ICND2 coming up [UPDATE: Passed]

aragoen_celtdra

So I'm on the home stretch for my ICND2 review. I'm set to take it on Sat, June 28th.

Aside from the time management advice (which I'm definitely factoring in heavily based on my performance on ICND1), is there anyone that has taken the exam recently that can share some motivational anecdotes that would help quell my nerves and apprehension towards failing?

Heck, I'd even listen to someone with an "I failed it twice, but with steadfast determination, I finally passed last week" story... or a "don't sweat it G! I took the test yesterday and passed with 998 with 45 minutes to spare so it should be cake!" story

But if not, just wish me good luck

astorrs

Can't speak to the difficulty of the exam, but I'm happy to wish you a "good luck"

mikej412

Good Luck!

Lots of time left to study!

Check the exam blueprint and make sure you have all the topics covered. Make sure you've gotten hands on practice with all the configuration, implement, troubleshoot, and verify tasks.

hypnotoad

Judging by the study notes on your blog, I'd say you're doing a good job (probably better than most) and will be ready. Best of luck to you and keep us posted.

127.0.0.1

I've been following your blog Aragoen, you have put a lot of effort into studying for this. I'm sure you will pass! Best of luck with ICND 2. I look forward to seeing your exam results!

aragoen_celtdra

Thanks for the vote of confidence everyone!

I have been putting a lot of effort into my studies for the last 3 months (as you can tell from my blog accounts). It's just that sometimes it boggles my mind how some people are able to prepare for the exams with as few as 2 or even 1 month of studying.

I have read Wendell Odom's ICND2 book twice as thoroughly as I could. I even supplement it with individual technology-focused pdf's from Cisco, as well as CBT nuggets. I started my review phase in the beginning of this month, doing a 3rd pass at the book, and I still find information I thought I already read. It just makes you question, "Is there more I missed?"

Hmmm... I guess it's just one of those things where you over-analyze things before you see them, and when I'm actually taking the test, I'd find that I have indeed over analyzed it. I just hope that my preparation will prove successful because I intend to follow these study methods in preparing for CCNP.

suffah

I'm also taking it Saturday. I think we'll both be fine.

Don't triple-check your subnetting like you did on ICND1. That's really killing your time! Double-check, maybe. But 3 times is just too much...

aragoen_celtdra

suffah wrote:

I'm also taking it Saturday. I think we'll both be fine.

Don't triple-check your subnetting like you did on ICND1. That's really killing your time! Double-check, maybe. But 3 times is just too much...

Haha! Oh man! I've been practicing subnetting so much that I feel I've gotten progressively better at it since ICND1. I find that subnettingquestions.com everyday is a great way to sharpen your skills. I do at least 5 a day and now i can look at an address with the prefix and automatically know in my head what the decimal equivalent is and what the bit increment is to form the subnet ranges. The funny thing is, I suck at basic math so much that I still have to write down the calculations.

Well good luck with the studying and hopefully we'll be sharing information on CCNP the following week.

aragoen_celtdra

Well.. I passed

I'll give some more details about my thoughts and study methods later. Right now gotta go to sleep and wake up early to accompany a church choir at 7am tomorrow. I'll be sending up a little thank you prayer in there as well.

mikej412

aragoen_celtdra wrote:

I passed

Congratulations!

astorrs

Congrats!

P.S. Don't forget to update your profile

mamono

Congrats! Well deserved!

Glynixx

aragoen_celtdra wrote:

Well.. I passed

I'll give some more details about my thoughts and study methods later. Right now gotta go to sleep and wake up early to accompany a church choir at 7am tomorrow. I'll be sending up a little thank you prayer in there as well.

Awesome job!!
Congrats!

do me a favor, send up another prayer or 2 for those of us trying to stay motivated to even get ICND 1 done

I'm finding that I have just too much material, way to much... (4 books, 5 exam prep software packages, video series).

Get some rest, you deserve it!!

127.0.0.1

I rarely congratulate people on this forum. Congratulations on the pass, you deserved it! Good luck with your CCNP studies.

If you don't mind posting it, what score did you get?

suffah

Congrats man, I knew you would pass. I want to thank you because I didn't take notes and just used your blog for reviewing ideas.

See you @ BSCI.

aragoen_celtdra

Finally I'm able to follow up on my promise to give details of my exam experience. Between the moderate celebration following my pass on Saturday and the incredibly busy Sunday (I played piano for 2 Mass servces for church and a league basketball game) I'm barely getting the chance to follow up with you guys.

Thanks everyone for the congratulatory greetings. I did get some PMs from several of you guys through the weekend asking how I did.There were also quite a few questions from you guys. In the future, I don't mind receiving your PMs but if you have questions specifically related to CCNA, I'd much rather you ask here on the forum or this thread to inspire a little bit of discussions. I'm sure some people would like to ask the same questions but are afraid to. Plus it's too much for my ego to contain such important PMs But no harm done.

So about the exam. I'm gonna try not to go into too much details because I have already written a pretty comprehensive summary of my experience here. But boy am I glad to pass it. As always I never felt ready for the exam. I might have even over-studied for it. But I'm glad I did. It wasn't just my intention to pass the exam but to understand the fundamental concepts well enough that it would easily transition me to the next level. So just barely passing the exam was not enough for me. That should be the same mentality for everyone in my opnion - at least for those who plan to move on to CCNP like I do.

My score on the exam was pretty much indicative of how I felt about the individual technologies that were tested. I came in knowing that switching was my worst area, and it showed in the results. I made sure I spent considerable amount of time on NAT and ACL, as well as subnetting (as it was discussed by many here being most challenging) and I scored the best on these areas. So no surpises there.

Here's a summary of my result:

-Configure, verify and troubleshoot a switch with VLANs and interswitch communications 82%
-Implement an IP addressing scheme and IP Services 85%
-Configure and troubleshoot basic operation and routing on Cisco devices 82%
-Implement, verify, and troubleshoot NAT and ACLs 100%
-Implement and verify WAN links 100%

Some questions asked by others:

Did you use any other material besides Odom's during your process or in the final days up to the exam?

My primary study material was the Odom book. I read it 3 times over 3 months. I also did extensive notes on my blog over a span of my 6 month study, if you're interested to read it. I also used CBT Nuggets, although I don't think it would've been enough to allow me to pass. The CBTs were very helpful in clarifying some concepts I didn't understand in the book. But once I got the clarification, the book started making sense. In my opinion, the Odom book has everything you need to know to pass. I bought the Todd Lammle book and the CCNA Portable Command guide. I barely used these two. Additionaly, I printed a lot of PDFs from the cisco DocCD. I didn't read all the DocCD materials I printed. I only used it to fill in some gaps where it applied. In the final weeks, I pored over the boson practice exams that came with the book. I found these exams to be more difficult than the real test. Lastly, I tried to create my own lab scenarios to cram the visuals in my head as I look at the CLI. Once you're taking the exams, you find yourself visualizing those commands you practiced in labs and you remember what the show command output look like.

any idea how to gauage when you are ready for the exam?

I had no real gauge of my readiness. Like I said earlier, I still felt i wasn't ready just before taking the exam. Ultimately I had to rely on what I have done so far to prepare. And my preparation proved sufficient enough for me to pass.

Which subnetting method did you use? Odom's or Jeremy's from the nuggets?

I learned the concept from Odom. I thought the way he explained it was very detailed that drilled down to the meat of the concept. For practical use, I followed Lammle's way. I never watched the nugget version. But if you want to get drilled with practice questions, I got it from someone here and have practiced with it everyday - Subnettingquestions.com. Do a few of them everyday with the goal of improving your speed with subnetting

Do you think you would have been able to pass just with the videos and the practice tests or did you have to get all the way thru Odom's book multiple times to really give you the edge?

I don't think I could've passed the test with with videos alone. I certainly could not pass the test by studying the practice questions alone without the benefit of knowing the concepts behind the technologies. I suppose if I had dumped it I could've done so. But what's the point of spending all this time heavily documenting my progress and "wasting" my time with reading if I could've gone that route . Going through the book multiple times was very helpful because it kept solidifying what I've already read and help me find little things I might have missed. And I did find a lot of new things each time around. Some people can do it with one reading. Others, like me, still find new things reading it multiple times. It really depends on your capacity to retain materials.

Well, I think that's short enough I'll be heading over to the CCNP forums soon and I hope I'm well received there as well as I was here. Cheers!

dynamik

Nice write-up

Congratulations!

Paul Boz

Especially nice job on the WAN portion. That is traditionally the weakest area for most people and you really killed it.

hypnotoad

Good job, and good scores. What do you have in mind next?

aragoen_celtdra

dynamik wrote:

Nice write-up

Congratulations!

Thanks Dynamik.. By the way,when are you gonna update your blog? Blogging my experience was very beneficial for my studying. Not to mention to others who said they benefited from it too.;)

Paul Boz wrote:

Especially nice job on the WAN portion. That is traditionally the weakest area for most people and you really killed it.

Yeah! I really didn't feel any pressure on this area at all. Even when I was first reading the section it felt pretty natural for me. Now switching... whooosh! Just went over my head and had to spend extra time to get a decent command of the concept. I plan to review the switching section through the period that I'm studying for BSCI - so I don't forget too much when BCMSN comes along.

nl wrote:

Good job, and good scores. What do you have in mind next?

Thanks nl! I'm moving straight on to BSCI. I'll probably spend extra time on this one because I hear that it's the toughest of all four. I'll look into spreading my schedule in a period of 4 months. Then I'll try to gauge how well or poorly I'm doing and re-adjust accordingly.

nel

@ aragoen_celtdra...great writeup man. i hope to be sitting for this in the next few months, ive only just started reading for icnd2 and can feel the massive step from ccent but are enjoying it so far!

Keep us posted with what your doing man! then hopefully i will c u on ccnp forums!

Ps, congrats

dynamik

aragoen_celtdra wrote:

dynamik wrote:

Nice write-up

Congratulations!

Thanks Dynamik.. By the way,when are you gonna update your blog? Blogging my experience was very beneficial for my studying. Not to mention to others who said they benefited from it too.;

Heh. I should just take that offline. I want to do more tutorials and things like that, but Wordpress isn't really meeting my needs. I'm going to hold off until I find a better solution. I think I'm going to switch over to Drupal. I believe a CMS will be a better fit than a blog. I just got a design guide for it from Amazon the other day, so I'm hopefully have it going sooner rather than later. I'm going to try to knock out a few exams before the end of July though, so maybe later in August