Passed ICND1

kalebksp

Score: 955/1000

Except for the system crashing on the last question and the 30 minutes it took to print out my score report, the exam wasn't that bad.

I used CBT Nuggets and Todd Lammle's CCENT book. The book is horribly written and didn't get all the way through, it felt as though pieces were cut pasted together and didn't flow correctly. Though the information is good, I would recommend that people look for a better written book.

Now on to the ICND2. Any good book recommendations for that?

-Kale

procman

i am reading Lammel's CCNA guide, but having Odom's guides are highly reccomended. http://www.amazon.com/Official-Certification-Library-640-802-Guide/dp/1587201836/ref=pd_sim_b_4/191-4894558-9163110
its a little more techie but its thorough.

kalebksp

Thanks for the recommendation. I think I'll go to the book store and read a little of the ones they have to see which one I like.

ULWiz

Congrats on the pass. I just cracked open my CCENT book this week and am hoping to wrap this on up in around 4 weeks.

Can you give me a little insigiht on what you did?
I currently have a big dilema. I have two cisco router and two switches downstairs but its currently part of running my home network. Really dont want to change that right now.

Can i complete everything i need with the Boson software


How long did you prepare for this exam for and can you give me a little background on you cisco experience before the exam?

the_Grinch

UL I had no physical equipment, just packet tracer and passed the exam. I have played with Cisco stuff in networking classes, but that was at least 1.5 years ago. I used Todd Lammle CCENT, ExamCram CCENT (get the CCNA version because it has the CCENT chapters), and the almighty CBT Nuggets. Study time was about 1.5 months of a couple of hours a night (should have done more subnetting though!) Oh I just like to talk about me which is why I answered your question....

JavonR

ULWiz wrote:

Congrats on the pass. I just cracked open my CCENT book this week and am hoping to wrap this on up in around 4 weeks.

Can you give me a little insigiht on what you did?
I currently have a big dilema. I have two cisco router and two switches downstairs but its currently part of running my home network. Really dont want to change that right now.

Can i complete everything i need with the Boson software


How long did you prepare for this exam for and can you give me a little background on you cisco experience before the exam?

You can get by with just boson, but it would be in your best interest to work with real Cisco equipment. If you don't want to mess up your home network I would suggest checking out http://www.gns3.net/ you could pull off the IOS images you have running your home network and make a simulated lab network that is virtually the same thing. You will get a better feel for the IOS this way, and it would be free

kalebksp

Thanks ULWiz.

I studied for about two weeks. No previous Cisco experience, but I had a good understanding of networking before hand. I don't know about Boson, as I have a lab that I did all my practice on. If you have access to IOS images you should look into GNS3, I played around with it a bit and it worked pretty well.

My study method primarily consisted of watching the CBTs over a weekend and then reading a bit of the book to get a more indepth understanding (broken up by watching CCNA CBTs). For me CBTs are a very effective learning method, couple that with some hands on and a little of the detailed knowledge from a book and I'm set.

A few years ago I studied for the CCNA for about an hour, but I just couldn't get my head around the command line stuff. It was too foreign to me, so I gave up. Since then I have worked extensively with Linux (which has become my preferred server OS), all with the command line. Even though they have only a few commands in common and work in very different ways, the IOS seems much more comfortable to me now, everything makes sense. I'm not sure if "spend three years administering Linux servers" is practical advice, but if you're not a command line person and you're having trouble understanding the IOS, I think it is worth being aware that it may not be Cisco that is giving you trouble, but the user interface.

-Kale