Hi all,
Just wanted to share my experience.
First of all, passed the beast with 949 on the first try with 25 min remaining after 2 months of self-study (woohoo!)
Having taken MCSE and a bunch of CompTIA exams in the past I would rate the difficulty of this somewhare around 7/10. I took the test with three years of experience administering/desiging small-scale LAN networks.
To study for the test I relied solely on Tod Lamme's CCNA Study Guide, RouterSim CCNASim 3.2 router simulator and Celtic Rover's excellent site. I found these sources more than sufficient to prepare for the test without the need for purchasing expensive lab equipment (No prior Cisco experience).
I found the book to be especially helpful in learning subnetting (I was able to do almost every such problem in my head) and understanding such concepts as VLANs and WAN technologies.
RouterSim has a limited command set but is more than sufficient for the types of labs that are encountered on the exam. I had two consecutive lab questions in the middle of the test, one to set up interfaces, the second dealing with troubleshooting RIP and interfaces. To tell the truth I find the difficulty of the labs somewhat overrated. With enough practice on the simulator these should become second nature.
Celtic Rover's site is the best online resource I have found and his lab simulators very closely resemble what you might find on the test. Drill through these again and again until you can breeze through them and your will most likelly pass the labs.
No major surprizes on the test although I found two or three questions a bit ambiguous, just got to have that Cisco mindset I guess
No IPX either as far as I could tell.
Hope you guys and gals can find this info useful,
Take care and good luck, you can do it!
