CCENT Study Schedule

pujan96

Hi Guys,

I was hoping if somebody could critique my study schedule and give me some advice.

I have been on and off been studying for the CCENT exam now for the past 18 months or so, I would say I have covered about 70% of the material 3 to 4 times now but am now looking to seriously put my time and effort into getting the test done and moving on to the CCNA, its time I got serious due to the the current outlook of my current position and I would like to move on to networking from helpdesk and become an Network Engineer.

I am currently planning to restart the process with about 2 hours of studying a day and 4 hours a day on the weekends, I plan on doing this for the next 2 months and sitting the exam at the start of May.

I have on hand the Wendell Odem book, the Todd Lammle book and a lab consisting of 2 routers and 2 switches with one router acting as terminal Server.

With someone who is slightly familiar with the concepts and just needs to refresh the knowledge and learn a few topics from scratch and put into practise the exam topics, would you guys say with the stated study routing if this would be achievable in the next 2 months?

Also what keeps you guys motivated through the Study period? I know some say you don't need motivation if you love what you do but I believe this one thing loving wha you do and one thing putting in all the time to study.



Thanks
Pujan

Moldygr33nb3an

pujan96 wrote: »

Hi Guys,

I was hoping if somebody could critique my study schedule and give me some advice.

I have been on and off been studying for the CCENT exam now for the past 18 months or so, I would say I have covered about 70% of the material 3 to 4 times now but am now looking to seriously put my time and effort into getting the test done and moving on to the CCNA, its time I got serious due to the the current outlook of my current position and I would like to move on to networking from helpdesk and become an Network Engineer.

I am currently planning to restart the process with about 2 hours of studying a day and 4 hours a day on the weekends, I plan on doing this for the next 2 months and sitting the exam at the start of May.

I have on hand the Wendell Odem book, the Todd Lammle book and a lab consisting of 2 routers and 2 switches with one router acting as terminal Server.

With someone who is slightly familiar with the concepts and just needs to refresh the knowledge and learn a few topics from scratch and put into practise the exam topics, would you guys say with the stated study routing if this would be achievable in the next 2 months?

Also what keeps you guys motivated through the Study period? I know some say you don't need motivation if you love what you do but I believe this one thing loving wha you do and one thing putting in all the time to study.



Thanks
Pujan

I've bee on and off with CCENT. I started middle of January and I'm already end of Feb. I had to push my date for the exam to beginning of march. I love studying the material, but I'm also taking classes in Java so this isn't helping.

Last couple of weeks, I've picked up the pace. I'm about 70% complete so I'm going to clear at least an hour a day and 4 hours on the weekend. At this pace, I should make early March.


My best recommendation for motivation is buying physical equipment. I have a rack at home set up in a very out-in-the-open area and everytime I look at it, I want to mess with it. Well since I'm messing with it, I may as well open the book or start watching videos. The rack only cost me about 150 bucks. (3 routers, two switches).

The other day, I could not get my Vlans to communicate across switches using what I thought was a working cross over cable. So I took two straight through cables and plugged them into a wireless ap and now my vlans (VTP) was working, hosts were not talking. I plugged wireshark into the access point and was trying to figure out why traffic wasn't traversing. The AP was set up for DHCP and handing out 192 addresses. Long story short, it didn't help I was using a T1 DSU crossover cable . So I managed to get it working using an actual 568 crossover cable.

Its moments like those that keep me motivated. Spent probably 2-4 hours troubleshooting it.

I'm currently covering the routing portion (serial DCE DTE specifically). I finished switching for the most part. I'm labbing while I'm studying so I'm not trying to hit it all at the end.

Also teaching people (who actually want to learn) is good motivation. They expect you, as the teacher, to know the content accurately. If you can get a few people to teach what you learn, you will be more willing to study.