Passed CCNA Today

Well I took the CCNA exam this morning and passed with a 947. Overall the test seemed very straight forward with no real surprises (not like a Microsoft exam).

I used the Odom books and also used the Cram Session deal from CBTNUGGETS to run through the videos last week. It took 3 days, but the $72 was well worth it for using the videos right before I took the exam. I would say the videos probably gained me 100 points or so on my score by filling in a lot of holes in my knowledge. I also used 3 2620XM routers and 3 2950 switches to do some labbing and to play around some. This was VERY helpful for the actual exam - especially playing around with STP and VTP on the switches.

I also used the Boson practice exams and I have to say they were a good representation of the real exam - but Boson was probably harder than the real thing.

My main bit of advice for anyone taking this is learn to subnet VERY quickly and be able to recognize the common subnet masks and pull out the range and host addresses, etc...

Thanks to everyone for all the help with this exam. I'll probably take a short break and then it's CCNP time.

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Comments

jamesp1983

Congrats! That's great news.

cyberguypr

Congrats on the pass.

Roguetadhg

Good Work. Now where to?

Todd Burrell

I'm going to start with the CCNP later this week. I need to pick up a 3550 switch and get my lab setup a little better (not just all sitting on a table), and I need to order the books I need for CCNP. I think I will start with ROUTE first and see how that goes.

alxx

Congratulations!

Good luck with CCNP!

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!

Any tips/suggestions outside of subnetting?

ciscoman2012

Congrats on the pass on the CCNA with a great score as well. Hopefully I'll be able to do the same once my time comes.

Good luck on the NP as well!

bryanthetechie

Great job... congrats!

Todd Burrell

I want to be careful with any advice as to not violate the NDA. However, here are the main things I concentrated on before my exam:

1) Get a good understanding on how to setup each routing protocol - especially the network statements. I just remembered how to setup RIP and OSPF - then I just know that EIGRP can do their NETWORK statements either the RIP or EIGRP way. And understand what the NETWORK statement actually is doing (advertise route AND turn out the RP through that interface).
2) CDP is your friend - learn it and know it well. You can learn a great deal about your network with SH CDP NEI and SH CDP NEI DETAIL.
3) Get the Boson practice exams and run through them. They are a very good representation of the actual exam.
4) Fully understand what happens at layer 2 and 3 as the packet/frame travels across routers from source to dest. And for that matter have a pretty good understanding of all layers of the OSI model.
5) Have a good understanding of WAN setup and different technologies with WANs. The CBTNUGGETS videos explain this VERY well.
6) Get the Cram Session from CBTNUGGETS ($24 per day for up to 7 days). I used it for 3 days and that $72 probably got me 100 points on the actual exam. I spent about 20 hours over the 3 days just watching the videos and I learned a great deal from them - they just filled in any holes I had in my knowledge. But I would recommend doing the videos AFTER reading the books.
7) Know all the stuff concerning VTP and STP. Basicallly VTP modes and how/when data might get updated or overlaid. For STP have a good understanding of the port modes for STP and RSTP - and understand the root bridge.

Know what it takes for OSPF and EIGRP routers to form neighbor relationships.
9) Know as many of the show commands for everything from SH VER to SH IP OSPF...

These were the main things I made sure I knew very well before the exam. Overall the exam was not as hard as I had feared, but I spent a great deal of time labbing and just playing around with my routers and switches and I tried to break stuff and then fix it back.

On a side note - yesterday I decided to upgrade the IOS on one of my routers - and like an idiot I deleted the old IOS before testing the new IOS. Somehow the new IOS got corrupted and I got to learn how to use TFTPDNLD and ROMMON on the fly. I learn a great deal more from my screw ups than I ever learn from doing things right.

Good luck to everyone with this exam. If you use the Odom books, the CBTNUGGETS videos and the Boson practice exams you should be ready to go...

kevin31

Well done!

Thanks for the top tips

thedude666

Congrats

whatthehell

Congratz on the pass and thanks for all the great info!

Ola_CISCO

Congratulations, and thanks for the information

angel.oa

Congratulations on the pass

alxx

Todd Burrell wrote: »

On a side note - yesterday I decided to upgrade the IOS on one of my routers - and like an idiot I deleted the old IOS before testing the new IOS. Somehow the new IOS got corrupted and I got to learn how to use TFTPDNLD and ROMMON on the fly. I learn a great deal more from my screw ups than I ever learn from doing things right.

At least your router had tftpdnld, xmodem even at 115200 takes a long time, even worse when you get crc errors and it takes 3 goes to get an image on.

Netwurk

alxx wrote: »

At least your router had tftpdnld, xmodem even at 115200 takes a long time, even worse when you get crc errors and it takes 3 goes to get an image on.

Always a good thing to know how to restore. I had a 2950 I thought a power failure took out but it was just a corrupted IOS that of course took forever to restore over xmodem. Kind of a walk away and check back much later scenario.

Anyhow, congrats on the pass to the OP

andy4tech

Congrats on the pass,Good job Todd.

pacotaco

Congratulations and thanks also for your info.

aldous

Congrats todd and also some good advice.

make sure you don't do the ios issue on a switch. i learnt the hardway if you do it to a 3550 you have to transfer the ios through the console cable which takes an age (even with bit rate set high!)

coykiam

Congratulations and thanks for the tip. Can't wait to pass mine!

shanparames

Hi Todd Burrell

Congratulations for becoming a CCNA and how long did you study CCNA for getting this achievement because I am studying CCNA through self-study guide from TODD LAMMLE, WENDELL ODOM and couple of videos like CBT NUGGETS, TRAINSIGNAL...

I am studying CCNA for past three years through self study and my studying habit is not consistent due to that when I am studying from beginning towards the end , I am forgetting the beginning even though I am fully understanding the concepts and going further.

If I understand in my study, then only I go further.... this is my bad habit.... I know

Please give me some tips to attend the exam.

I attended Boson exam environment and got only 50% in the exam .

Please advise me!

shanparames

Hi Todd

I have seen your advice posted previously in this post

alxx

aldous wrote: »

Congrats todd and also some good advice.

make sure you don't do the ios issue on a switch. i learnt the hardway if you do it to a 3550 you have to transfer the ios through the console cable which takes an age (even with bit rate set high!)

switches are quick compared to some of the routers.
Trick is to load the smallest ios image you can get your hands on via xmodem, then when its up and running
then load the proper image via tftp.
Lot faster to load a smaller older image around 5MB rather than a 42MB 12.4t advipservicesk9

CodeBlox

Todd Burrell wrote: »

I want to be careful with any advice as to not violate the NDA. However, here are the main things I concentrated on before my exam:1) Get a good understanding on how to setup each routing protocol - especially the network statements. I just remembered how to setup RIP and OSPF - then I just know that EIGRP can do their NETWORK statements either the RIP or EIGRP way. And understand what the NETWORK statement actually is doing (advertise route AND turn out the RP through that interface). 2) CDP is your friend - learn it and know it well. You can learn a great deal about your network with SH CDP NEI and SH CDP NEI DETAIL. 3) Get the Boson practice exams and run through them. They are a very good representation of the actual exam. 4) Fully understand what happens at layer 2 and 3 as the packet/frame travels across routers from source to dest. And for that matter have a pretty good understanding of all layers of the OSI model. 5) Have a good understanding of WAN setup and different technologies with WANs. The CBTNUGGETS videos explain this VERY well. 6) Get the Cram Session from CBTNUGGETS ($24 per day for up to 7 days). I used it for 3 days and that $72 probably got me 100 points on the actual exam. I spent about 20 hours over the 3 days just watching the videos and I learned a great deal from them - they just filled in any holes I had in my knowledge. But I would recommend doing the videos AFTER reading the books. 7) Know all the stuff concerning VTP and STP. Basicallly VTP modes and how/when data might get updated or overlaid. For STP have a good understanding of the port modes for STP and RSTP - and understand the root bridge. Know what it takes for OSPF and EIGRP routers to form neighbor relationships.9) Know as many of the show commands for everything from SH VER to SH IP OSPF... These were the main things I made sure I knew very well before the exam. Overall the exam was not as hard as I had feared, but I spent a great deal of time labbing and just playing around with my routers and switches and I tried to break stuff and then fix it back. On a side note - yesterday I decided to upgrade the IOS on one of my routers - and like an idiot I deleted the old IOS before testing the new IOS. Somehow the new IOS got corrupted and I got to learn how to use TFTPDNLD and ROMMON on the fly. I learn a great deal more from my screw ups than I ever learn from doing things right. Good luck to everyone with this exam. If you use the Odom books, the CBTNUGGETS videos and the Boson practice exams you should be ready to go...

I learned about xmodem and tftpdnld when I purchased a router with an unbootable image. First, I tried xmodem which was really, painfully slow. It was going to take 2 hours to transfer a 6mb file... I stopped and learned about tftpdnl within 10 minutes and had the image transferred quickly.