How to fail sims on exam?

binarysoul

I'm not sure if I can tell you how to pass sims on CCNA exams, but I may have found a way to fail them Here is how.

You finish a chapter and go through all excercises and follow practical labs and probably score 90%+ on practice tests, but guess what? You may not be able to put everything together and come up with a solution. For example, over the past few days, I learned everything about VLANs, but then I tested myself by trying to create a few VLANs and try to route traffic among them via a router. I failed to do so It seemed like me pulling a truck uphill.

I believe this is one way why most poeple find sims difficult, as it doesn't tell you which chapter of the book it's gonna be about.

How can I become good at 'putting it all together'? Any ideas?

shednik

the old saying of practice makes perfect is definitely true in this matter, If it hadn't been for my lab and using the sim exercises in TestOut I would have never felt comfortable on the sims.

If you want post your configs and we'll help you point out your config errors...

dynamik

You definitely need hands-on experience. Check out my response here: http://techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29228

binarysoul

The good news is after spending two hours, I was able to establish communication among multiple VLANS It was a good eye opener!

What I did was I put all moving parts of an inter-VLAN network on a sheet of paper: interfaces, sub-interfaces, IP's, gateways, VLAN's and I was able to see it all.

One thing I don't understand is why we assign an IP to VLAN 1? I understand it's for management, but what exactly is it used for. What if you don't assign an IP to VLAN 1?

yukky

Having good router diagrams is very useful. I came across DiaCze which seems to be free.

EdTheLad

binarysoul wrote:

One thing I don't understand is why we assign an IP to VLAN 1? I understand it's for management, but what exactly is it used for. What if you don't assign an IP to VLAN 1?

You dont have to assign an ip address to vlan 1, its your choice if you want to be able to manage the box via telnet.A switch is layer 2 and unlike a router you cannot telnet to it as its interfaces dont have an ip address.By default all the ports on the switch are in vlan 1 so if you assign an ip address to vlan 1 you will be able to manage it via telnet using any connected port.You can assign a port to another vlan for instance vlan 5 the problem is you will not be able to connect to the switch via telnet using any port in vlan 5 until you assign interface vlan 5 an ip address.A low end layer 2 cisco switch will only allow one interface to function with an ip address, you can configure muliple vlan interfaces with ip addresses but only one can be active the others get shutdown, which vlan interface stays up is another story,best just to enable a single vlan interface as your management vlan end of story.For security reasons vlan 1 is rarely used, good practice is to assign all your ports to say vlan 2, put an ip address on interface vlan 2 and if required move ports out of vlan 2 into new vlans when required.

freetech

Well the only way to do the sims is to do them, and do them and do some more.
Practice, practice, practice.
No magic formula, and it IS the best way to learn.
Remeber, Cisco is trying to test real-world skills. I'm not sure how well the CCNA test does that, but it takes practice to pass the sims on the test.