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!
