CCNA exam: expectations of IOS sims

thedude666

Hi all,

I have been here in the past and successfully passed my exams for Solaris 10.

Now I want to take the CCNA exam.

From what I understand doing just the CCNA exam or taking ICND1 & 2 demands the same knowledge and leads both to the CCNA certificate.

What I wonder is, if I do the ICND1 & 2, do I have to pay for both seperately? Resulting in double the cost?

Another thing I was wondering: I heard that there are IOS sims on the exam. However I am not fully clear on what they expect you to do there. Type a command or 2 to configure something? Type all commands to configure a router? Or do you just have to be able to see some configuration stuff and you have to be able to read the output that is relevant in this question and give an answer based on that.

I am doubting if I should take the 2 exam part or 1 exam.

Thanks in advance!

JDMurray

thedude666 wrote: »

From what I understand doing just the CCNA exam or taking ICND1 & 2 demands the same knowledge and leads both to the CCNA certificate.

What I wonder is, if I do the ICND1 & 2, do I have to pay for both seperately? Resulting in double the cost?

You can take one exam (CCNA 640-802) to get the CCNA cert, which costs $250US, or your can take two separate exams (ICND1 640-822 and ICND2 640-816) to get both the CCENT and CCNA certs, which are $125US each. Either way it's the same cost to get the CCNA, but the two-exam route gets you two certs for the same price as taking only one exam.

Also, you can buy discounted exam vouchers to save some money. Right now, GetCertify4Less has early expiration ICND1/ICND2 vouchers for $85US each.

seansd

The ICND exams are half the CCNA full exam, so total cost is same either route. As to which test route you want to take, it will depend on your comfort level and experience. Start studying and see how you do on practice exams & quizes. Personally, if I had to do it over, I would go the 2 test route, since I only rarely work with Cisco equipment for my job. I was able to pass the single exam based on overall experience over the years. The ISO sims will be as if you had real console access to the Cisco device, including the relevant commands and configuration options.

pogue

thedude666 wrote: »

Hi all,

I have been here in the past and successfully passed my exams for Solaris 10.

Now I want to take the CCNA exam.

From what I understand doing just the CCNA exam or taking ICND1 & 2 demands the same knowledge and leads both to the CCNA certificate.

What I wonder is, if I do the ICND1 & 2, do I have to pay for both seperately? Resulting in double the cost?

Another thing I was wondering: I heard that there are IOS sims on the exam. However I am not fully clear on what they expect you to do there. Type a command or 2 to configure something? Type all commands to configure a router? Or do you just have to be able to see some configuration stuff and you have to be able to read the output that is relevant in this question and give an answer based on that.

I am doubting if I should take the 2 exam part or 1 exam.

Thanks in advance!

As for what you are expected to do in the sim..

It would be safe to say you should be able to do all tasks comfortably that are in the study guide. For real.

As a very vague example that does not violate the NDA..

(While looking at a 4 router network with PC hanging off one end router..)

Goal: Change router X's hostname to "BlahBlah"

(You cannot get to router X without fixing multiple network issues..)

I first took the CCNA back in 2000. I took it again in 2009. It was MUCH harder and more sim-intensive in 2009.


In other words, if you have serious doubts as to whether you are ready, then you probably are not ready.

Russ

thedude666

Thanks for the replies guys!

Start studying and see how you do on practice exams & quizes.

I already finished studying a book (Sybex - CCNA Study Guide - Todd Lammle).
Did all the review questions and it got along well. But that might give me a false view of the real exam.

For now I'm planning to do all the labs in the book. I don't have that much experience with cisco however I did some basic configuration in the past (hostname, passwords, vlan, subnetting, ...)
I'll check when I can do the first exam. That should give me a view of what I know about it and give me some feeling.
So I can expect sims in the ICND1 part as well probably (probably a stupid question ).

I'll let you guys know how the ICND1 turned out. Hope I can do it somewhere next week.

Greetings! (happy new year everyone btw )