first attempt several months ago - failed 847. used Lammle 5th edition and various router sims.
2nd attempt today - passed 898. mainly used Odum ICND + Intro books/practise exams, and Dynamips virtualisation software for hands-on.
i wrote out a subnetting table beforehand in order to save time and mental energy by quickly looking up blocksizes and their equivalent slash notation (and yet i still completed the exam with barely a few minutes to spare).
nearly panicked on a few occasions especially on the more involved, heavily-weighted questions and so concentrated on answering/doing the parts of the question i was confident with, before returning to devote time to the more troublesome areas in order to complete it.
overall, nothing appreared on the exam which really took me by surprise
