My Progress Thread (was: Practice Exam #2)

bermovick

OK whew; so I found out how to modify the exam engine to simulate a 'normal' exam environment better (so I didn't get stuck with all 161 questions lol), and I feel quite a bit better about the outcome now.

I still failed with a 70% score after setting a 50 question/90 minute exam, but I got a nice breakdown on where I did good and where I did poorly. Yes, I remembered a couple questions from previously but I still worked out the answer(s) in my head for each of them so that shouldn't have skewed the test much if at all. I did get a couple questions that I'm not sure are ICND1 level (1 or 2 questions regarding TTL on traceroutes, and I think I had a question on a routing protocol other than RIP2) so I may be slightly better even. Of course practice exam questions != real exam questions so ...)

While taking the questions I had issues regarding RIP (I didn't really 'get' autosummarization apparently), and had a few issues regarding 'subnet zero / no subnet zero' (I think I got them switched around for one question, but since NONE of the answers made sense I reversed what I was thinking it meant).

My subnetting seems ok; I'm sure I could improve on it some. Answering questions on subnettingquestions.com is one thing but having a big diagram where I have to do it on multiple subnets at once to review the question/answer(s) puts me into 'panic mode' a little bit still. I did get to put into practice a new 'shortcut' I worked out, and it seemed to work out pretty well so that's good.

I'm much happier now; I feel more confident that I have a decent understanding of most of the information - I just need to brush up on my weak points and sortof 'fill in the cracks' on things I understand but not completely. I picked up Lammle's study guide off eBay ($7.50!) which should be arriving in a couple days so I think I'll use that resource rather than try re-hashing CBTNuggets or Odom's book, while working more on the subnettingquestions.com website just to get quicker at it. I can get the magic number quickly, but then takes me time to come up with the subnet number/range from that (umm, magic number 16, and I need to find the network for .197 -- so 16, 32, 64, 128, umm.. 160. umm... 192, so umm - what was my magic number? 16 ok and 192, so we're 192 - next number is (192, +6 is 198, +10 is 20, so 192 to 207!). Yeah, I could get faster at that .

I'm rambling now so I'll stop ().

bermovick

After getting Lammle's book on saturday and spending the last couple days reading the first half of it, I decided to take another practice test today because I felt I wasn't really picking up anything new from it.

I set up the Boson exam for 55 questions and 90 minutes. I also checked the 'show number of answers needed to be correct' as I heard the actual exam lets you know this, had it show answers/explanations when answered incorrectly so I could review why I got an answer incorrect immediately after answering it incorrectly, and removed all the ICND2 questions (why are they included in an exam specifically listed as ICND1? At least it was only 1 question).

I scored an 873 on it! Excellent. I missed 7 out of the 55 questions. I'm hitting the option to re-take the 7 I missed now so I can comment on them.
1: Regarding commands to get cdp information. I knew this but second-guessed myself and selected a wrong option. Solution: don't second-guess myself!
2: Layer 2 question. The host in question had an empty arp cache (but all switches had fully propagated). I forgot the first frame would be an arp (broadcast) to get the destination mac, instead selecting the route the ping would take once the mac address was known. Solution: Pay a bit closer attention!
3: Detailed rip. I need to work on this a bit more; it seems one of my weaker areas (summarization and classless/classful specifically). I don't entirely understand the explanation even so yeah; I need to focus on this.
4: A sim. I missed a step and I'm annoyed by it. Admin couldn't telnet into S1. A review of running-config showed Vlan1 was shutdown. I no shutdown'd it, verified I could telnet into it (through a router) once done, and hit complete. Wrong! There was no default gateway set. Annoyed since it shouldn't have WORKED then. Oh well. Not sure how to solve this except to pay super super close attention lol.
5: security question regarding IDS. Forgot what IDS was. lol. I'll re-read that section a couple times since it's strictly memorization, which I'm not super at.
6: WLAN question; hosts unable to communicate with an AP. Got 2 of the 3 options. I'd guessed on the 3rd since I wasn't sure, although I had been eyeing the correct answer. (RF interference from another device that I didn't know threw off RF).
7: This annoyed me that I missed it; topology had multiple routers & was a subnetting question. I did the math fine; what I DIDN'T notice was 2 of the routers were connected to the same subnet, so rather than counting for 9 subnets I should only have calculated for 8. Solution: pay closer attention!.

I'm thinking I'll try scheduling the exam for sometime next week! Hooray!
(sorry for the long post)