ICND1 Pass Report from 4/27/16

Well ladies and gents, it happened. It's been 6 months in the making. 951/1000.
100% Operation of IP Data Networks
91% LAN Switching Technologies
83% IP Addressing (IPv4/IPv6)
100% IP Routing Technologies
100% IP Services
88% Network Device Security
100% Troubleshooting
Resources:
* Wendell Odom's ICND1 100-101 Official Cert Guide (dry but I slugged through it about 2 chapters a week)
* Cisco Press 31 Days Before Your CCENT Certification Exam (nice little bites of information. I basically abandoned this around 15 days out in favor of taking practice tests to see what I was weak on)
* UDEMY Chris Bryant's CCNA Boot Camp - watched through the lectures on IPv6
* CBTNuggets Jeremy Ciaroa - Watched the majority of these from start to finish
* Cisco Packet Tracer - Built and destroyed a few topologies. Got a taste of the CLI. REALLY helped me grasp VLANs and Trunks.
* Live equipment at work. My network bros let me plug in a stack of switches that I played around with on putty.
The exam was not as hard as I was thinking it would be. I spent the last month devouring every practice test I could find via Cisco's Learning network and google. Every time I missed a question, I basically opened a new tab and went down the rabbit hole trying to understand what I wasn't grasping or how the question tried to trick me.
What recommendations do I have? Same as everyone else. Be able to subnet quickly and accurately. Know the basic show commands and where to find relevant information in the outputs. Know beyond any shadow of a doubt how a switch or router will process frames/packets based on what's in the header and what's in the MAC address table/routing table. Most of all, know how to weed out incorrect answers. Sometimes they hand you 5 multiple choice answers and you can axe 3 of them immediately based on a simple fallacy or discrepancy. From there it's basically a this or that answer.
On to ICND2 y'all!

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Comments

jaso

Congrats! What method did you use for learning "to subnet" quickly?

Last time I was preparing for CCENT I got stuck there because Pluralsight instructor was teaching it somehow and I was calculating in other way (knew it from work)...

BrosoATX

I think everyone probably finds a different way, but my method was to get a hold of some apps for my phones. There are some great free subnetting practice apps out there. Anytime I found myself waiting at the doc's office or just sort of zoning out on the sofa, I'd grab my phone and stomp out 15 or 20 different subnet exercises. Before long, my instincts became more reliable than my rationale, and I could start trusting my gut on what the subnet ID, broadcast, and ranges were no matter the scenario.

GDaines

jaso wrote: »

Congrats! What method did you use for learning "to subnet" quickly? Last time I was preparing for CCENT I got stuck there because Pluralsight instructor was teaching it somehow and I was calculating in other way (knew it from work)...

Try this site for practice questions: Subnetting Questions

I've been studying using Todd Lammle's book (Sybex, ISBN 978-1118789704) but didn't really grasp subnetting, or at least didn't find it easy to answer the questions. Then I watched Chris Bryant's video course from Udemy and it just sort of clicked for me. Using the practice site I've linked to for you I'm now getting at least 95% or more right, and I'm getting quicker at just spotting masks or block sizes from the details given. To be honest, I now consider working out block sizes to be easy.

Codeman6669

Congrats man!