CCNA Passed. Materials Used, Methodology, etc.

Hey everyone,

Just passed 200-105 with an 836. I'll keep this short; kind of.

Materials:
Lammle's 200-105 study guide.
ITProTV Accelerated 200-105 with Lammle.
Boson 200-105 Pratice Tests.

Equipment:
4 routers, 2 Layer 3 switches, 1 layer 2 switch.

Methodology:
Read through Lammle's study guide and created flash cards along the way. Ended up with about 500 flash cards.
Read through flash cards, cycling out cards that I felt I understood until I had no cards left.
Ran through all of the ITProTV practice labs, which are incredible. I can't stress to you enough how amazing these labs are. I used their emulated CLIs as well as my own equipment. Lammle's book comes with a free month of ITProTV.
Took the Wiley pratice exams that come with Lammle's book.
At this point, I did not feel prepared enough to take the exam even though practice tests went great.
Ordered the Boson practice exams 2 days before my exam date. Did terrible on my first exam (around 74%). Panicked. Panicked more. Studied Boson's explanations for each question's answer.
Took the last 2 Boson exams and scored a 81% on my final exam.

Conclusions:
I feel that Lammle doesn't go deep enough into the topics, but he does give a good base. I would have failed with only his material. The boson practice tests saved me as well as the ITProTV labs. The boson exams are necessary to pass if you go with Lammle's curriculum. For example, Lammle doesn't go over how to configure, troubleshoot and verify SNMPv3 which is an exam objective. The same goes for HSRPv2. He brushes over the APIC-EM Path Trace tool and I feel that Boson covers it much better. His depth on STP is far from acceptable but Boson takes care of it.

Final thoughts: I have a CS degree and the hardest tests I took during algorithm analysis, physics, etc. do not compare to the difficulty of this exam. This is my opinion. Others may think that I am exaggerating, but for me, this was very difficult. I don't say this to discourage anyone, only to prepare them for the weight of the exam. I am here to answer any questions. Also, I have posted numerous questions on this forum and you have all been very helpful. I am thankful for this community and I hope to give back as much as possible.

Kindly

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Comments

greg9891

Congrats!

PocketLumberjack

Uriah7 wrote: »

Ran through all of the ITProTV practice labs, which are incredible. I can't stress to you enough how amazing these labs are. I used their emulated CLIs as well as my own equipment.

I just wanted to mention that these labs are on actual equipment in a Data Center in the UK, not simulated. It is real equipment.

Congrats on the pass though! I cannot wait to get mine!

WastedHat

Congrats man! I also noticed with Lammles book the "Covers 100% of exam objectives" is true but he skims over a fair few of them, only 1 short paragraph on SNMPv3! Glad you made it first time, I didn't use ITProTV but good it know they have decent labs.

Uriah7

WastedHat wrote: »

Congrats man! I also noticed with Lammles book the "Covers 100% of exam objectives" is true but he skims over a fair few of them, only 1 short paragraph on SNMPv3! Glad you made it first time, I didn't use ITProTV but good it know they have decent labs.

Thanks! Ya, I wish he just went deeper into the objectives. He wrote a whole chapter on OSPF but it isn't deep enough. I think what happened is he had to rush to publication and he didn't have time to go deeper into the newer objectives. If you watch any of the ITProTV stuff, he is one of the hosts for the CCENT and CCNA videos and it is obvious that he really cares about us passing. Hopefully he released and updated version soon.
Are you working on another cert right now? I am thinking of getting a job and a few years of experience before taking the CCNP.

WastedHat

Yeah it felt rushed to me too, it's a shame he scarificed the quality considering how much Cisco want you to know all the little details. It seems knowing the discrepencies is part of the course anyway.

I'm thinking about starting a Windows Server 2012 cert but from what I've read I'm going to hate the exam, really obscure questions and high fail rate. Are you in the US?

dodgers08

Hello,
Firstly, big congrats for your pass!!!
I scheduled ICND 2 exam for next friday and I am getting a bit nervous.
I did a evening course to learn Cisco R&S and I do practice questions using Wendell Odom book ICND 2 200-105.

I would like to know from you if you remember any qustions in your exam regarding OSPF LSAs, as I understand they are not included in ICND2 v3 exam topic?
In Odom's book, i encountered few questions about LSAs and I'm a bit confused..

Cisco Inferno

congrats!

DAVIS NGUYEN

Congrats!

labscloud

Congrats man! I'm going to take mine in the next month or so.

Sweece

How long did you study for?

dskk89

Congrats, and thank you by you thorough review!!!

clarkincnet

Congrats!

windvexor

Which router and switch models did you use? I'm just starting out and see a kit with 3 2801's and for switches 3 2950's. What do you think?

huntert

congrats

lucky0977

@ windvexor

You don't need to spend money to take this exam. Packet tracer will do just fine for CCENT/R&S/Security.
I guess if money is no object, google ciscoland

But if you plan on moving onto CCNP, then packet tracer will not be enough.