Hey Now...Lab Sims

seansabian

Hello All,

Has anyone used Test Out Lab Sims as a main source for self study? My employer has provided the Lab Sims as a way to get familiar with technology. Has anyone used these to prepare for certification ? Thanks for your replies in advance.

earweed

I used labsim as my main source for the Net+ and as a second source for the Sec+ and they were pretty good.

tex3030

I have used labsims to practice for the CCNA. I feel like it is a good overview of the topics, and has a decent "simulator" built in to the course.
One of the big problems I have with it is that when asked to troubleshoot something it is like shooting fish in a barrel. If you are in the section dealing with WAN encapsulation, guess where you should look. I am still in the process of going through the course, and am about 3/4 of the way through it or so. I do not believe that I would use this as my only source of information, but it does seem to be providing the majority of the topics.

onesaint

I took the CCNA courses from a local B&M, but the classes were online. The materials were Cisco Network Academy and Labsim. I have since purchased both Lammle's and Odom's books. I needed something that delivered the concepts more directly.

The Labsim material is good and will be good for notes on theory specifics, but I don't think it does much for all the nuances that need be known for the exam. Granted I haven't sat for it yet (I'm not quite sick of reading materials yet!). An example of this is debugging and show commands. It's very important to know these and their output, but they are only lightly covered in examples in the Labsim material. Long story longer, use it as a second source.

Mike-Mike

onesaint wrote: »

I took the CCNA courses from a local B&M, but the classes were online. The materials were Cisco Network Academy and Labsim. I have since purchased both Lammle's and Odom's books. I needed something that delivered the concepts more directly.

The Labsim material is good and will be good for notes on theory specifics, but I don't think it does much for all the nuances that need be known for the exam. Granted I haven't sat for it yet (I'm not quite sick of reading materials yet!). An example of this is debugging and show commands. It's very important to know these and their output, but they are only lightly covered in examples in the Labsim material. Long story longer, use it as a second source.

i posted another thread similar to this one... any chance you got the Sybex or Odom book with the virtual lab?

onesaint

Mike-Mike wrote: »

i posted another thread similar to this one... any chance you got the Sybex or Odom book with the virtual lab?

No, neither. Taking the Network Academy gave me full access to Packet Tracer and all the PT activities in both the 4 Discovery and 4 Exploration books. Additionally, those labs come in PDFs so they can be set up in GNS3 or a real lab, if desired. I didn't see a need for an additional network sim. With that said, I really thought the Boson testing engine that comes with the Odom book and the practice exams (maybe 550 questions) in Labsim were fantastic.

asoft

seansabian wrote: »

Hello All,

Has anyone used Test Out Lab Sims as a main source for self study? My employer has provided the Lab Sims as a way to get familiar with technology. Has anyone used these to prepare for certification ? Thanks for your replies in advance.

Any amount of preparation is good for CCNA. Just don't confine to the study guides like Cisco Press CCNA or Todd. Though study guides are essential, one need to workout using different sources of prep materials.

You may also try out CertExams.com Network Simulator for CCNA, and Exam Simulator for CCNA (they have testlet, simlet and router simulation questions that are not available in most of the practice tests available else where).

Good luck!

KrisA

asoft wrote: »

Though study guides are essential, one need to workout using different sources of prep materials.

I could not agree more. This forum is a prime example. Ask 1 simple question, you can get 6 different ways explained, all of which are right.

A good example would be subnetting and the 500K ways of doing... all in the wording and how you comprehend the complexity of the explanation.