Pros and cons of ICND1 & ICND2 versus Composite exams

I've had the luxury of working as a network engineer on a large production network before having to get certified, but they really want me to get certified. Work paid for a week-long CCNAX immersion class (which really feels more like an introduction given how much they pack into five days and how little time is spent per subject) and I've been hitting the Wendel Odom ICND1 and ICND2 books and picked up and have been going through the Command Reference Guide, but I'm still not doing quite well enough on practice questions to be confident. On the practice tests I'm doing better at ICND1 topics (like getting 100% on subnetting questions doing the calculations entirely in my head) than ICND2 topics, but that makes me wonder, if the split on the composite exam is roughly 50/50 ICND1/ICND2, I might actually be better off taking the composite exam than taking two exams since I could boost my ICND2 losses with my ICND1 successes.

Work will pay as long as I pass, but it's a reimbursement process and they won't pay if I don't pass.

I guess as a question, is there any real benefit to having a CCENT at all from a practical perspective? Going through old CCNA books it looks like ICND1/CCENT now is just about where CCNA was ten to fifteen years ago, so from a knowledge perspective it's not useless, but I'm wondering if employers even care.

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aderon

I debated taking the composite after failing ICND2 the first time. I do feel that if you're strong at subnetting then ICND1 is significantly easier than ICND2. So, along that thinking, if the question split on the composite is 50/50 it theoretically should be easier than taking ICND1 and ICND2 by themselves. Ultimately, I stuck with the ICND2 because I didn't want to shortchange myself. I also felt like it would've been a really lame way of getting the CCNA if I did the composite only because I wimped out on retaking the ICND2 lol.

TWX

To be perfectly frank, I have a lot of mixed-feelings about Cisco certification and about certification in general.

Cisco's structure of allowing any equivalent-level cert causing an automatic renewal of all other equivalent-level certs and all other lower-level certs is basically just a racket to get people with a lot of certs to their names but where after so many years and fresh revisions to the material they might not be capable of doing the job that they're certified for. Someone might have gotten their original cert a decade ago before a lot of material was required for it and then spent time getting voice, wireless, security, design, etc to keep their cert alive. As for other certifications I've known plenty of people with certifications that weren't terribly good at their jobs as well.

My A+ was issued back when they were lifetime certs. To my view its' only worth is that it demonstrates that I've been at this for a long time. Being certified in MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, ISA, EISA, Microchannel, and VLB isn't exactly useful, but it's technically still valid so I still leave it on the résumé.

As far as I'm concerned, given how others have described the incredibly bizarre nature of many of the questions on the tests, if I can reduce the number of bizarre ICND2 topic questions from 50-60 to more like 20-30, and basically have 20-30 cakewalk questions, that appeals. The biggest challenge that I've had going through this is that we don't use most of the CCNA-tested technologies at work; we're entirely metro-optical-Ethernet so all networking is Ethernet, we're routing between sites but our backbone provider gives us transparent L2 via MPLS, so we theoretically could make our entire WAN L2 if we wanted, we're using L3 switches instead of routers, we're using some very sophisticated content filtration an load balancing to our public-edge so the CCNA curriculum does not apply, etc. Basically I'm having to learn a whole lot of basics that I'll never use at work so long as I'm with this employer, at least as far inter-site connectivity is concerned.

That's the biggest reason for being conflicted, I just need the cert, I don't need a lot of the material the cert covers, and the easiest way Cisco offers to get the cert is probably the best, so long as CCENT isn't really of any value once CCNA is attained.

aderon

Yep, then I would say if your sole intent is to just get the CCNA as quick as possible, then absolutely I'd go with the composite exam. I do feel like it took me longer to get the CCNA by taking ICND1 and ICND2 separately.

james43026

If you have been working as a network engineer in a large production environment, then you should have no problems with the composite exam. As you should already have all of the basics down. Which is essentially all the CCNA covers.

TWX

james43026 wrote: »

If you have been working as a network engineer in a large production environment, then you should have no problems with the composite exam. As you should already have all of the basics down. Which is essentially all the CCNA covers.

I wish it was that straightforward. Trouble is, the network was already built and is so flat that the bulk of the day to day work is changing VLAN assignments on access ports and replacing dead equipment with existing configs or from existing templates. It's still a blast but there's a lot in the CCNA R&S curriculum that is not part of my job currently.

james43026

TWX wrote: »

I wish it was that straightforward. Trouble is, the network was already built and is so flat that the bulk of the day to day work is changing VLAN assignments on access ports and replacing dead equipment with existing configs or from existing templates. It's still a blast but there's a lot in the CCNA R&S curriculum that is not part of my job currently.

Ahh I see. My best recommendations for studying, are a good book like Todd Lammles, CBT nuggets or INE videos, and either a real lab to work in, or a simulator or emulator. This all depends on just how knowledgeable you are, and how comfortable you are with the material, I always recommend looking over the exam objectives on ciscos website, and building a study plan off of it for any of their exams.

TWX

I've built a lab with a 2851 with 15.1 Advanced Enterprise, a 2821 with Advanced IP Services 12.4, a 2811 with IP Base/K9 12.4, and a 2801 with IP Base/K9 12.4, with various switches hanging of of each router, and the routers linked together via Serial and T1 crossover.

Just off-hand, I've been looking at the nature of spanning-tree portfast and spanning-tree BPDUguard, trying to learn the behavior when configured locally per-interface versus globally on the switch. What I wanted to know was if setting it globally meant problems on trunk interfaces. I didn't think that it would given that would mean either having to manually disable it per-trunk, but I couldn't find a straight answer. Played with it in my lab and I don't think it's a problem...

! Confirming that it's enabled globally...
idf2a-sw1#sh run | inc portfast
spanning-tree portfast default
spanning-tree portfast bpduguard default

! FastEthernet 0/5 is an access port on VLAN 10
idf2a-sw1#sh spanning-tree interface f0/5 portfast
VLAN0010 enabled

! GigabitEthernet 0/1 is a trunk port with VLAN 5 and 10 manually defined
idf2a-sw1#sh spanning-tree interface g0/1 portfast
VLAN0005 disabled
VLAN0010 disabled

I'm used to hard-setting trunk and access ports, not leaving anything to autoconfigure. One of these days I'll try autoconfiguration to confirm the same behavior but I don't expect it to be any different if the interface becomes a trunk through negotiation with another device.