So moving from the CCNP world to the CCIE world seems like a massive jump. Just look at the book list for instance.
But how huge is the jump really?
Looking at the topics shared between the different levels (and due to space constraints I have had to shorten the topic titles as much as possible) we can see that a number of topics, as expected are already well covered, and there are a few that will be completely new.
The items that aren't covered are in green, and where a topic is covered the corresponding exam is in brackets (R for Route, S for Switch and T for TShoot.
| CCIE Topic | CCNP | |
| 1.10 Spanning Tree | Yes (S+T) | |
| 1.20 VLANs & VTP | Yes (S+T) | |
| 1.30 Trunking & EtherChannel & Load Balancing | Yes (S+T) | |
| 1.40 Implement Ethernet technologies | Yes (S) | |
| 1.50 SPAN, RSPAN & Flow Control | Yes (T) | |
| 1.60 Implement Frame Relay | Yes (R) | |
| 1.70 HDLC and PPP | Yes (R) | |
| 2.10 IPv4 addressing, subnetting, and VLSM | Yes (R) | |
| 2.20 IPv4 tunneling and GRE | Yes (R+T) | |
| 2.30 IPv4 RIPv2 | Yes (R) | |
| 2.40 OSPF | Yes (R+T) | |
| 2.50 EIGRP | Yes (R+T) | |
| 2.60 BGP | Yes (R+T) | |
| 2.70 Implement policy routing | Yes (R) | |
| 2.80 PfR and OER | No | |
| 2.90 filtering, route redistribution... | Yes (R+T) | |
| 3.10 IPv6 addressing | Yes (R+T) | |
| 3.20 IPv6 neighbor discovery | Yes (R) | |
| 3.30 IPv6 functionality protocols | Yes (R) | |
| 3.40 tunneling techniques | Yes (R) | |
| 3.50 OSPFv3 | Yes (R+T) | |
| 3.60 EIGRPv6 | Yes (R) | |
| 3.70 filtering and route redistribution | Yes (R) | |
| 4.10 MPLS | No | |
| 4.20 VPNs PE, P, and CE routers | No | |
| 4.30 VRF and VRF-Lite | No | |
| 5.10 PIM | No | |
| 5.20 MSDP | No | |
| 5.30 interdomain multicast routing | No | |
| 5.40 Auto-RP, RP, and BSR | No | |
| 5.50 multicast tools | No | |
| 5.60 IPv6 multicast, PIM, and MLD | No | |
| 6.01 access lists | Yes (S) | |
| 6.02 Zone Based Firewall | Yes (T) | |
| 6.03 uRPF | Yes (T) | |
| 6.04 IP Source Guard | Yes (S) | |
| 6.05 AAA | Yes (S+T) | |
| 6.06 CoPP | Yes (T) | |
| 6.07 Cisco IOS Firewall | Yes (T) | |
| 6.08 IPS | Yes (T) | |
| 6.09 SSH | Yes (T) | |
| 6.10 802.1x | Yes (S) | |
| 6.11 NAT | Yes (R+T) | |
| 6.12 routing protocol authentication | Yes (R) | |
| 6.13 device access control | Yes (S) | |
| 6.14 security features | Yes (R+S) | |
| 7.10 HSRP | Yes (S+T) | |
| 7.20 GLBP | Yes (S+T) | |
| 7.30 VRRP | Yes (S+T) | |
| 7.40 NTP | Yes (T) | |
| 7.50 DHCP | Yes (R+T) | |
| 7.60 WCCP | No | |
| 8.10 MQC | Yes (T) | |
| 8.20 Layer 2 QoS, WRR, SRR, and policies | No | |
| 8.30 LFI for Frame Relay | No | |
| 8.40 generic traffic shaping | No | |
| 8.50 RSVP | Yes (S) | |
| 8.60 Cisco AutoQoS | Yes (S) | |
| 9.10 Troubleshoot L2 | Yes | |
| 9.20 Troubleshoot L3 | Yes | |
| 9.30 Troubleshoot a network in response to application problems | Yes (T) | |
| 9.40 Troubleshoot network services | Yes (T) | |
| 9.50 Troubleshoot network security | Yes (T) | |
| 10.01 syslog and local logging | No | |
| 10.02 IP SLA | Yes (R+T) | |
| 10.03 NetFlow | Yes (T) | |
| 10.04 SPAN, RSPAN, and RITE | No | |
| 10.05 SNMP | Yes (S+T) | |
| 10.06 EEM | Yes (T) | |
| 10.07 RMON | No | |
| 10.08 FTP | No | |
| 10.09 TFTP | No | |
| 10.10 TFTP server on router | No | |
| 10.11 SCP | No | |
| 10.12 HTTP and HTTPS | Yes (S) | |
| 10.13 Telnet | Yes (S) | |
| 11.01 Evaluate | ||
| 11.02 Determine | ||
| 11.03 Suggest |
So for someone who has already passed the CCNP then the parts to concentrate on are really just MPLS and a few extra bits!
OK, maybe its not that easy - clearly the depth of knowledge needed when going from CCNP to CCIE is much greater. But thankfully with a CCNP under your belt, then you are already a good way there. So I would still advise picking up the books form the book list and reading them thoroughly. But looking through it, it certainly doesn't seem too scary a jump!