ICND2 Booked 1st December - Passed!

D-Day

Pretty nervous, at work at the moment, exam is at 3:45 GMT just under 6 hours away. Spent the weekend running through scenarios and going through notes etc... Just looking over some IPv6 info now as I still feel this is my weakest area.

I never know how these things could go. Am I confident? Good God no. Have I revised hard and given it 100%? Yes. Hopefully that is whats needed.

Matt

VantageUK

Good luck fella!

gorebrush

Best of luck, dude!

JavonR

Good luck - I have my exam scheduled for Thursday so I know the feeling

mattrgee

It's good to belong to the club that is CCNA! Woot woot. I took the two exam route, so this time round it was 640-816 ICND2.

I got to tell you, I thought the exam was tough, perhaps not entirely down to the difficulty of the questions but more the time pressure. The exam was 75 minutes with 41 questions, after twenty minutes I had done 3! One being a simulation, so I had to crank it up a notch and get through some of the straight multiple choice questions. I had 5 mins on the clock when I click onto the final question, terrified it was going to be another simulation. If it had I would have been screwed, but it wasn't! All in all a bit of a rollacoaster.

Anyway, I passed with 890, I wanted to break into the 900's, but not this time, hey ho. For future test takers here are a few details of the resources I used.

1. I used CBT Nuggets as an 'introduction' to the material, I watch these once and thought they gave me a good grounding in the topics covered.

2. Cisco Press ICND2. Good book, although I thought it suffered in some chapters from bad writing and a lack of structure. Even after studying the chapters I was still struggling to piece together the structure of some of the protocols and concepts. The IPv6 chapter was particularly awful.

3. Todd Lammel, a good book written far more casually than the Cisco Press book that allowed some topics to be understood far easier, yet sometimes lacking in detail.

4. 3x2950 Switches, 3x1721 router and the all mighty GNS3. I spent many hours configuring scenarios and testing concepts, I probably spent more time working on equipment then I did reading and doing the theory. I know there is a bit of an issue with the legality of GNS3 so don't shoot the messenger, but all I can say is GNS3 played an important part in building complex topologies that let me get hands on experience with all topics in the CCNA.

Right, I'm off for a beer and maybe a trip to Amazon for some light Cisco reading...

Matt

JavonR

congrats on the pass!

nel

Matt,

COngrats man! what the hell took you so long to post

Enjoy the beers man!

phantasm

Congrats!! I need to schedule mine for sometime soon.

worldmac1

Way to go Matt! You are the man! 890 is not bad at all dude, it's a PASS!!!

I hope to be in the club with you too here pretty soon... Although it may be next year.=(

Sorry for such a late response, as I have been waste deep in understanding VTP, VLAN Configs, and STP...

The CBT for the 816 is great! I watched the VLAN chapters twice and then tried to read chapter 1 of the Cisco Press..I found myself nodding off several times...I also found the CBT to be much more interesting and I followed along with Cisco's Packet Tracer 5.

What is next on your agenda? Are you planning to go Voice, security, associate status, or more along the lines of professional (ccnp, ccvp, etc)? I suppose you'll take a week or so off so your head doesn't explode like the guy in "Scanners".

Congrats again, and keep up the with the studies!!!

mattrgee

Thanks guys. It feels bloody good to have this wrapped up before the end of the year. Not sure what to do next, I feel inclined to do one of the concentrations, maybe Voice followed by Security. Wireless doesn't interest me that much to be honest.

Looking back on the exam it's surprising how many topics weren't covered, I won't go into details.

For anyone in the UK, the test I used was Taitec in Manchester, this is a Prometric and Pearson Vue centre. The test centre was ok, they didn't take my photograph although they did check my ID and get me to sign the various forms. There wasn't anywhere to put your belongings, so I had store my bag in a filing cabinet for 'safe keeping' not good really. The test centre was also a bit noisy with old equipment. The computer I used was had an old mouse with no wheel and a keyboard that made shockwaves with every key pressed! I'll probably try a different test centre next time.

For anyone studying the CCNA, just remember the CCNA is not unreachable and limited to a an elite group of computer geeks. It is obtainable by anyone who is willing to put the effort in, learn the material and practice the concepts!

Good Luck.

Matt

laidbackfreak

well done matt good score and a great pass

know what you mean about the test centre (ive not used that one tho) some of them are shocking... so yeah look around till you find one your happy testing in

ConstantlyLearning

Well done man.

kalebksp

Congrats! Not a bad score at all.

Don't get me started on testing centers, at the one where I took ICND1 I had to tell them they needed two pieces of ID.

I was considering doing CCNA Voice after I finish CCNA too, but it looks like the equipment is pretty spendy (I need to have hands on). So now I'm thinking that I'll go for CCNP. Good luck with what ever route you choose.

VantageUK

Well done, mate.

Have a beer

boswd83

Hi Matt, I have my ccent exam booked at Taitec in Manchester next week. Ive been there before and you're right it is a bit of a ****! Was wondering on the ICND1 exam did you get any quesions/sims on SDM?

cheers

networker050184

boswd83 wrote:

Hi Matt, I have my ccent exam booked at Taitec in Manchester next week. Ive been there before and you're right it is a bit of a ****! Was wondering on the ICND1 exam did you get any quesions/sims on SDM?

cheers

That can not be answered by anyone who has taken the exam. It would violate the NDA everyone agrees to when they take the exam. Violating it could result in losing your certification and being banned from taking any further exams.

My advice to you would be to be confident on everything on the exam blue print prior to attempting the exam.

Good luck!