a habit from the start. When two endpoints cannot communicate, distinguish a failed link from a wrong VLAN, a missing route, an address mismatch and an access-control decision before applying changes.
Practice with a small routed network and two VLANs. Document expected traffic paths and failure symptoms. Configure gateway addressing, basic dynamic routing where appropriate, and management security. Being able to explain why the network works is more valuable than memorizing a command transcript.
Understand enterprise switching beyond configuration syntax
VLAN segmentation, trunk links and spanning tree manage where traffic is forwarded and how loops are prevented. Technologies that appear as separate topics in older courses often interact. An incorrectly pruned VLAN may look like a routing problem, while an unexpected spanning-tree topology may cause asymmetric traffic or intermittent congestion.
Analyze each switching decision in context: the broadcast domain, active path, redundancy design, failure recovery and operational visibility. Use packet capture and show-command evidence to verify assumptions. Test a controlled link failure and measure convergence before claiming the design is resilient.
Evaluate routing protocols as design choices
OSPF and BGP do more than exchange reachability. Their configuration and policy determine convergence behavior, route preference, administrative boundaries and operational complexity. Understanding neighbor formation and route installation is essential, but professional-level competence also means diagnosing why a valid route was not selected.
A lab with several routers can demonstrate OSPF areas, summarization trade-offs, BGP route selection and failover. Record the routing table before and after a change. Avoid treating a successful ping as proof that application traffic has the expected path or that failover meets business requirements.
Routing design questions survived the old certification names
Before selecting a routing protocol, start with failure-domain boundaries and the behavior an operator needs during an outage. OSPF may simplify a multi-area enterprise campus when summarization and route flooding are controlled. BGP becomes relevant when policy, multiple upstream connections or clear administrative boundaries matter. Neither protocol is automatically superior; the design must define convergence expectations, route filtering, redundancy and the circumstances under which traffic is permitted to fail over.
The retired Routing and Switching curriculum placed substantial weight on technologies still encountered in existing networks, including VLAN trunking, spanning tree, first-hop redundancy and IP routing. A current practitioner should preserve that technical knowledge while comparing it with automation, wireless assurance and software-defined enterprise networking in the newer Cisco tracks. A retired badge should not be used as the only inventory of skills needed for a modern network engineer.
Use a migration lab rather than a memorized exam sequence
A practical transition exercise starts with a small redundant network and a published addressing plan. Record a baseline route table, interface state and latency. Introduce a failed uplink, an incorrect prefix advertisement and a broken trunk configuration in separate test cycles. For each incident, collect evidence, identify the first incorrect state and confirm the network recovers when configuration is corrected.
Then repeat a safe configuration change using an automation playbook or API workflow with a dry-run or review stage. That exercise connects legacy routing-and-switching expertise to present-day responsibilities: traceable deployment, validation, rollback and operational documentation. Employers value the demonstrated ability to explain and repair the system more than a claim that an old exam code remains an available route to certification.
Place automation within the current enterprise track
Modern Cisco enterprise certification work includes programmability and automation alongside traditional network knowledge. APIs, structured data and repeatable configuration methods reduce manual drift when used carefully. They do not remove the need to know device behavior or to validate the effects of each change.
Start with a read-only inventory task: gather interface descriptions or routing facts and compare them against the intended design. Later, build a controlled configuration test with a rollback plan. Prefer narrow, predictable automation that produces verifiable results over scripts that change many devices without a review step.
Choose the right CCNP Enterprise requirement
Cisco’s enterprise professional pathway uses a core exam and a concentration exam. Core learning provides broad enterprise understanding; concentration topics allow candidates to align deeper study with advanced routing, wireless, network design, automation or another approved area. The precise exam options and versions should be checked in Cisco’s active catalog.
Do not confuse an old Routing and Switching credential with an active registration pathway. Map the job to the current skills measured: enterprise routing and services for route-policy troubleshooting, design-oriented content for architecture decisions, or automation content for repeatable changes and platform APIs. A useful preparation lab should produce configuration diffs, routing evidence, and a rollback record that a colleague can review. The result is more informative than merely repeating the command syntax from a retired exam guide.
Someone responsible for branch and campus troubleshooting may benefit from advanced routing and services, while an automation engineer may need stronger programming and platform integration skills. A career decision should consider the production environment and role expectations, not simply choose the exam that seems easiest.
Keep historical resources labeled and current facts verified
An old ROUTE or TSHOOT workbook may contain valuable explanations of redistribution, failure analysis and topology reasoning. Those technical sections can remain useful if tested against current platform behavior. However, exam registration, scoring, prerequisite and renewal statements from those books are not current proof. Cisco’s exam-retirement table and active exam pages are authoritative for exam status.
For hands-on preparation, build small end-to-end scenarios and explain trade-offs. Configure a campus segment, advertise routes, restrict a sensitive path and investigate a failure using multiple evidence sources. This approach builds skills that survive certification restructuring.
Use the new labels without losing the old context
Cisco Routing and Switching describes a historical credential family and a continuing technology discipline. CCNA and the enterprise professional and expert tracks are better starting points for a new candidate in 2026. Readers with an older certification should consult their transcript and Cisco’s credential policy rather than infer its status from this historical title.
The enduring value is understanding how packets move and how networks respond when one component changes. Modern certification objectives add new operational techniques, but they rest on the same requirement to design, validate and troubleshoot connectivity carefully.
