Passed 640-822 - ICND1 today!

I just wanted to let everyone know that this morning I passed my ICND1 certification! I spent about 2 months going through Todd Lammle's CCNA book (overview) as well as Odom's ICND1 book (indepth). I didn't really use any specific video series, but I did use a home cisco lab (1 2620, 1 1760 and 1 catalyst 2950 switch).

I just wanted to thank everyone that posts to this or any other forum on TechExams. It's really easy to get discouraged when you feel alone in your pursuits to continue learning... although I don't often post I regularly lurk and reading about other people's questions, comments and successes helped keep me motivated.

On to ICND2 (V1.1) - before time runs out!

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Comments

Dakinggamer87

Congrats on pass!!

Good luck with CCNA

SephStorm

How did you like those resources, and how did you feel they each contributed to your pass?

webgeek

Congrats!

Master Of Puppets

Congrats

SharkDiver

Congratulations!
Great job.
ICND2 is no match for you!

SirAlchemist

Of the resources I used for ICND1:

Lammle's CCNA book: I really liked his writing style which was a nice change from the normal dry and dull of other tech related material. I used it more as an overview as the book seemed too jammed packed of information to lend itself as only a ICND1 or an ICND2 book. However, being just an ICND1 or 2 book was not the author's intent.

Odom's ICND1 book: Very informative and in depth for the topics covered just on ICND1. I'd recommend it. I used it extensively right before the test because of the command references and chapter reviews at the end of each chapter. I was able to quickly create a guide for myself to do quick study sessions by taking notes just on the key topics he outlined.

The lab: I'm a firm believer in physical devices for ICND1 and ICND2 studies. As I started to learn more about Cisco routing and switches my lab began to evolve from verybasic to somewhat complex. Originally, I had no Cisco console cable - I had to make my own using a DB-9 to RJ45 with a normal cat5e straight through cable that went to a punch-down block which did the rollover (1 port to 1 device). Additionally, use T1 cards back to back on my routers - therefore I had to learn to do some of my own wire crimping. Soon enough I replaced all of the cables on my lab with custom sized wires. Once I got tired of swapping the cables to get to various consoles, I setup a dedicated wireless AP for just the Cisco lab environment and Telnet-ed into my devices. It forced me to think about how would I fix this issue if I was miles away... what would break if I changed this setting or that IP address. I plan to expand my lab environment before continuing to ICND2 since the experience working with the lab was well worth the hassle and cost of purchasing hardware.

Hopefully this approach will work just as well for ICND2 as it did for ICND1.

Master Of Puppets

Congrats and good luck on the next one!