Pushing past the obstacle

dmacomber

I have taken the ICND2 too many times. I am seriously close to burning out on Cisco, but really want to finish and move forward. The frustrating part for me is that I can setup routers and switches, I just test really poorly on it. My failings have been in the troubleshooting areas, I do not currently work in the networking field and have to find time to study/lab. I finally starting working in packet tracer and it really is better than I thought. Long story short... How can I get the troubleshooting down to get past the test. I have been within 7 points of passing.

Thanks

DM

heliuminside

Well, troubleshooting is not something that you learn to do off the book. You need to apply the concepts in the book to a real life lab or packet tracer topology in order to see how they work, and if they don't work as supposed than there is a issue here, something wrong you have typed or merely a device fault. If you understand how something works, and than it is a piece of cake to troubleshoot tickets.

If you've read the book and understood it, you'd have seen that there are tons of methods to use. Cisco recommends using OSI's 7-layer model for different troubleshooting scenarios. It has three approaches like: Bottom-up, Divide-and-conquer, and Top-down. Believe me if you'd apply one of these three approaches into a lab or real life scenario, and you check every single layer of the OSI model on that device if they are working correctly, you shall solve any scenario. But if you think that OSI is dull, and takes to much time for troubleshooting, then you can try to guess where the problem is related from, and go straight to that part and apply skills that you've learned through the book, it may take time for some of the newbies but you'll get used to it after you solve a few.

Also in order to become a better troubleshooting person you need to explore the IOS, there are tons of debug and show commands that you didn't know of, and don't go just as the book says you to do so, try doing something that you are not sure what results you will get, after you see a few failed configurations, you will start to recognize the same appropriate error in the other scenarios, than your mind immediately would go "Ah-ha" here is the portion where you start saying "I know this issue that has occurred me in several situations let me check what is wrong with the debug and show commands that I managed to learn", and also this is the part where troubleshooting gets easier. Without practicing you cannot succeed.

dmacomber

I may have been vague, I can configure and do ( on a physical and packet tracer setup ), my problem is the test. they ask questions that for some reason I am not grasping. I am looking for insight on how to answer the questions that to me are holding me back. Would it be better to have some one modify a lab and ask me what the expected result would be, or show me portions of routing tables to diagnose the issue? That seems to be what is holding me back. Thank you for the input though.

dontstop

So you have a lab at home correct?

dmacomber

yeah extensive one.

alxx

What lab guides/work books have you gone through ?

Do you have any practise exams like bosun exsim max or the free version that comes in the back of Wendel Odoms book ?

The INE ccna videos are free (to stream) until the end of this month.
I've got 12 still to go through.

How familiar are you with the ios show and debug commands ?
Can you interpret the outputs ?

Todd Burrell

I am sure some of my comments are repitition, but I would recommend playing around with all of the SHOW and DEBUG commands in painful detail. I'm getting ready to take the composite exam and I have similar issues - I just can't seem to get my mind around all of the extensive info needed to troubleshoot the various scenarios with routing (RIP, OSPF and EIGRP) and switching (VTP and STP) as well as WAN and NAT issues. There just seems to be an overwhelming number of scenarios and information.

I will say that from my experience with MCSE, MCITP and other certs - the best advice is to just work as many problems as possible. For the CCNA I'd work through the Boson practice tests and then find as many of the free labs as possible and work though them.

Good luck...

thall860

alxx wrote: »

The INE ccna videos are free (to stream) until the end of this month.
I've got 12 still to go through.

Where can we find these free videos?

alxx

need to register
CCNA Associate Course - 640-802