Passed ICND1 last month and ICND2 today - Finally got that CCNA.

R9 290X

After taking classes at my local college and going through Wendell Odom's book and passing the ICND1 - CCENT last month, finally passed ICND2 today and got that CCNA, the day before ICND2 - 200-101 expires. Boy that was a relief. It's been a year and a half journey (if you include the classes I took at the local college), in addition to studying on and off prior to that so I am finally glad to get this monkey off my back.

For those who are wondering the resources I used for both ICND1 and ICND2.

For ICND1:

Cisco Networking Academy (through my local college)
Wendell Odom's ICND1 book.
Exam Cram ICND1.
Official Cisco Labs textbook which I purchased for the courses I took through my local college.
******** website
Packet tracer.
Also, have my own routers and switches but mostly did the labs at school.

For ICND2:
Cisco Networking Academy (again through my local college).
Wendell Odom's ICND2 book.
******** website.
Official Cisco Labs textbook which I purchased for the courses I took through my local college, doing most of the labs at school. Didn't use other resources much for ICND2 because I was short for time as I passed ICND1 last month and only had 1 month and around 1 week to pass ICND2 (not to mention losing time doing other things during that time period).

Officially joined the site back in 2013 when I passed my Network+ finally posted after passing my CCNA.

Have any questions feel free to ask.

adrianm68

Congrats! well done.

DAVIS NGUYEN

Congrats!

varelg

Congratulations! Are you happy with the score and were there areas in which you felt not as confident as you'd like?
Now that you passed, I wonder what is your opinion on Chris Bryant's ebooks on CCNA (two books, I got them as ebooks on Kindle), it seems to be well-wriiten material without fluff and fancy wording, would they be enough to pass? Mind that I am not a beginner but I haven't got my hands yet on Cisco equipment.

iambrainz

Congrats!

toasterboy1

Nice to hear!

R9 290X

varelg wrote: »

Congratulations! Are you happy with the score and were there areas in which you felt not as confident as you'd like?
Now that you passed, I wonder what is your opinion on Chris Bryant's ebooks on CCNA (two books, I got them as ebooks on Kindle), it seems to be well-wriiten material without fluff and fancy wording, would they be enough to pass? Mind that I am not a beginner but I haven't got my hands yet on Cisco equipment.

Hey varelg,

I am happy with the score (got over 90%). It's funny that you mention about things I didn't feel confident about because in the middle of the exam I wasn't sure if the answers I chose were right and thought that I may possibly fail the exam. Without going into it too much, I would state that know STP/RSTP and the difference between them and the process of going about choosing which one will become the designated router and the state of the ports of the designated routers and the state of the ports in the other switches/routers that are connected to the designated router. Know terminologies like 'hold down timer' and 'reverse poising' and things that are related to it. I would also be familiar with basic Eigrp, Ospf configurations on routers in a network and getting the routers to "talk" to each other using these configurations.

I work in the networking field so doing the trouble shooting part of the exam wasn't that difficult (CCNP trouble shooting questions will be harder). It was associating certain concepts and terminologies that can be confusing.

As for Chris Bryant's book, I can't comment on it because I haven't used it. I would suggest you look at reviews about his work and how many were able to pass using his book. One thing I will mention is don't rely on one source. I would suggest at least two different sources and doing lots and lots of practice questions. The reason for two different sources is because one source may teach you about a concept and in the other source may teach you about the same concept and then you may finally go "oh I get it". You don't necessarily have to read through entire two different source books but you could read an entire one and skim through the second one and do practice questions or end of chapter practice questions for the second source book, in that way you will see what you were missing in the first source book and hopefully it will re-enforce concepts.

Me personally went through all of CBT Nugget videos for ICND1 and read through all 800+ pages of Wendell Odom's ICND1 book before taking the first exam. For the second exam, I mostly used the sources I mentioned and skipped some of the chapters for Odom's ICND2 because some of the chapters dealt with trouble shooting and skimming over those trouble shooting concepts I felt I already knew them. So, mostly focused on the chapters about topics I wasn't familiar with. I was in a bit of rush for ICND2 because yesterday was the last day to take ICND2.

Also, the labs I did at my local college for the official Cisco Networking Academy's CCNA course was very helpful. Reading about concepts is one thing but doing and implementing these concepts is a whole different experience and knowledge.

I would suggest getting Cisco equipment or at least using packet tracer to at least learn how to configure things like OSPF and EIGRP on routers with hosts and getting hosts and routers to talk to each other.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

BWT

I'm about 20 chapters into Wendell's first book. Did you do the practice questions, etc. in the intervals he advised?

I'm thinking about going for the combined CCNA 200-125, but that's also approximately 1,600 pages. I'm concerned that knowledge retention will be an issue by the time I get there. I started the book at about the beginning of this month.

erikiiy

I went with the two exam route, if I were to do it again, I would do the combined one, as you get done with ICND1, ICND2 will be much easier if you were thorough with ICND1. I feel that ICND1 is 70% of the way to CCNA and ICND is 30%.

R9 290X

erikiiy wrote: »

I went with the two exam route, if I were to do it again, I would do the combined one, as you get done with ICND1, ICND2 will be much easier if you were thorough with ICND1. I feel that ICND1 is 70% of the way to CCNA and ICND is 30%.

I would still go the two part route. Why? As someone put it, if you pass ICND1 you are up half the mountain. After you get past that you could try for the rest half. Plus, it costs $150 each, so, If you miss one you will lose $150 as opposed to the full $300.

R9 290X

BWT wrote: »

I'm about 20 chapters into Wendell's first book. Did you do the practice questions, etc. in the intervals he advised?

I'm thinking about going for the combined CCNA 200-125, but that's also approximately 1,600 pages. I'm concerned that knowledge retention will be an issue by the time I get there. I started the book at about the beginning of this month.

I definitely felt that ICND1 was much bigger than ICND2. There are a lot more chapters in ICND1 and in ICND2, I was able to skip the trouble shooting chapters as I felt pretty comfortable in those doing labs and from my work.

everybodyknows

Is the new books by Odom worth getting if I have the 2013 versions?

the.thrillseekers

everybodyknows wrote: »

Is the new books by Odom worth getting if I have the 2013 versions?

I just purchased the new Wendell Odom book, I had Todd Lammle's book for the v2.0 exam, Odom's book is thorough on everything so far from what I've read, whereas in Lammle's book it's him teaching you as you read. I also purchased the premium subscription IT vids from learningnetwork.cisco.com