What is the hardest topic to study for CCNA?

Here's a poll mainly to see on which topics we should focus in our practice exams and TechNotes. The options correspond pretty much with the exam objectives.

Johan

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Matt_Chris

I had to spend so much time onWAN technologies... I guess its the most difficult for me..

ciscom

This thread reminds me when I was studying for the ccna...Lots of stress huh?

Don't worry guys it is not that difficult(the exam). When you feel like want to commit suicide, get out of that chair, relax, take a walk... If you're self-studying I recommend a 10 min. break after each hour of reading. It helps.

BTW I went to ccna academy (ccna3.1). The hardest part. or may be the most boring was First Semester.

I hadn't a hard time with subnetting, but ISDN...damn! I think the hardest parts are the ones that I was not Interested in.

Oh, a question: Did cisco retired RIP from the new courses?

zen master

The hardest part in my opinion is preparing for the simulations, because you just never know what kind of scenario they're going to throw at you. Sometimes, when you see all the pretty colours and weird symbols, it takes a while for you to get your bearings and figure out what the heck you actually need to do.

painted veil

SoCo4Fun wrote:

Personally I think the WAN technologies are the most difficult. For some reason they just dont click with me.

I totally agree. They were a real problem for me too.

ikeit

Webmaster wrote:

Here's a poll mainly to see on which topics we should focus in our practice exams and TechNotes. The options correspond pretty much with the exam objectives.

Johan

i've taken the ccna twice and failed it cos of the switching question and a stupid mistake i keep making on the configuration of a simple router interface.but the switching part just is not easy 4 me to get in the console and start anything

ken.perez.8541

VSLM has been the hardest part for me so far. I am using the Sybex 5th edition book by Todd Lammle and I do not think that it does a good job of explaining. I think I am either going to buy the Odum book or bite the bullet and go the CBT Nuggets route. I have been watching the free Cisco videos and like the way the Instructor, Jeremy Cioara, teaches.

pitviper

I would say NAT for sure – It also indirectly tests your understanding of subnetting and ACLs at the same time.

perseu79

In my opinion The hardest or the worst topic that I had studied was ACL list . Man ! I suffered a lot to understand it !

kurosaki00

I actually failed the CCENt exam..
I got 760 something % =_=

It was like a month and a half ago.
I actually got 100% in subnetting =_=
but 30% something in routing =\
I had MODERATED freaking simulations... is it normal to get that much?

Anyways it was my first test EVER and I failed. I felt soooo bad.
I took a break and I began studing and brushup like 2 weeks ago.
I'll take the exam on the 29th of this month.

Im brushing everything up but studying hard in the areas that I had the worst score.

schpenxel

Remembering all the different routing protocols is the hardest for me. I can implement them all fine..but remembering the good/bad about each is a pain. esp ones that aren't really use that much anymore.

I don't really understanding how subnetting is so hard for everyone. I mean, really all you do is subtract each octet that isn't 255 from 256. Whatever your left with is how much that octet of the IP address can change and still be in the same subnet.

192.168.1.0 / 255.255.255.192 =

255 mean 0 change . 255 mean 0 change, 255 means 0 change, 256-192 = 64 change

so

192.168.1.0-63
192.168.1.64-127
192.168.1.128-191
192.168.1.192-255

last IP on each = broadcast. first one's can be used.. anythingelse can be a device's IP basically. and i mean, the only sizes you can end up with is 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 and 256 in each octet. not hard, people!

Solaris_UNIX

Is subnetting not part of the CCNA exam anymore

? I didn't see it on the voting list. I remember subnetting and how it related to classful routing and CIDR seemed to be the main hurdle that newbies had problems climbing over.

I personally voted for access lists, btw. Access lists and things like spanning tree and VTP seem like some of the most important things to know on the day to day job given that it's not normal to change the "routing" settings on the core routers on a day-to-day basis.

itdaddy

I think ACLs are the most difficult and the rest to me really is cake!
Where to place the ACL which direction (in/out) etc....you have to really play with them a lot! And then it comes to you!

802 exams take out ISDN there is no such thing on the exam. well in real life there I am sure still is

pipemajor

Danman32 wrote: »

For those who have installed/worked with memory on IBM XPs might remember the patterns: 512/1024/2048/4096/8192/16384/32768/65536 (I remember these last two from Apple II and Atari 800 days)

Oh man, AT and XT class PCs.... Yeah, I remember when memory chips were available in 64k and 128k sizes. And to get your hands on an 80Mb hard drive? You were in fat city then! I remember one of my mainframe coworkers bragging about his new home PC which came with a whopping 105Mb HD. He said he hadn't even made a "dent" in it yet.

My first PC (actually a microcomputer - IBM coined the "PC" description) was a Radio Shack TRS-80. I got the "big" one with Level 2 Basic and 16k of RAM. $999.
Standard version was Level 1 Basic and 4k of RAM.

Our company mainframe still had the iron core memory.

ncsugrad2002

Solaris_UNIX wrote: »

Is subnetting not part of the CCNA exam anymore ? I didn't see it on the voting list. I remember subnetting and how it related to classful routing and CIDR seemed to be the main hurdle that newbies had problems climbing over.

It's still on the exam and in pretty much every other question. In a lot of cases it's kind of a secondary part of the question being asked. By that I mean it doesn't actually "subnet this..blah blah blah" but in order to answer the question you will have to subnet.

tigerplug

Hmm, for me I think that subnetting and STP have been the hardest (I take my CCNA exam in the morning).

I've found everything else to be pretty simple as I have been doing alot of the internetwork expert core technology labs from the volume I workbook that they have for the CCIE. This product is excellent and helps you to really understand the technologies. It'll also come in useful as I work towards CCNP and hopefully CCIE!

Guess I should see how tomorrow goes first

iDen666

IMHO: NAT should have separate option in poll

cleanwithit

I started the ICND2 book last week. So far, STP & VTP have been the hardest for me. It just took a while for all those details to sink in.

The ICND1 book was easy. The hardest thing for me was subnetting, but I got it down now.

jjbrog

I agree, I have been studying switching basics and intermediate routing for the last week on and off, and have got a pretty ok grasp of ospf, vlans and what not, but am kinda confused on stp, and the advanced stp(can't remember the term, but its faster cause theres no 50 sec downtime)

jonfc3s

Supernetting can be confusing at times for me,...

Meditator

At the begining of CCENT, it was subnetting. Different books showed me different ways of doing it, so it took me the longest.

In ICND2, NAT/ACL looked scary, it took me a couple weeks to feel really comfortable. I even made myself a few flash cards to take them everywhere w/ me.

tlammle

Webmaster wrote: »

Here's a poll mainly to see on which topics we should focus in our practice exams and TechNotes. The options correspond pretty much with the exam objectives.

Johan

From Todd Lammle:
The reason people struggle so much right now is because they do not understand the NAT overload commands enough. Be sure and be able to configure NAT overload in your sleep, and be able to subnet without having to think about it..

Todd Lammle
CCSI and Sybex Author

saravanaboobathy

but i got 100% in each chapter (Bridging/Switching,7-layer OSI Model,LAN Technologies,Basic Router Management and Configuration).. except Access Lists

in access list i got only 65%....

steve514

WAN was my main issue when I was studying for the CCNA. Glad I got it all figured out in the end though! lol Frame Relay was my nemesis.

DevilWAH

I would say it was subnetting.

Not so much because I found it hard, but it was the first think I really studied and previous to that I had mostly worked on pure switch layer 2 environments. I also only knew subnetting as a classless activity, so I had to relearn in things like eigrp that Class is still important in auto sumorisation, and to not forget it exists. and that you can have issues sub/super netting across the class boundaries.

However once I got the fundamentals of ip addressing and the OSI model down. The rest all seemed common sense.

notgoing2fail

I have some issues with supernetting and subnetting in general, especially in class A....class B is ok and class C is cakewalk....

rathnadurai.p

Guys,

Could any one help me regarding subnetting.

I am very poor in it. Am good with the all the class ip address but the thing is i could understand how to do subnetting. I tried a lot but i failed. Could any one help me out . Is there any site,pdf or tutorial where i could get through it.

Please assist me.

Thanks in advance.

tearofs

The hardest topic to study for CCNA?

IPv6

I am not kidding, it is hard to learn after you master your IPv4 enviroment.

wbosher

tearofs wrote: »

The hardest topic to study for CCNA?

IPv6

I am not kidding, it is hard to learn after you master your IPv4 enviroment.

I'm with you there! I seem to skip that part in the book or video series and move on to something else. Even when I go back and go over old stuff, I still skip the IPv6 material. I just can't get my head around it, and it doesn't interest me, even though I know that it is the future and I will have to learn it eventually.

ZZOmega

I'd rate them all by how long it takes for the information to go from text, into memorized ideas that can play out logically(and correctly!) inside my own head.

IPv6 certainly is a doozy, but as for the choices in the poll, I'd have to give it to WAN.

WAN technologies are hard for people to grasp, probably because the first time they've seen anything near what's tested on, would be studying for CCNA. Most of these concepts were easy to learn, simply because I've seen them before in one form or another, but IPv6 and WAN are just things I don't want to deal with!

...of course I'll have to though.

alan2308

I can't believe that I still haven't voted.

I have to say access lists because it was a pretty tough thing to get down and they're used EVERYWHERE.