What the actual ENCOR exam feels like under the clock

The biggest mistake people make with 350-401 ENCOR is treating it like a pure routing-and-switching exam. It is not. Cisco spread the objectives across architecture, virtualization, infrastructure, network assurance, security, automation, wireless, and SD-Access, and the exam reflects that mix. Expect roughly 90-110 questions in 120 minutes depending on the delivery version. That pace is aggressive once Cisco starts giving you multi-paragraph scenarios with CLI snippets, controller outputs, JSON, or diagrams.

A practical pacing rule for this exam is to divide the paper in your head into three buckets:

Fast wins: direct recall on things like REST API methods, FHRP behavior, basic wireless concepts, model-driven telemetry, or first-hop security features.
Medium reads: scenario questions around OSPF, EIGRP, STP, wireless roaming, QoS marking, or device management.
Time sinks: SD-Access, DNA Center workflows, automation payload interpretation, and redistribution/path-selection questions with multiple moving parts.

Cisco likes to mix question styles. On ENCOR, I saw that the most time-consuming items were not necessarily simulations; they were text-heavy questions where one sentence changed the answer. Be ready for:

Multiple choice / multiple answer with very Cisco-specific wording.
Drag-and-drop around control plane/data plane, underlay/overlay, wireless architecture pieces, or API concepts.
Exhibit-based questions using routing tables, show outputs, WLC configs, packet captures, or JSON snippets.
Occasional simlet-style items where you inspect outputs rather than configure everything from scratch.

One important exam-day habit for ENCOR specifically: if a question requires mentally tracing several technologies at once — for example, OSPF adjacency + LACP + STP state + HSRP role — do not burn four minutes trying to prove every option wrong. On this exam, those stacked-scenario questions are designed to consume time. Make your best call, mark it mentally if review is allowed in your version, and move on. The exam is broad enough that over-investing in one routing puzzle can cost you easy automation or wireless points later.

Where the points really are: prioritize by ENCOR weighting, not by comfort

Cisco publishes the domain weights, and on 350-401 they matter. The heavier areas usually include Infrastructure, Security, and Automation, with Architecture and Network Assurance also very present. If your background is classic routing/switching, the trap is spending 70% of your time on OSPF, EIGRP, and STP because they feel familiar. That is not how this exam is distributed.

The highest-return study order for most candidates is:

Infrastructure — because Cisco asks it in many forms: routing, switching, wireless, IP services, overlays, and basic enterprise design.
Security — because there are lots of compact questions here that are easy points if you know the details: device access control, AAA, control plane policing, DHCP snooping, DAI, port security, wireless security, segmentation.
Automation — because Cisco keeps rewarding candidates who can read JSON/XML, identify REST semantics, and understand controller-based operations.
Architecture / Assurance — because these domains produce conceptual questions that are less about memorization and more about knowing what Cisco considers the right enterprise design model.

If you are deciding what to review the night before, the highest-yield ENCOR-specific list is:

OSPFv2/v3 behavior, DR/BDR logic, network types, LSA basics, and route preference interactions.
EIGRP named mode, metric logic, feasible successor conditions, and unequal-cost load balancing concepts.
STP/RSTP/MST, EtherChannel, and FHRP interaction questions.
Wireless architecture, roaming types, CAPWAP, WLC/AP modes, RF basics, and WLAN security.
SD-Access building blocks: fabric edge, control plane node, border node, underlay vs overlay, LISP/VXLAN ideas at a high level.
DNA Center / controller-led operations and what belongs where.
AAA/TACACS+/RADIUS, device hardening, and first-hop security.
REST APIs, YANG, NETCONF, RESTCONF, JSON, and model-driven telemetry.

The exam does not reward depth equally across all topics. You do not need CCIE-level theory on every protocol. You do need to know where Cisco draws the line between technologies and which component is responsible for what.

Routing and switching questions: Cisco loves interaction effects more than raw protocol trivia

ENCOR routing questions often look straightforward until you notice they are really testing interaction effects. Cisco rarely asks a bare question like "What is OSPF cost?" and stops there. More often, they combine protocol behavior with design or convergence.

On the routing side, pay special attention to these patterns:

Administrative distance vs metric traps. Cisco will give multiple routes and tempt you to compare metrics when the real answer is decided by AD first.
OSPF network type assumptions. Broadcast vs point-to-point changes neighbor formation and DR/BDR expectations. This shows up a lot in exhibit questions.
EIGRP successor logic. If you cannot quickly tell whether the feasibility condition is met, you will waste time. Cisco likes answers that sound operationally valid but violate that condition.
Route summarization and default route propagation. Questions often hinge on where the summary is applied and what disappears from the table.
Redistribution basics. ENCOR does not usually go absurdly deep here, but it will test whether you understand seed metrics, route tagging purpose, and loop avoidance at a practical level.

On the switching side, the exam repeatedly targets things candidates think they already know:

RSTP port roles and states rather than old 802.1D wording.
MST region behavior and what must match for switches to be in the same region.
EtherChannel consistency — Cisco likes mismatched settings questions where the bundle will not form even though most parameters look right.
HSRP/VRRP/GLBP with tracking and failover behavior.
VLAN trunking gotchas, native VLAN implications, and pruning assumptions.

A common ENCOR trap is a topology where two answers are technically plausible in a generic network, but only one matches Cisco enterprise best practice. Example: if you see a design question involving loop prevention and fast convergence, Cisco often wants the answer framed around RSTP/MST plus EtherChannel rather than a one-off workaround. The exam rewards knowing Cisco's preferred operational model, not just protocol theory.

One more thing: memorize the outputs you are likely to see, not just the concepts. If you have not practiced interpreting show spanning-tree, show etherchannel summary, show ip ospf neighbor, show standby, and route table excerpts quickly, you will feel slower on ENCOR than your knowledge level suggests.

Wireless and SDA are where many strong route-switch people bleed points

If you come from a traditional enterprise networking background, wireless and SD-Access can quietly drag your score down. They are exactly the kind of domains people postpone because they feel more conceptual. Cisco knows this and uses them heavily.

For wireless, focus on operational behavior instead of trying to memorize every standard in isolation. The high-value areas are:

CAPWAP: control vs data tunneling behavior, especially in centralized architectures.
AP modes: local, monitor, sniffer, rogue detector, bridge, flexconnect. Cisco loves mode-identification questions.
Roaming: Layer 2 vs Layer 3 roaming and what changes when the client moves.
Wireless security: WPA2/WPA3 basics, 802.1X, PSK, web auth, and where authentication decisions happen.
RF fundamentals: channel overlap, 2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz implications, power/channel planning basics.
WLC interfaces and WLAN mappings in older logic versus newer controller abstractions.

The gotcha in wireless questions is that the wrong options are often not absurd. They are close. Example: Cisco may ask what happens during a roam, and two answers will both mention reassociation, but only one correctly reflects whether the client keeps the same subnet or requires a mobility anchor/tunnel concept. If you only know the buzzwords, you will miss these.

For SD-Access, you do not need to build a fabric from memory, but you absolutely need to know the role separation. This is probably the single most testable conceptual area in ENCOR right now. Be clear on:

Underlay vs overlay: underlay provides IP reachability; overlay carries segmentation and endpoint mobility functions.
Fabric edge node: where endpoints attach.
Control plane node: maintains endpoint-to-location mappings.
Border node: connects the fabric to external networks.
DNA Center: orchestration and policy workflow, not the data plane itself.
LISP/VXLAN at the level Cisco expects for enterprise deployment understanding.

Cisco likes wording traps here. A question may ask which component "advertises endpoint reachability" or "connects to external domains" and provide answers that mix up control plane node and border node. If you are shaky on these roles, fix that before exam day.

Also expect segmentation questions that blur VRF, SGT, and VLAN. ENCOR wants you to know that these solve different problems. VLAN is not the same thing as policy-based scalable group segmentation, and Cisco absolutely writes options that exploit that confusion.

Security and assurance: smaller topics, easy to underestimate, heavily testable

The ENCOR security domain is not deep in the same way a dedicated security exam is deep, but it is packed with high-probability question types. These are excellent points if you stop treating them as side topics.

Know the practical use and limitation of:

AAA with TACACS+ vs RADIUS — device administration vs network access is a favorite distinction.
DHCP snooping, Dynamic ARP Inspection, and IP Source Guard — especially their dependency chain and what must be enabled first.
Port security behaviors such as violation modes and sticky MAC implications.
Control Plane Policing (CoPP) — Cisco often asks what it protects and what it does not.
ACL placement and behavior in infrastructure protection scenarios.
802.1X and MAB at a high level for campus access control.
Wireless security modes and enterprise authentication flow.

The classic ENCOR trap here is sequence dependency. Example: Cisco will ask why DAI is not functioning, and the real issue is that DHCP snooping was not enabled or trust was not configured correctly. Another trap is using the right tool in the wrong plane: candidates pick a data-plane feature when the question is asking about control-plane protection.

For network assurance, Cisco tends to test what telemetry/monitoring method fits the use case rather than random monitoring trivia. Study these distinctions:

SNMP for polling/traditional monitoring.
Syslog for event logging.
NetFlow / Flexible NetFlow for traffic visibility.
SPAN/RSPAN/ERSPAN for packet analysis use cases.
Model-driven telemetry for streaming data and modern observability.
IP SLA for synthetic measurements like latency/jitter/path verification.

Questions in this area often hinge on one word: historical, real-time, event-driven, flow-level, packet-level. Cisco uses those words intentionally. If the question asks for scalable streaming operational data, they do not want SPAN. If they ask for packet payload inspection, they do not want NetFlow.

Automation and programmability: the most underrated score booster on 350-401

A lot of candidates still approach ENCOR automation as if it is a minor appendix. That is outdated. Cisco puts enough automation and programmability on this exam that being merely "aware" of the terms is not enough.

What you need is not heavy coding skill. What you need is the ability to read API and data-model questions fast. Focus on these exact items:

REST principles and standard HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE.
JSON structure: objects, arrays, key-value pairs, nested data.
YANG as a data modeling language.
NETCONF vs RESTCONF and when XML vs JSON tends to appear.
Controller-based automation with Cisco DNA Center and APIs.
Model-driven telemetry versus traditional SNMP polling.
Basic Python awareness only to the extent it helps interpret automation workflow questions.

Cisco likes to show a small JSON snippet and ask what field is being modified, what method would retrieve it, or which API style is in use. These are easy marks if you have actually practiced reading examples. They are ugly time-wasters if your only prep was memorizing definitions.

A reliable ENCOR-specific prep tactic is to do mini drills where you identify, in under 20 seconds:

whether a payload is JSON or XML,
whether the action should be GET vs POST vs PUT/PATCH,
whether the interface is NETCONF or RESTCONF,
whether the use case fits streaming telemetry or older polling.

Also understand Cisco's controller language. When the exam mentions intent-based networking, assurance, policy, and provisioning, it often expects you to map those functions to DNA Center rather than to a device-local CLI workflow. This is one of those places where candidates with strong traditional networking backgrounds can overthink and pick the old-school answer.

The last 7 days: what I would review if I had to sit ENCOR again

If I had one week left before cisco-350-401, I would stop trying to cover the entire blueprint evenly and instead run a targeted review based on what Cisco actually asks in tricky ways.

My final-week checklist would be:

Rework OSPF, EIGRP, STP, EtherChannel, and FHRP using only diagrams and show outputs.
Review wireless AP modes, roaming, CAPWAP, WLAN security, and RF basics until you can explain them without notes.
Memorize SD-Access node roles and the difference between underlay, overlay, policy, and external connectivity.
Drill AAA, DHCP snooping, DAI, IP Source Guard, CoPP, and 802.1X/MAB with scenario questions.
Practice reading JSON/XML and API method questions quickly.
Revisit telemetry, NetFlow, SNMP, Syslog, SPAN, and IP SLA by use case, not by definition.

Use your practice bank intelligently. With 1000 practice questions on Truekia, do not just chase a high percentage. Tag misses by blueprint area and by failure type:

Concept miss: you did not know the technology.
Cisco wording miss: you knew the concept but chose the answer that was true in general, not true in Cisco's preferred model.
Exhibit miss: you were too slow or misread CLI/JSON output.

That tagging matters because the fix is different. Concept misses need review. Wording misses need more Cisco-style scenario practice. Exhibit misses need timed repetition with outputs.

In the final 48 hours, I would not spend much time on fringe memorization. I would spend it on role identification and feature differentiation, because ENCOR is full of near-neighbor answers: TACACS+ vs RADIUS, underlay vs overlay, NetFlow vs SPAN, local AP vs FlexConnect, control plane node vs border node, GET vs POST, RSTP vs MST behavior, DHCP snooping vs DAI. That is where a lot of the exam is won or lost.

Cisco testing quirks that matter specifically for ENCOR

Cisco exam items often have a house style, and it shows on ENCOR. The wording is usually fair, but it is very specific. A few patterns are worth expecting because they change how you approach the question set.

First, Cisco loves the "best" enterprise answer, not merely a technically possible answer. On ENCOR, that shows up in architecture, wireless, SD-Access, and automation questions more than in pure protocol mechanics. If two answers could work in a lab, choose the one that aligns with Cisco's scalable design model.

Second, exhibits are often where the question really lives. The stem may look broad, but the answer is hidden in one line of output such as:

an interface trust state affecting DHCP snooping/DAI,
an OSPF neighbor state that tells you the network type implication,
an EtherChannel flag showing the bundle is not actually formed,
a WLC/AP mode detail,
a JSON key that reveals the API object being manipulated.

Third, if your version allows review, use it selectively for long scenario items only. ENCOR is broad enough that there will be easier points later in the exam. If your version does not allow returning to previous questions, be even stricter about not getting trapped in deep troubleshooting mode on one item.

Finally, remember that Cisco scoring is scaled and undisclosed at the per-question level. That means chasing certainty on one monster question is usually a bad trade. The smart ENCOR play is to be especially efficient on the repeatable categories Cisco asks every cycle: routing outputs, switching roles/states, wireless architecture, SDA component roles, security feature dependencies, and automation data formats. Those are the patterns I would expect again if I sat the exam tomorrow.