Ccna

So, I am looking at taking CCNA in the next few weeks.

My class instructor at school said it is a really tough exam and that the sims are the hardest part of the exam and the easiest to fail. He said that the routing sims are what caused him the most trouble and that I should be worried about them.

I'm just wondering if this is the case.

I feel ready to take it, but feel worried after his remarks.

Should I be? Do you guys and gals have any advice for me?

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Comments

networker050184

As long as you have studied and know the material you should be good to go. What's hard to one person could be easy to the next. Good luck!

NetworkVeteran

Whether it's hard mostly depends on whether you know the material. If you know subnetting well, you should ace that portion of the test. If you don't know it well, you won't do so well on that section. I don't consider it particularly tricky!

boobobobobob

The simulations were without a doubt the hardest parts for me when i took my CCNA. When i took the CCNA i was very green, and just being inside a command line itself made me quite nervous. As i remember it, i pretty much passed on all the simulations... i completely failed them. That being said i still passed the exam (i passed with 7 points). I obviously did very well on the multiple choice questions. So yeah, that was my experience with the CCNA. I took the composite exam if you were wondering, the CCENT tests did not exist when i took the test.

Also i'll add that now with much more experience (and lots of equipment to practice on) my testing situation has seems to flipped. I recently took my CCNP SWITCH and the simulations were very easy, so easy i thought i was reading the questions incorrectly. But i did very poorly on the multiple choice questions... they were just too grainular. Remember that the "?" mark command works on the exam, and cisco will often remove commands that are not relavent to the simulation you are working on. So if you are familar enough with the command line and know the jist of what needs to be accomplished you should be able to figure out what needs to be done with some smart "?" commands.

DoubleNNs

I'm currently in the middle of studying for my CCENT - plan on taking it in a few days. Did a few practice tests, and the sims def seem to be the hardest part of the practice tests. Getting some labbing experience w/ the Cisco IOS CLI is pretty much mandatory to practicing the exam, and I'm sure w/ some practice the sims could become easy to complete. Personally however, the only thing about the sims that scare me so far is the time it takes to complete them and the fact that I might run out of time.

Just like how practicing subnetting regularly increases your speed and accuracy dramatically, so will practicing your commands in the CLI for the sims. As long as you get labbing in and understand the material as a whole, I don't think you should be too afraid of the test.

flattley

Hey, thanks for your replies.

I guess the the only thing that worries me is that I only have access to packet tracer and can't really troubleshoot. I've heard the labs are all about troubleshooting

NetworkVeteran

flattley wrote: »

I guess the the only thing that worries me is that I only have access to packet tracer and can't really troubleshoot. I've heard the labs are all about troubleshooting

Sometimes people starting out make "troubleshooting" into more than it is. Going through your Packet Tracer labs, have you ever misconfigured something and had to figure out what went wrong? That is troubleshooting. If that hasn't happened to you yet, the solution is to simply build more complex topologies--more protocols. more routers, more switches, more interfaces.

What you've heard about the CCNA labs is also wrong. See Cisco's CCNA blueprint for the real scoop.

iamme4eva

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

If that hasn't happened to you yet....

If that hasn't happened to you yet, then you are ready!!!! Happens all the time to me!

NetworkVeteran

iamme4eva wrote: »

If that hasn't happened to you yet, then you are ready!!!!

Ha! I suppose that's the other possibility.

flattley

I've decided to build a network and try and break it to see if I can fix it. I have been looking over my cisco module books from school and also looking over Lammle material too. I just hope I can troubleshoot routing protocols and nat and acls. I am trying to write an acl in the shortest lines as possible.

I did have another question. If you get asked to do a sim on acls, are you supposed to use access-list xxx statements or can you use ip access-list extended name-of-list and then add the statements

NetworkVeteran

flattley wrote: »

I did have another question. If you get asked to do a sim on acls, are you supposed to use access-list xxx statements or can you use ip access-list extended name-of-list and then add the statements

If they don't specify, you may do it any way you like, that accomplishes the goal.

Standard, Extended, and Named ACLs all have their places and should be understand before taking the exam.

NetworkVeteran

Here's a sample ACL question for you--

"Create and apply an ACL so only IP 1.1.1.1 is allowed to telnet to the router. The password "NetVet" should allow access."

See if you can solve that.

flattley

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

Here's a sample ACL question for you--

"Create and apply an ACL so only IP 1.1.1.1 is allowed to telnet to the router. The password "NetVet" should allow access."

See if you can solve that.

Going from the point of setting the vty 0 4 password to NetVet and setting login

The ACL would be: access-list 1 permit host 1.1.1.1

To apply this would be:
line vty 0, 4
access-class 1 in

NetworkVeteran

Very good. This is one reason one must know more than named ACLs.

flattley

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

Very good. This is one reason one must know more than named ACLs.

Yeah, he mention about numbered and named lists.

He also mentioned about the probability being high of getting an acl sim. I'm fairly confident I understand them. He said I should practice writing ACLs in as few lines as possible. Practising away!