Best way to cram for CCENT exam in 3 weeks?

I've been ambitious and tried to complete the CCENT in 2 months. I'm 3 weeks away from my exam and was hoping to get some tips before the exam.

I've gone through the CBTNuggets videos a few times, been labbing, and now been doing the practice exam papers on the CBTNuggets website, averaging ~65%. My plan is do keep doing labbing and as many papers/practice questions I can find on the internet and refer back to the CCENT Offical Guide for any questions I get wrong.

I've also used Packet Tracer Labs and am very comfortable with subnetting.

Anything else I should be doing? Is it true there will be "simulations" on the exam where I'd actually get access to the terminal and have to fix issues on Routers/Switches?

Thanks!

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Comments

Jon_Cisco

I don't really like the concept of cramming but keep doing what your doing.

I think labbing is the best way to make the information click but reading is the best way to absorb some of the fine details.

Some things are just memorization. I usually don't focus on them as they won't matter much long term but they would probably be helpful for cramming.

Good Luck!

thomas_

If you don’t mind spending the money, the Boson ExSim practice exams are pretty good. I didn’t use them for CCENT/CCNA, but I did use them for CCNP.

deltzy

Thanks, yes I was doing research and I've heard good things about these Boson Exams, apparently they are very similar to the real exam. May be worth spending the money on them and passing first time than resitting it and paying for the cost of the exam agai

shochan

why not just take the one CCNA exam instead of CCENT, which is 1 of 2 exams, to gain CCNA before time runs out in Feb 2020?

deltzy

Hi Sochan - I'm not looking to get into becoming a network engineer. I just wanted the base knowledge of networking to apply in my role in Security. Having CCENT will evidence that. However I'd be more interested in doing the new CCNA depending on what the new syllabus contains.

Infosec_Sam

deltzy said:

Hi Sochan - I'm not looking to get into becoming a network engineer. I just wanted the base knowledge of networking to apply in my role in Security. Having CCENT will evidence that. However I'd be more interested in doing the new CCNA depending on what the new syllabus contains.

While I think you've got the right idea, my personal opinion is that the CCNA is a much better stopping point for networking knowledge as a security guy. You might not be directly working on routing/VLANs/WANs, but there's a good chance you'll be working adjacent to them most of the time, so it's always a good thing to know more about how they work.

Plus, searching for "CCNA" in the US on indeed.com returns 9652 results, whereas "CCENT" only returns 521. There's a pretty good chance that a CCNA would get you more interviews than a CCENT.

deltzy

Thanks for your comments Infosec_Sam. Yeah I did toy with getting CCNA done before Feb 2020, but looking at the syllabus it seemed very heavily focused on routing (EIGRP, OSPF, WAN) which I thought didn't add much value to my role at the minute. I was much more interested in how packets are formed and moved across a network which ICND1 provided me.

Doing the ICND2 (200-101) exam will probably be much less effort than doing the new CCNA exam, however the new CCNA exam seems to have more interesting topics I'd be interested in learning.

I'm 50/50 at the moment, I'll see how I get along with CCENT and I have a Azure certification to do straight after. Might be a tight squeeze before the deadline!

mizterkewl

How did things go?

Jon_Cisco

I just saw you passed thread. Great job.

deltzy

mizterkewl said:

How did things go?

See my latest post, was tough but gone it done in 2 months: https://community.infosecinstitute.com/discussion/136076/passed-icnd1-936-832#latest

deltzy

mizterkewl said:

How did things go?

See my latest post, was tough but gone it done in 2 months: https://community.infosecinstitute.com/discussion/136076/passed-icnd1-936-832#latest

Advancedguy

You can check the cram notes for ccent from the examguides.com website.