Passed the 640-607 today, here are the highlights...

ed6612

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!

Todd1225

Thanks for the heads up! I've got about 2 weeks until I take my exam. How detailed was the exam, was it just a general overview, or did they get very specific? I think my worst fear is "characteristics" questions, like "name 3 characteristics of XXXX"....


Again, Congrats!!!!

Ghent

Congratz.

Lexxdymondz

Congrats

ed6612

Thanks everyone,

I would have to say that the exam was neither too general or too specific. It would be fair to say that you should expect questions on both theory and practical use. Some problems that I encountered asked about the traits of network technologies (eg. switches, OSI, LAN, WAN) while others went right down to applicaton (eg. subnetting, identifying IOS commands). One thing I do know with certainty is that the study materials I used were sufficient for me not to encounter surprise questions that caught me off guard. There were a few questions that I thought either had more correct answers than asked for or no correct answers but even then I was familiar with the concepts behind the question and the possible answer choices allowing me to make an educated guess.

dagr8tim

Without answering any specific questions or talking about specific questions. How helpful was celticrover?

I've been messing with their site because they seem to have alot of practice tests that are quick and easy to get to. How did the hardness/easyness of their questions compare to what was on the exam?

Harder? Easier? About the same?