failed the exam, desperate advice needed

Few weeks ago I failed CCNA 640-801 with a marke of 696

I got somewhat disappointed as I had studied hard, I used Todd Lammle's book, used simrouter AND I know networking as I went to college to study it for one year.

Now I'm thinking to take the exam in two parts: 640-821 (INTRO)
and 640-811 (ICND). Should I do that or should I study more and take 640-801 again? I am two minded on this and I really need your advice. Of course it's different for everyone, but give me your ideas.

I really need a CCNA.

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Comments

EdTheLad

Stick to the one exam,dont just study from the exam guides use other sources, cisco.com has everything you need and will explain the concepts better than the study guides.
If you find yourself falling asleep while studying change the material, Sybex is good for ccna but multiple sources will make it so much easier.
After sitting afew cisco exams myself, i find i enjoy reading books which arnt exam related and describe the technology in an interesting way.
Good Luck..

pizzafart

It's hard to say whether taking it in two parts is a good idea seeing as you've already seen the composite. Yeah, that would probably be easier in the long run, though, why not go through what stumped you?

Below is my guestimate on how important each topic is. Note that this isn't necessarily a guide telling you how long you need to study for any particular topic. Things that are conceptual in nature (e.g. subnetting) have the potential to come more quickly to some people than others whereas things "brute" like memorizing lists of cable specs can be more easily gauged. Even though I've put "memorizing facts" as a 30%, it does have the possibility of being the most time consuming element. It just depends on how quickly you catch on to subnetting and routing.

1. Subnetting and addressing. 40% (100%)
This is huge. You got a pretty low score it seems, so, I wonder if you bombed a bunch of subnetting questions? All I have to say is, don't go in there unless you understand subnetting and can answer subnetting questions quickly. Half of the time I spent studying for the CCNA, I didn't know exactly how subnetting worked and I just sort of "coasted" through the books. Once I really understood subnetting, I went back and reread a lot of material, all of which started to make more sense to me. I put 100% in parenthesis because in essance, you're screwed if you don't understand subnetting. There are tons of resources online about subnetting. Read them all until one makes sense. There is a point where it "clicked" for me and I was like "oh boy, until now I've been doing this all wrong".

2. Sim questions. 30%
If you don't have access to equipment, try getting the CCNA Boson Netsim package. It has a bunch of labs that come with it. Do all the labs and you should be prepared for the sim questions on the exams. Some people say it's bad... well, it's not perfect. Also, it can simply be wrong. But, it's all I used when preparing for the CCNA and I felt pretty good about how I did on those sim questions. Note that in order to understand what you're doing in the sims, you still need to know how to subnet because routing tables won't make much sense otherwise.

3. Memorize facts. 30%
Start making lists (or whatever works) and start memorizing things. Everything: Acronyms, hello intervals, cable specs, connector types, cable types, ios commands, OSI layers, etc...

pizzafart

Yes I agree with Ed. Get multiple books - that really helps. Cisco online material is also helpful; I'm learning that now.

Speaking of, Ed - I've been using your study refs for my bcran preparation and I agree with you that the Cisco Press books are pretty bad! This test has really forced me to get into the cisco website and use the online documentation.

binarysoul

Thank you all for the advice, some really good advice about the importance of subnetting and getting sims, using different references and going for the one exam than two. Good job all. I really need a CCNA to get a job.

What really annoyed me was that I did pretty bad on the basics

I went there under the assumption that ok boy I know the basics, so it should be a piece of cake. I did really well on WAN.

I can't answer senario questions very well and that applies to simulation questions as well. I am realy good at understanding the indiviual topics, but once there is a senario questions that involves multiple topics, I get very confused. Any suggestion? Has anybody else had this problem?

TheShadow

Unfortunately everyone uses scenario questions, Cisco, Microsoft, CompTIA, IBM etc. Scenario questions mimic the real world, you just need to learn to filter the B.S. out like a detective and get just the important facts. It is a basic skill that you must master to be able to apply what you have learned. It is really like word problems in math classes which many people also hated.

"John is a network engineer at xyz company...." who cares extra B.S. "he needs to create 6 networks with no more than 200 hosts" these are facts; continue processing the scenario this way filtering the facts from the garbage.

Assignments tend to be conversational as do problem or fault descriptions therefore everyone wants to know if you are up to the task of getting the facts.

Only hands on with real equipment or a simulator like Boson will help you with simulation questions.

binarysoul

you just need to learn to filter the B.S. out like a detective and get just the important facts.

It makes sense and you remined me of my math profs who always used to say first you must write the given facts in the question and then detect what is unknown.

Danman32

Get to know switches too. I found quite a few questions on VLANs and such. Even though I understand VLANs, at least one question had me stumped the first time because I kept thinking of the switches as routers and VLANs as subnets (which actually they are), not thinking that switches can't route between VLANs, so if hosts can't communicate across 2 or more VLANs, there's a bad router or routing connection somewhere. You may get questions on finding root switches and designated ports.

Also you must understand subnets, and be quick about figuring subnets in your head or at least on paper. There's no time doing a bunch of multiplication and addition to figure out the values of bit positions. You don't get a calculator, as you already know, and most sites have the crappy erasable board with markers that don't write well or are too fat. So learn to break down IPs into nets, subnets and hosts quickly.

Get practice troubleshooting and find systematic means of diagnosing problems. I am usually good with diagnostics, but in test conditions, I don't do as well. After doing a few labs, I learned to check things like pinging interface addresses, listing pertenant info, etc.

BubbaJ

Danman32 wrote:

VLANs as subnets (which actually they are)

Probably for the exam, this is a good answer. In the real world, we have situations where there is more than one subnet on a particular VLAN.

A couple of examples:

Since router interfaces can have secondary addresses, you could have multiple routed subnets on a single VLAN.

There can be cases where you want to have a non-routed subnet on a VLAN that has a routed subnet. IBM has some high-availability stuff that uses this. The have to be on the same VLAN since the interfaces will take over (assume addressing) for failed intefaces, but they can't be in the same subnet while standing by.