The BIG 801

kousa95

Wrote and passed the 801. I don't usually like to be negative because it just messes with your confidence, but this is a pretty tough test. You get 56 questions with 90 minutes with a 5 min warning. I wrote with about 4 minutes left and only because I forced myself to rush through a few questions. The subnetting questions were very basic ,so if you know subneting really well, meaning you can answer it just by looking at it, then this will save you precious time for the sims and troubleshooting questions which you will need just because of the nature of the sims and taking your time on them. There are some gimmies which is always nice to see. A couple of things I will confirm
1. No IPX
2. Know your subnetting inside out. You should not even have to think about it, it should become second naure
3. know how to convert hex to binary to decimal

I don't really want to say too much in order to honor the non disclosure agreement and preserve the status of the CCNA and all the hard work we all put into preparing for these exams we put ourselves through.

My studying was as follows. Got 2 cisco 2500 routers (could not afford a switch) Just did some basic labs with these to become more familiar with the command line

Used the new Self test exam for the 801 it was pretty good. It has good explanations to the answers.
Used The Cisco Press CCNA Self Study kit which includes 2 books 1 for the INTRO and 1 for theI CND. This is the best bang for your buck. It is well written and more than covers everthying you need to know and I am sure that I will use it as a refernce in the future. The best part is the great exam sim you get with it for the price of the books you get a free exam sim which alone is worth more than the books! So if you are on a budget I would go with that here is the info for it
Cisco Press ; ISBN: 1587200953

Good Luck!

Ghent

Congratz on the pass.

chalaak

sadly the case with me..is i prepared or the 607..and the deadline just skipped my head....and completely forgot about it....but if u prepared for the 607...shud u have to prepare much for the 801?

kousa95

I would say you are probably 90 per cent prepared if you were ready to write for the 607. The new objectives mention NAT and VPN not sure if that was on 607 cause I wrote back for the 507. I did not find the content even that much different than the 507 other than sims this time around. The closest thing 507 had to sims was asking what command to fill in for enabling RIP on a router. The new material skims cable DSL and wireless a bit.

braveheartz

I failed the CCNA 607 I'm planning to get the CCNA 801. Where did you get your Self Study Exam? Is it also from CISCOPRESS?

dagr8tim

Great job on the pass. I heard the first time they gave the beta out to their own employee's, less than half of the cisco employees that took the test passed.

I also think I got a taste of 801 questions in the last quarter of the network academy. Intresting questions.

I think it still comes down to reviewing the material and actually applying yourself before you take the test.

kousa95

I used the exams that came with cisco press books. It has tons of questions. I also used the 801 exam from Selftest Software.