ICND1: Is Boson just really time consuming or am I really unprepared?

Magik Smoke

Hi all, I've been studying off and on for about three months. I've finished the CBT nuggets videos, read Lammle's book and done Frame Relay/Serial and RIP on GNS3 and real equipment.

I bought the Boson test sim during the holiday special and have been working on it for a month. I'm scoring 90-100% but the tests are taking me a couple of hours... The RIP labs (If you own it you know what I'm talking about) are taking 30 minutes or more.

Do I need to find a quicker method of subnetting or is the Boson sim just time consuming?

vinbuck

Boson is desgined to be incredibly difficult and mirror the test environment so that you get used to providing the knowledge Cisco wants in the format they want. This is critical because so many questions may appear to be beyond your knowledge at first glance, but once you get over the shock factor and start dissecting what the question is asking, oftentimes you'll find that you know the answer or have a good idea but just aren't familiar with the formatting of the question....

Welcome to self-imposed torture aka Cisco testing

Two hours is a little on the long side to get through one test and you should probably see what areas take you the most time to answer. Subnetting should be 30 seconds for less to determine an answer - this is about the speed you need to have to be successful in the CCENT and CCNA level exams.

Todd Burrell

I think from everything I have read and heard that the Boson exams really are a good indication of the actual CCNA exam - and I have heard they are probably a little harder. But you HAVE to do the tests faster than a couple of hours. Jeremy in the CBT Nuggets videos says you need to be able to quickly subnet - and this is something that I believe 100%. You should be able to look at an IP address and a subnet mask and pull out the range and the subnet and broadcast address within 10 seconds. And Jeremy also says in his preparation video that the CCNA is all about SPEED. On that point I fully agree. You need to get down to around 75 minutes on the Boson exams.

It also should not take that long for the sims. I would say that a sim should take no longer than 5 minutes. Setting up RIP is just not that hard if you understand the concepts. There was only one Boson sim that took awhile - and I think it was the OSPF one. The RIP sim was not that bad. The main thing with all three routing protocols is to FULLY understand the network statements. RIP network statements are quick because they ONLY contain the classful network.

Of course I take my exam on Monday so that's when I find out how well prepared I really am. I'll put out an update Monday afternoon.

Good luck...

alxx

Certainly takes time to go through all the questions at first.
I'm slowly getting better but still to slow.

MrXpert

I personally found the Boson icnd2 questions much easier than the real exam.
However it was the other way around for icnd1