Bad time to study for CCENT?

ready253

I'm currently watching CBT nuggets videos and following along with my home lab. I currently do not have any reading material, but would like to pick some up. Does anyone know the most current versions of books to purchase? I saw in another post that the exam was changed in September and don't want to get the wrong stuff.

Also, what IOS should I be running on my appliances?
2950 x2
2611 x2
2509-ET Terminal Server

Thanks!

Magic Johnson

Look for anything that contains ICND1 v2 or 100-101.

It isn't a bad time, the learning material I believe has been out since mid-2013.

CCNTrainee

CBT Nuggets has the updated material for the v2 exams, and Todd + Odin have more their books out for the new exams as well.

I took the old ICND1 based on CBT Nuggets, thou I do have experience in the career field as well. Good luck!!

ready253

Thanks for the response guys! Also, do you guys what IOS my hardware should be on?

Thanks!
Jesse

tidyguy

You won't need any of that hardware for CCENT. Just use packet tracer.

DoubleNNs

I believe the new exams are on IOS 15. However, I'm not too sure whether the newest IOS is needed for studying or not. I doubt it.

Magic Johnson

DoubleNNs wrote: »

I believe the new exams are on IOS 15. However, I'm not too sure whether the newest IOS is needed for studying or not. I doubt it.

Wendell says no, 12.4T is all you need. 1 or 2 commands might have different syntax but it definitely isn't worth the extra £££ to get a 15 device.

late_collision

Magic Johnson wrote: »

Wendell says no, 12.4T is all you need. 1 or 2 commands might have different syntax but it definitely isn't worth the extra £££ to get a 15 device.

This is what I experienced too, atleast on the switching side. I cant comment on the routing side because I used ver 15 on them. There was only 1 unrecognized command I found on my switches, which was "ip address dhcp". I never used dhcp in my lab environment, so it was no big loss.

I ended up using 3x 2950t switches (about $30 shipped each) and 3x 1841, each with a WIC-2T card in each.

It helped to have 3 switches when I got to the spanning tree section of the curriculum. I kind of wish I had 4 routers for the Frame Relay curriculum. Frame Relay has been the most difficult topic for me so far.

ready253

So it looks like my 2611 can only go to 12.3. Is this going to set me back? Should I be looking for different hardware?

Thanks again for all the suggestion!

Magic Johnson

ready253 wrote: »

So it looks like my 2611 can only go to 12.3. Is this going to set me back? Should I be looking for different hardware?

Thanks again for all the suggestion!

On Packet Tracer 6 (the latest one) I found most of the stuff you could use was running 12.3 too so wouldn't imagine so. Just be wary of the minor syntax differences but iirc you get to use the ? key in the exam so should keep you right.