ICND2 Pass and thoughts
Excellent1
Member Posts: 462 ■■■■■■■□□□
in CCNA & CCENT
Sat the exam a couple of hours ago, passed with an 874. Not the greatest score, but it's a pass. Basically on the score report I bombed WAN links for some reason (felt really strong in this area going in), so that was a bit of a surprise. I had hardly any questions on WAN links, so I must have bobbled the couple I had. The rest of the areas I scored well in.
As for the exam, I used almost all of the allotted time. That's rare for me. I am usually a very quick test taker, as I either know the answer or I do not--I don't sit at a question and 2nd guess myself very often. This exam, however, takes some time. I scored 100% in IP addressing, and as many have said over and over again, subnetting is the heart of this exam. When you're staring at a diagram with 3-7 routers and 3-4 interfaces per router and trying to make sense of the routing table and the different ip addresses on the links, you do not have time to break out an abacus and convert from binary to dotted decimal. All the time I spent practicing subnetting paid off big time, and it will for you too, so my advice is to not neglect it.
Materials I used: Odom's ICND2 material, Lammle's latest CCNA (7th edition I believe, off the top of my head) and Bryant's study guide. I also labbed everything extensively. I'm running 3 2650xm's, 2 1760 (all w/max flash/ram), along with a 3550 and a few 2950's. This is overkill for the CCNA, but nothing helps you retain something like doing it yourself. I also used the practice exams here and some of the practice tests from Labsim. I can't really recommend Labsim as a resource though, several of the labs are flat out wrong (one of my labs for switching wanted me to configure a console password, but I failed that lab because I put the password on the console line instead of line vty 0... yeah). To be fair, though, I didn't go through much of Labsim's stuff, so it may just be the labs that are poor quality.
Anyway, I know it's almost cliched to do so, but I really do want to thank the people on this forum for taking the time to share their experience and the resources they have used. Not having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to self-study is a huge help, and I have a debt of gratitude to everyone who contributes here. Thanks again.
Well, back to the books. I have CCNA Security to knock out, then I'm starting on my NP. I am well and truly hooked at this point. I may toss some Juniper studies in at some point, but routing and switching is my new love. Time to buy a bigger rack.
Good luck to everyone on your studies.
As for the exam, I used almost all of the allotted time. That's rare for me. I am usually a very quick test taker, as I either know the answer or I do not--I don't sit at a question and 2nd guess myself very often. This exam, however, takes some time. I scored 100% in IP addressing, and as many have said over and over again, subnetting is the heart of this exam. When you're staring at a diagram with 3-7 routers and 3-4 interfaces per router and trying to make sense of the routing table and the different ip addresses on the links, you do not have time to break out an abacus and convert from binary to dotted decimal. All the time I spent practicing subnetting paid off big time, and it will for you too, so my advice is to not neglect it.
Materials I used: Odom's ICND2 material, Lammle's latest CCNA (7th edition I believe, off the top of my head) and Bryant's study guide. I also labbed everything extensively. I'm running 3 2650xm's, 2 1760 (all w/max flash/ram), along with a 3550 and a few 2950's. This is overkill for the CCNA, but nothing helps you retain something like doing it yourself. I also used the practice exams here and some of the practice tests from Labsim. I can't really recommend Labsim as a resource though, several of the labs are flat out wrong (one of my labs for switching wanted me to configure a console password, but I failed that lab because I put the password on the console line instead of line vty 0... yeah). To be fair, though, I didn't go through much of Labsim's stuff, so it may just be the labs that are poor quality.
Anyway, I know it's almost cliched to do so, but I really do want to thank the people on this forum for taking the time to share their experience and the resources they have used. Not having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to self-study is a huge help, and I have a debt of gratitude to everyone who contributes here. Thanks again.
Well, back to the books. I have CCNA Security to knock out, then I'm starting on my NP. I am well and truly hooked at this point. I may toss some Juniper studies in at some point, but routing and switching is my new love. Time to buy a bigger rack.
Good luck to everyone on your studies. Comments
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alxx
Member Posts: 755
Congratulations!
Did you use any other lab work books ?
Good luck with CCNA SecurityGoals CCNA by dec 2013, CCNP by end of 2014 -
cyberguypr
Mod Posts: 6,928 Mod
AS Vin Diesel said, it doesn't matter if you win by a second or a mile, winning is winning. Congrats.