Cisco's new direction might take away some of the luster, but I was already committed to studying for this and I want to get the CCNA R&S before it becomes Cisco's equivalent of a CISSP. I passed this with a score of 942 and wanted to share my study resources.
Reading
- Todd Lammle's 100-105 Study Guide - I find his writing style easy to digest
- Odom's ICND1 Official Cert Guide - didn't read fully, I used it after Lammle's chapters to find alternate explanations or go more in depth on certain topics. What I really liked about this book were its illustrations, the tables and pictures helped a lot with some information
- Professor Messer's ICND1 notes - towards the end I didn't feel too ready and had overlooked some topics in my own notes, like VTP for example, so I paid the 20 bucks for these notes. They're decent but not entirely necessary and I could have done without. Also I noticed some duplicate content here and there
Video
- CBT Nuggets, highly recommend
- ICND1 course on Cybrary, used more as a recap, ok for a free resource
Labs
- I started with Packet Tracer and did David Bombal's PT course on Udemy and various labs on the internet
- the best practice resource I found was Boson's NetSim. It already had lots of labs and none of PT's limitations. I will definitely use this for the 2nd part as well and this was my main confidence booster. There's a discount on their site, if anyone is interested
Other than the above, I went through various practice questions and tests from the internet and the CCNA Practice Test book. I didn't need to use the Boson Exam Simulator, which I've also heard many good things about. I'll see how it goes in a few months for ICND2
