two days til CCENT

Deathmage

Any pointers gents?

Using flash cards atm and the Exam Cram tear-out-sheet as my refresher till Thursday.

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Deathmage

Push it forward one week, but scheduled the exam.

3 weeks til exam day.

Study done:

1. CBT Nuggets with Keith Barker.
2. OCG by Odom for ICDN2, read his OCG for ICDN1 so it kind of flowed.
3. Laz's Udemy Videos on CCNA composite.
4. Chris Bryant CCNA videos on Udemy.
5. Doing Ross's videos on Pluralsight right now.
6. labbing everything I'm doing in notes.
7. using Boson at work and when I have 20 minutes to burn.

Been using subnetting.net ot stay sharp with subnetting.

If I fail the exam like I plan on then I'll just retake it again and again until I pass it...

ICDN2 scheduled.JPG

volfkhat

Deathmage wrote: »

Study done:

1. CBT Nuggets with Keith Baker.

Keith Barker.

Nonetheless, i sure you'll rock that exam :]

Deathmage

With the home-lab all up to spec as far as the CCNA is concerned I've update the flowchart of the home-lab to reflect the latest hardware additions.

Not included in the flowchart is the two ASA 5505 firewalls I have and the 2 Cisco Aironet AP's, those will be apart of the CCNA:Security pursuit later on.

The network is fully operational, of course only on weekends. The lab will be used after the CCNA for the VMware VCIX and MCSE:SI track for 4 completely separated Windows domains that currently live in the VMware ESXi 6.0 home-based cluster, they just lack physical vLAN's.

But now this fabric is a reality.....

Home-Lab 10-13-15.JPG

hannism

Good luck, Deathmage. I'm sure you will kill it.

Nafe92014

How did you make that flowchart? I'm look for something to hang above my lab for referencing

Deathmage

Microsoft Visio.

Deathmage

finished the Pluralsight videos last night by Ross, so now between those notes and the notes from the other videos I'm now going to refresh from the Odom's book of the highlight areas to my notes and do nothing but Boson exams until next Saturday.

Next Saturday is a good date cause the past two weeks has been boring as **** watching video's cause at this point I'm not learning anything new, just reviewing.

Deathmage

It's hammering time.... notes, notes, notes, at some point this weekend I'll play something for now, more notes. I want my CCNA badly!

Deathmage

3 hours of review, made it to chapter 7 of Odom's book. More review tomorrow and Sunday.

Deathmage

Finished Odom's book review, took way less notes than from videos. Focusing on Frame Relay, VPN, EIGRP, OSPF, and troubleshooting.

Now just reviewing my 5 yellow notepads and Boson here and there till Saturday.

I'll either pass or I won't.

Deathmage

always finding something else to study, https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccna/icnd2_v2/exam-topics, been going down the list one by one and thinking of the show commands for each of them.

Tomorrow after work turning on the lab and going down the list one by one just so I make sure I know exactly what each one does....

Dollarhyde

Deathmage, focus specifically on STP and FR. My exam consisted mostly of them, if you can do them very easily and can do the STP math/process very quickly and know all the issues and things that can go wrong with FR, this exam will be much much easier than CCENT. Just a piece of advice.

Deathmage

Dollarhyde wrote: »

Deathmage, focus specifically on STP and FR. My exam consisted mostly of them, if you can do them very easily and can do the STP math/process very quickly and know all the issues and things that can go wrong with FR, this exam will be much much easier than CCENT. Just a piece of advice.

I learned a frak ton of what could go wrong with FR when I was figuring out the whole FR switch concept.

But I will defiantly be going into the lab this evening and blowing stuff up and then fixing it. Wish i had a friend near by that knew this stuff I'd have him break something while i went to the bathroom or something.

But I have been focusing more since yesterday on the troubleshooting aspects, I got the principals of each configuration down cold, it's the troubleshooting I'm focusing on.

Dollarhyde

Sometimes it is helpful to have someone break something and then try to fix it. Also try to fix things without looking at the show run, that might help you because sometimes on the certification exams they disable it so it is a good practice to know multiple ways how to see what the problem is. Additionally I cannot stress enough practice STP, you might remember my words after the exam. I used just to put random switches, links, link speeds, mac addresses and figure out which one will become root and how will the topology look like when STP finishes its process.

Deathmage

took my 1st practice exam just as I got home at 6:30 and I just finished now, so roughly and hour and 30 minutes. Did pretty good, but still too slow. Really made sure to read questions slowly.

will get some dinner and take another practice exam in a bit.

ICDN2 practice exam - 1st one so far took me hour and half.jpg

category review 1.JPG

Dollarhyde

That is really good. Just practice on speed after you get a feel that when you come in a network turn debugging on and immediately know what is wrong, you know that you are ready and that you will have no problem passing. Good luck!

Deathmage

Dollarhyde wrote: »

That is really good. Just practice on speed after you get a feel that when you come in a network turn debugging on and immediately know what is wrong, you know that you are ready and that you will have no problem passing. Good luck!

wish i can turn on debugging on an exam. I tried once before, debugging is how i find issues quickly.

Of course, debugging only stays on for a few lines before it blows up the IOS.

will just keep doing these practice exams, but at some point i'll be just remembering them. Wish there was more simlets, love them....

Dollarhyde

Deathmage wrote: »

Of course, debugging only stays on for a few lines before it blows up the IOS.

Depends which debugging you turn on, debug ip packet is going to blow it up easily, but if you are looking in specific anomalies and know what to turn when, is going to make a difference. And then you just confirm your thoughts with show commands and find the issue. Of course on the exam there is no debug, but it is a good thing to know.

TWX

One can probably even use packet debugging if one actually filters it down with an ACL to get only what one needs. I've done that in my home lab for routing protocols and the like and it was handy.

Deathmage

So I feel like I'm going to fail this test on Saturday even though I think I'll be fine....

I take one Boson exam, near perfect score. Take another and I bomb it...

But talking to others it seems failure is a fact of life in Cisco land...

Yanio

Deathmage wrote: »

So I feel like I'm going to fail this test on Saturday even though I think I'll be fine....

I take one Boson exam, near perfect score. Take another and I bomb it...

But talking to others it seems failure is a fact of life in Cisco land...

Stay positive mate! You seem to know your stuff.

Everyone can have a bad day though, so if the worst happens, take it on the chin and smash it next time around!

Nafe92014

You got this, dude. Stay positive and you will walk out doing Churchills V for Victory gesture

Deathmage

Whelp the big day is tomorrow, I studied four chapter last night, STP and FR fundamentals and then the chapters on implementing them both again for the 6th time and FR finally made more sense. STP I think I finally got a handle on, it's just a matter of remembering the "if, else, then" steps of root bridge selection, other that that the rest I got a handle on.

My biggest hurdle, until I read a blurb on it, was that "frame-relay interface-dlci" is for use when inverse arp is on, which is on by default and then if inverse arp is off you used "frame-relay map ip [ip-address] dlci [broadcast - if you have a dynamic routing protocol]". Until last night I always thought one was for point-to-point and the other was for multipoint. A big one for me was frame-relay lmi-type [ietf, cisco, asni] because in my lab the default 'cisco' one didn't work in the FR switch correctly and I had to use 'asni'.

Finally got PPP protocol down when using 'encapsulation PPP, and then PPP Authentication CHAP', the hostnames are flipped in the username but the passwords are the same, and the passwords being the same is extremely essential.

STP was indeed interesting to learn on paper casue in the lab STP was easy to implement but as mentioned above remember all the way the root bridge was selected and then the process that redundant links are selected with the highest-port number out of the links being blocked was a doozie because one book said it was the lowest-port and another said it was the highest-port, then I went on cisco.com and it said it the highest-port. Hope the website is correctly and the one book was just a massive typo....

Other than that EIGRP and OSPF I think I got solid, EIGRP needs the same ASN, same K values, same subnet, authentication needs to be shared, requires no areas. OSPF doesn't need same ASN (logically significant), hello and dead timers need to match, same subnet, authentication needs to be shared, and Router ID's need to be different. Other than that Multi-area OSPF isn't hard at all, just need one router (ABR) to have a interface in both AREA's and it will forge the link in the background.

We shall see tomorrow what the test tells me my weaknesses are, I'm prepared to fail but hoping for a pass. going to glaze over my notes throughout the day and I was practicing my writing last night on a dry eraser board I bought and a ultra-fine pen so I can get my thoughts down to a science. I will say, lol, I fit nearly everything in my notes on that pad, and now surprisingly I think repetition suck it all in my brain after erasing it and doing it over and over 5 times; took me an hour in total.

I'm really not going to be upset if I fail, it truly is a journey and never everyone I talk to either on here or the Dell Tech Support, and the CCNA/CCNP Study groups on Facebook; they all have failed the Cisco exams numerous times. I really don't feel so badly but I am giving it my all.

Will loading up double nootropics tonight and tomorrow morning.

Deathmage

Exam tomorrow.

gncsmith

Good luck! You'll do fine.

Deathmage

Off I go...exam at 11

Deathmage

Dear lord was that hard, failed sadly.

That was even more harder than I imagined, I swear it was all STP and RSTP.

My score is pathetic:

Lan and switching: 45%
IP Routing Technology: 36%
IP services: 100%
Troubleshooting: 60%
Wan technology: 75%

I knew I was going to fail just not that horribly, it was super hard. My OCG from Odom only covered a little bit on STP troubleshooting and it held me up on a few questions that took me a while to answer. I figured 2 minutes per question and I spent a good 8 minutes on some....

Going to refocus on STP and FR and OSPF and EIGRP and retake it again .....

But God dam was that hard..

NetworkNewb

That sucks, I thought the INCD2 was alot harder then the INCD1 personally... I gave up after I failed it once, I don't really do any networking at my current position and didn't feel worthwhile to keep going after it and am working on things more I can use at my work now. Will probably attempt it again somewhere down the line when I can put it to use.

I'm sure you will keep going at it and pass it soon enough though!

Deathmage

NetworkNewb wrote: »

That sucks, I thought the INCD2 was alot harder then the INCD1 personally... I gave up after I failed it once, I don't really do any networking at my current position and didn't feel worthwhile to keep going after it and am working on things more I can use at my work now. Will probably attempt it again somewhere down the line when I can put it to use.

I'm sure you will keep going at it and pass it soon enough though!

It's definitely harder, especially since this one has 52 questions but only 70 minutes to do the exam.

I actually asked the testing center if I could ask for more time and they said sure without a problem, they said if you request it they'll give you 30 more minutes after you provide them a IEP, which I have since I'm dyslexic. That's my biggest problem, time, I normally have to read a question a few times for me to understand it...

For you all that can understand a question be thankful you can, living with a disorder that makes reading a question hard is beyond frustrating...

I'm going to live in Boson exams now and painful re-read the book again....

One things about me is that living with a learning disability makes me want things even more just because I can't translate words correctly. That's why the simlets I feel I did fine. I knew all the commands and how to get the answers...

Just keeping my chin up and get back at the studying....

Dollarhyde

Deathmage wrote: »

Dear lord was that hard, failed sadly. That was even more harder than I imagined, I swear it was all STP and RSTP. My score is pathetic: Lan and switching: 45% IP Routing Technology: 36% IP services: 100% Troubleshooting: 60% Wan technology: 75% I knew I was going to fail just not that horribly, it was super hard. My OCG from Odom only covered a little bit on STP troubleshooting and it held me up on a few questions that took me a while to answer. I figured 2 minutes per question and I spent a good 8 minutes on some.... Going to refocus on STP and FR and OSPF and EIGRP and retake it again ..... But God dam was that hard..

That is why I have given you the advice to focus on them even before you took the exam. If you know them ICND2 should be much easier than ICND1, as ICND1 tests your knowledge and ICDN2 how well you can troubleshoot advanced networks with addition of STP and FR