Hello all,
I thought it would be fitting to discus with everyone what I say on my exam and the study materials I used. Hopefully this will mentally prepare the future test takers out there.
The exam is most definitely passable! I know I freaked out over the score needed to pass. Its insane! But do-able. Just apply yourself and you should do fine. Let me give you some background information, and as you shall see you can pass this.
I have no prior experience with Cisco routers, besides in high school, but I do have experience with networking and hands on with network experience. I studied for 5 weeks almost everyday, close to 4-8 hours a day. Busted my ass off. Studied free time at work and at home and on weekends. Of course it wasn’t everyday but about 5 days out of the week I devoted time to study. So if I can pass this exam with no prior experience with Cisco and no online training courses or “Cisco schooling” you can pass also. You just need to devote yourself.
My exam study materials:
Boson router simulator beta CNNP with the Network Designer program.
Real Cisco 2600 router I took from work to study. (Honestly I used it one day, and then brought it back and just used the simulator)
Very good book- Sybex CCNA 5th edition.
Lots of practice questions from many different sources, including the ones that were from the Sybex book.
To re-learn my subnetting and to STRONGLY enforce it I used this site.
http://www.subnettingquestions.com/ I strongly recommend this site as it helped A LOT!
Ok, for the things I saw on MY exam:
Not many questions asking you to subnet (I think I got one) but MANY about 50% of my questions were indirect subnetting questions. As in you could not answer the questions without know how to subnet. They would give a problem and at the end would say, use the last usable host address on the first subnet and the last usable host address on the second subnet. So if you didn’t know how to subnet you were screwed!! That means you miss about half your exam questions because you failed to subnet properly! When people and myself put emphasis on subnetting, know that we CARE and it’s VERY important to learn this for the CCNA!
Also let me emphasize VLAN’s and Switching in general. Many general questions came from this category, so know VLANS inside and out and switching and how STP works!
Ok that’s about it, these were the main areas I was hit with on my exam. Again MY exam all exams varies but, at least you get a sneak peak into a real one.
NOTE: If you have no pirior experience with network I would strongly advice the Network+ exam first then CCNA. It will prepare you for the CCNA.
Also for the ones out there who are asking themselves if the CCNA is worth it? Oh you bet your ass it is! Here’s how I know. I updated my resume yesterday, to include my CCNA on there. Today I get, no lie, 6 calls and emails from IT recruiting companies who want to interview me for jobs that I never ever would had access to before my CCNA. 6! In one day! Just for putting my CCNA on my resume that’s all I did!
Hope this helps some people!
