CCENT Scheduled For Thursday

jibtech

Working on ICND1 for WGU. The sheer volume of material has me anxious, along with the unfamiliarity of the eCisco environment in general.

All uCertify chapters completed. About halfway through the massive practice question database, and doing fairly well. Finishing those up tonight and tomorrow, then working through all of the Boson labs and practice exams.

Did everyone else find this a bit overwhelming, or am I on my own with this?

Mr.Robot255

I got overwhelmed last week and cancelled my exam i am now taking it on Monday coming, I reckon keep doing what you are doing, practice tests, keep it all fresh in your mind, If possible look online at other random ICND1 quiz questions to see different formats of same questions being asked.

I am glad i cancelled my exam last week now i feel more relaxed about it i took a step back just to confirm what i know and don't know and what i felt i was weak at, from what i have read here and elsewhere , be confident with the SHOW commands and how to interpret the outputs.

Good luck

networkfuzz

jibtech wrote: »

Working on ICND1 for WGU. The sheer volume of material has me anxious, along with the unfamiliarity of the eCisco environment in general.

All uCertify chapters completed. About halfway through the massive practice question database, and doing fairly well. Finishing those up tonight and tomorrow, then working through all of the Boson labs and practice exams.

Did everyone else find this a bit overwhelming, or am I on my own with this?

You are absolutely not alone in thinking this. ICND1 was like learning Japanese for me. It was so much information at one time and was extremly overwhelming. I delayed my exam a week three times even though I probably didn't need to just to double-check and triple-check that I knew all that I could know.

networkfuzz

ICDN2 feels the same way already and we are only into VTP. We haven't even touched STP, EIGRP, or OSPF.

jibtech

networkfuzz wrote: »

You are absolutely not alone in thinking this. ICND1 was like learning Japanese for me. It was so much information at one time and was extremly overwhelming. I delayed my exam a week three times even though I probably didn't need to just to double-check and triple-check that I knew all that I could know.

That makes me feel better that other people are feeling that overwhelming sensation too.

networkfuzz wrote: »

ICDN2 feels the same way already and we are only into VTP. We haven't even touched STP, EIGRP, or OSPF.

This, however, is not filling me with the warm and fuzzies.

trac0de

Hey guys,

When I was studying ICND1 I felt the same. It was a lot of material and at the back of your head, you know that you may expect some detail question which doesn't make you feel better.
To study ICND1 I have used Odom book + CBTNuggets + Labs. During the study making notes was essential for me as it was easier for me to remember stuff. It took me over 3 months to get prepared for the exam ICND1. I was studying every day but work for over 50h a week too, so it was not easy for me.
When I sat the exam question felt easy-ish, passed at the first attempt (lucky?).

Straight after the ICND1 exam, I have started to learn ICND2 material ... but that's another story :P

BTW I didn't work in IT during ICND1 and ICND2 study.

labscloud

There's a reason that the CCNA typically will land you a better job when you get certified, there's a ton of information to learn! Good luck.

jacksonr

Very best of luck. Its beaten me twice, it wont beat me a 3rd time.
I was looking taken it soon, but re-considering it now.

trac0de

jibtech keep us update !! do not forget about Us

Freejole

Good luck man!! Let us know how it went

jibtech

My apologies! This was the first test that has ever left me feeling physically drained. But, I got through it and passed with an 895/832.

Self-awareness being a thing, I would say my biggest weakness is with routing of all things. I get the concepts but having to dig through layers of information to find what is actually causing the issue sucks.

I also found the inability to go back to a question very disconcerting. i dealt with it, but it was always in the back of my mind.

Looking back, I would cut back 30-40% on the practice questions and tests, and double the time spent labbing. I really think it's a comfort thing.

Bear in mind that I am also accelerating hard through this stuff, so experience may vary. I studied hard for about 2 weeks, pushing 6-8 hours per day.

Working on ICND2 now. I was quite surprised to see that STP seems fairly intuitive. But I am sure there are fun surprises waiting for me. Plan is to test ICND2 by 9/15.

Wish me luck, and if anyone has questions, just speak up!

Welly_59

You want to sit icnd2 within 2 weeks of starting to study for it?

Freejole

Congrats man! Thats awesome. With STP, just make sure you can look at a switch mesh topology and be able to identify the root bridge, all root ports, and which of the rest are designated/blocking. Then the differences between STP/RSTP (PVST+/PVRST+). You got it!

jibtech

Welly_59 wrote: »

You want to sit icnd2 within 2 weeks of starting to study for it?

Pretty much. 14 days @ 8+ hours/day is a lot of time. Given that some of those are actually 12 hour days, I think it is completely doable. Of all of the certifications I have taken this year, ICND1 took the longest at 2 weeks. I have identified where my study approach had flaws, and I am correcting them.

If I am a couple of days from testing, and I really don't feel like I have it, I will push it back. If I take it and fail, then I will know where my weaknesses are, and will have at least 5 days to focus and get stronger.

It may not be an approach that works for everyone, but I have six months of history to show that it works well for me.

jibtech

Freejole wrote: »

Congrats man! Thats awesome. With STP, just make sure you can look at a switch mesh topology and be able to identify the root bridge, all root ports, and which of the rest are designated/blocking. Then the differences between STP/RSTP (PVST+/PVRST+). You got it!

This was the part I was working on last night. The STP root bridge, root ports and designated ports all just make sense for some reason. As do the idea of alternate ports, backup ports and how each gets designated. The logic of how the BID and MAC address were chosen for the automatic determination makes no sense, but they had to pick something. I can foresee so many ways it would go bad, so I was diving into how to manually set those costs, instead of leaving it automated.

The bigger picture issue is trying to manually manage it on a HUGE network. There would be so many pitfalls, it could get painful. This is one of those areas where I would almost prefer to build it from scratch, than come in trying to adjust something that works, or "mostly" works.

But yeah. STP makes sense to me. Next up is VTP and OSPF, so maybe all of that warm fuzzy feeling is about to go away

Freejole

Thats awesome man. The only thing that I didn't realize (and its a small thing but it does show up on some exams/practice tests) is that the BID is the Priority + MAC address (obviously), BUT I had a question that asked me "If all settings are at default, what would be the priority for Switch X on VLAN 5?" and I didnt realize you add the VLAN integer to the default priority. So a default switch on VLAN 5 would have a priority of 32773 (32768+5). Not sure why maybe I missed that part on the first read through but that threw me off when I came across it.

As far as OSPF, I actually prefer it to RIPv2 and EIGRP. I dreaded it because Todd Lammle built it up to me this monster that would turn our brains into knots but as far as the general config and troubleshooting, I really like how clean and neat everything is. In multi-area OSPF, learning the different types of LSA's can be tricky but (and maybe this is just me) it never really came up (as far as asking about specific LSA's and what each type carried) on any of my practice exams or the CCNA.

Keep it up brother!

jibtech

Freejole wrote: »

Thats awesome man. The only thing that I didn't realize (and its a small thing but it does show up on some exams/practice tests) is that the BID is the Priority + MAC address (obviously), BUT I had a question that asked me "If all settings are at default, what would be the priority for Switch X on VLAN 5?" and I didnt realize you add the VLAN integer to the default priority. So a default switch on VLAN 5 would have a priority of 32773 (32768+5). Not sure why maybe I missed that part on the first read through but that threw me off when I came across it.

As far as OSPF, I actually prefer it to RIPv2 and EIGRP. I dreaded it because Todd Lammle built it up to me this monster that would turn our brains into knots but as far as the general config and troubleshooting, I really like how clean and neat everything is. In multi-area OSPF, learning the different types of LSA's can be tricky but (and maybe this is just me) it never really came up (as far as asking about specific LSA's and what each type carried) on any of my practice exams or the CCNA.

Keep it up brother!

Many years ago, I did a class for my MCSE down in Texas. It turned out to be Todd Lammle's company. He wasn't my instructor, but he was around all of the time. Really nice guy, but REALLY intense guy.

Just walking by the lab for the CCNP and CCIE stuff was nuts. He would be a lot of fun to hang with, but not a lot of fun to have in the car when you get pulled over. I think I heard he closed down the training center, which is too bad. I would be interested in going down there again.

Freejole

Oh man thats a bummer! Well congrats again man and good luck on ICND2

Welly_59

OSPF at CCNA level really is simple. When you get to CCNP though its another level

jibtech

No intent right to go for CCNP right now, so that's good to here.

If I do go CCNP, it will be Security, not R&S.

trac0de

jibtech congratulation on ICND1.
Are you working ? or you have all the time in the world to study and pass ICND2. Two weeks to study and pass ICND2 without experience is a bit mad for me.
ICND2 it is a lot of material.
Regarding STP it's good to know what is the priority after issuing "spanning-tree vlan vlan-id root secondary" command and what is going on with priority on a switch after "spanning-tree vlan vlan-id root primary" command.