Took ICND 1 - CCENT exam today...

Souljacker

I came back today to see how you had done. I'm sorry you had such a rough time.

Here's my study method. Maybe some tips could help you.

1. Read through your materials. Odom's books are excellent for learning the theory behind how everything works. Some people think he's dry, but I found his ICND1 books fascinating and I'm enjoying ICND2 now.

2. Family support is nice to have, but can be distracting. Focus on your studies and learning.

3. Cramming doesn't work. Post memory tables around your desk at work if you can and glance at them as you go to lunch, or space out looking at them when you are thinking about something else. They will stick in your head, especially if you are a conceptual and visual person which many women are.

4. Use a study plan. Either make your own, or check out CCNA in 60 days. If you have a plan of what material to go over, you have half the battle already won.

5. Don't cram up until your last moment. Take the final week before doing the actual exam to use practice tests. Boson I hear is very good - Exam Cram also has a book of just CCNA questions. Get every question you can possibly get your hands on, and play games with Packet tracer or whatever sim you are using. I recommend the sims because while it's nice to have a home lab with a router or two, with a sim you can have as many routers and switches and users as you like. Look for challenge labs on the internet - people in forums like these post challenge labs for each other all the time. Paul Browning also has a book out that is just labs and it's like 5 bucks for the kindle version.

That last week shouldn't be you with your nose in a book. It should be practicing questions and labs. don't get too hung up on book study. That's just for theory. Get through the books once, and use them to go back and reference practice questions when something doesn't make sense.

And don't get too hung up on subnetting. You should know how to do it, absolutely - but you get 90 minutes for this exam and if it takes you 3 minutes to figure out a subnetting question you are still fine. That time will be made up on the "gimme" questions, like port numbers. Simlets are arguably the hardest if you aren't familiar with the actual command line, so yes, get back into PT and start building networks, and learn those show commands!

If you need any help, feel free to ask.

Addendum:

One other tip I have if you use PT is to document the labs you do thoroughly. There is a "Place Note" option you can use to document the IP addresses you are using on interfaces and just generally take notes. For specific labs I will document the ints, and paste all the commands used to get to whatever lesson the lab was about. Today I'm working on access lists so my notes have all the ints labelled, the commands I used to create the static routes for my testing and the commands to get the ACL set up.

You can print out the whole topology and keep that in your notes to glance at and refresh your memory on how to do a task. I'd also suggest having the various show commands for the lab on the topology to the side to train yourself what issues can be solved by which show commands.

shellee1983

Souljacker wrote: »

I came back today to see how you had done. I'm sorry you had such a rough time.

Here's my study method. Maybe some tips could help you.

1. Read through your materials. Odom's books are excellent for learning the theory behind how everything works. Some people think he's dry, but I found his ICND1 books fascinating and I'm enjoying ICND2 now.

2. Family support is nice to have, but can be distracting. Focus on your studies and learning.

3. Cramming doesn't work. Post memory tables around your desk at work if you can and glance at them as you go to lunch, or space out looking at them when you are thinking about something else. They will stick in your head, especially if you are a conceptual and visual person which many women are.

4. Use a study plan. Either make your own, or check out CCNA in 60 days. If you have a plan of what material to go over, you have half the battle already won.

5. Don't cram up until your last moment. Take the final week before doing the actual exam to use practice tests. Boson I hear is very good - Exam Cram also has a book of just CCNA questions. Get every question you can possibly get your hands on, and play games with Packet tracer or whatever sim you are using. I recommend the sims because while it's nice to have a home lab with a router or two, with a sim you can have as many routers and switches and users as you like. Look for challenge labs on the internet - people in forums like these post challenge labs for each other all the time. Paul Browning also has a book out that is just labs and it's like 5 bucks for the kindle version.

That last week shouldn't be you with your nose in a book. It should be practicing questions and labs. don't get too hung up on book study. That's just for theory. Get through the books once, and use them to go back and reference practice questions when something doesn't make sense.

And don't get too hung up on subnetting. You should know how to do it, absolutely - but you get 90 minutes for this exam and if it takes you 3 minutes to figure out a subnetting question you are still fine. That time will be made up on the "gimme" questions, like port numbers. Simlets are arguably the hardest if you aren't familiar with the actual command line, so yes, get back into PT and start building networks, and learn those show commands!

If you need any help, feel free to ask.

Addendum:

One other tip I have if you use PT is to document the labs you do thoroughly. There is a "Place Note" option you can use to document the IP addresses you are using on interfaces and just generally take notes. For specific labs I will document the ints, and paste all the commands used to get to whatever lesson the lab was about. Today I'm working on access lists so my notes have all the ints labelled, the commands I used to create the static routes for my testing and the commands to get the ACL set up.

You can print out the whole topology and keep that in your notes to glance at and refresh your memory on how to do a task. I'd also suggest having the various show commands for the lab on the topology to the side to train yourself what issues can be solved by which show commands.

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. I feel much more confident. I may ask you a couple questions later on but I honestly think what my major pit fall this last time was not knowing the Simulator...I thought the simulator I got with the ICND1 (Odom's Book CD) would be enough, I was so very wrong. I broke down and bought Boson's sim and it has already taught me a great deal in such a short time. I plan on retaking this in about 2 weeks.