CCENT - Am I ready?

forevertom

Hi guys!

I am currently completing the CCNA Discovery course at a Cisco Academy. I have just passed CCNA2 with a score above 90%. After this I booked my CCENT exam for next week but I am now worried I might not be ready. This is my first IT exam that I will have taken.

Is the Discovery course enough to get you through the exam? My tutor has told me it is but I don't know if he is just tyring to make me feel confident.

Thanks in advance!

tomaifauchai

Hi and welcome on the forums!

From my experience, you'll need to review most of the stuff and understand subnetting on your fingertips. You should be able to crack a subnet/IP addressing question within 15-20 seconds

forevertom

tomaifauchai wrote: »

Hi and welcome on the forums!

From my experience, you'll need to review most of the stuff and understand subnetting on your fingertips. You should be able to crack a subnet/IP addressing question within 15-20 seconds

Thanks for the quick reply!

A bit worried by that as I tend to work out the subnetting by writing out the binary and it tends to take me about 30 seconds to work it out.

I am currently reading through my notes from both CCNA 1 and CCNA 2 but am not sure if there is extra reading I need to do before the exam.

ciscoman2012

forevertom wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply!

A bit worried by that as I tend to work out the subnetting by writing out the binary and it tends to take me about 30 seconds to work it out.

I am currently reading through my notes from both CCNA 1 and CCNA 2 but am not sure if there is extra reading I need to do before the exam.

If you're not sure about how your subnetting is I would take the subnetting quiz hosted by TechExams.

If you can do it in under 12 minutes I'd say you're ready. And miss no more than 1 question! Hopefully none

Here is the link:
Practice Exams - Browse - TechExams.net

You can scroll down and take the following tests:

Subnetting Test (CCNA)
CCNA ICND1

bigmantenor

If your CCNA Acad is structured the same as the one here in the states, then you will most likely need to study up on switch operation/configuration before taking the CCENT. If you look on the objectives for the CCENT, switch configs are on there, but are not taught in CCNA 1&2. Here in the states, 1&2 consist of Discovery (TCP/IP, OSI, general networking) and Routing (OSPF, EIGRP, and RIP). That's the odd thing about the CCNA Academy; the courses don't line up with the tests like you think they would/should. My advice would be to grab the Odom or Lammle book and work on switch configuration before your exam (no need to go into the deeper bits yet, like configuring VLANs/VTP/STP etc.). YMMV.

gosh1976

bigmantenor wrote: »

If your CCNA Acad is structured the same as the one here in the states, then you will most likely need to study up on switch operation/configuration before taking the CCENT. If you look on the objectives for the CCENT, switch configs are on there, but are not taught in CCNA 1&2. Here in the states, 1&2 consist of Discovery (TCP/IP, OSI, general networking) and Routing (OSPF, EIGRP, and RIP). That's the odd thing about the CCNA Academy; the courses don't line up with the tests like you think they would/should. My advice would be to grab the Odom or Lammle book and work on switch configuration before your exam (no need to go into the deeper bits yet, like configuring VLANs/VTP/STP etc.). YMMV.

You are describing The CCNA exploration course and it is true that you do not study everything that could be on the CCENT until you are almost done with the fourth module which is Accessing the WAN. I studied ahead so that I could take the CCENT before we had covered everything in the course.

The OP poster reference the CCNA discovery course which is structured completely differently and they do cover pretty much everything that might be on the ICND1 in the first two modules.

forevertom

Thanks for the advice guys. Tomorrow is the exam day so will see how it goes. I am not overly sure if I am ready but I am more than happy to treat this as experience. Still would love to pass though!!

ciscoman2012

forevertom wrote: »

Thanks for the advice guys. Tomorrow is the exam day so will see how it goes. I am not overly sure if I am ready but I am more than happy to treat this as experience. Still would love to pass though!!

Awesome best of luck with it and stay positive! Let us know how the outcome of the exam is too.

Also, it will be great practice for you so either way it's a win-win!

MAC_Addy

Good luck mate!

forevertom

PASSED! So unexpected and really pleased. Was so worried as there were some questions that I don't think were covered in the CCNA Discovery course but I still managed it. Definitely a good Christmas present to myself!

ciscoman2012

forevertom wrote: »

PASSED! So unexpected and really pleased. Was so worried as there were some questions that I don't think were covered in the CCNA Discovery course but I still managed it. Definitely a good Christmas present to myself!

Congratulations man this is awesome! Now for the ICND2!

Would you say the questions were harder than you expected going into it, the same as you expected, or easier? Also, how were you on the time limit? Do you remember how many minutes you had left when you finished the exam?

forevertom

Definitely. I start CCNA3 (The next one on the Discovery course) at the beginning of Jan. The questions were the sort of level I was expecting but I wasn't expecting some of the layouts. I was okay for time in the end. I think I had about 25 minutes left. Nearly a week of subnetting revision and drawing out a little subnetting table on the paper provided definitely made all the difference!

ciscoman2012

forevertom wrote: »

Definitely. I start CCNA3 (The next one on the Discovery course) at the beginning of Jan. The questions were the sort of level I was expecting but I wasn't expecting some of the layouts. I was okay for time in the end. I think I had about 25 minutes left. Nearly a week of subnetting revision and drawing out a little subnetting table on the paper provided definitely made all the difference!

Great news well that's awesome you passed it with relative ease. Hopefully you'll do the same for the CCNA as well. I'm taking mine in January (ICND1) so hopefully I will have the same outcome.

forevertom

Good luck for it!