CCNA - Passed today 989!!!!!

Author

Passed today 989!!!!!

raydawg30

2001-08-10, 7:18 pm

Well I've been lurking in this forum for a while now and picking up on some good information from time to time so I thought since I finally got this CCNA monkey off my back I would try to contribute some tips on passing this thing. First, a little backround, I'm starting my senior year at the local college majoring in Comp. Sci. I've had two semesters of the Cisco Net Acad. but really consider programming my forte and really got into this CCNA business because eventually I would like to develop software for the networking community. I managed a killer score on the test (probably missed one or two) by using the following materials: The online Cisco Netacad curriculum, Todd Lammle's Study Guide and Exam Notes, Lots of sneaking into the Cisco lab at school and playing with the routers, Boson's practice exams, and this forum. I relied heavily on the Todd Lammle books and I didn't see anything on the test that wasn't covered to some degree in these books. I believe that hands on training is a must if your really going to consider yourself certified, I know plenty of people have posted here saying they passed after only 2 weeks of study but for the rest of us the best way to learn is to log on to a router and really screw up the config and try to get it back working again, and I'd put my knowledge and practical experience against any of these 2 week wonders anytime. It's been said before but I'll say it again... You really need to KNOW the workings of the OSI and TCP/IP to do well on the exam, trying to memorize isn't going to pass you and it's not going to do you much good a year from now when an employer is going to expect you to still know these concepts. You really need to be able to track everything from the Application Layer through encapsulation, and back, and know what is actually happening at each and every point in between. As far as the actual test, I won't go into too much detail, after you read through all of the agreements while taking the exam you realize Cisco takes that stuff seriously so I'm not about to start posting test questions. The best advice I can give is GO SLOW, there were several questions that I thought I knew the answer to untill I read the question a second time and examined all of the options realizing that it was actually something different. Overall though I think the Boson tests are almost exactly the same difficulty level, I was scoring consistant 95-96 percent on the boson exams before deciding I was ready for the real thing. Well, goodluck to all in the pursuit of the CCNA, It's not hard, it's not easy but it's somewhere in between and with some quality studying and a little hands on you will pass the test with ease. I think this is going to do it for me for Cisco Certs for now, besides I need to start spending some time trying to figure out what Big Bill is doing with this whole .Net thing what's up with C# ??????? That's a little more my style.

username

2001-08-10, 9:46 pm

Congratulations. Do you think the Cisco Academy books are as good as the Sybex Todd Lammle book?

chevy138

2001-08-10, 10:03 pm

Congrats!!!

raydawg30

2001-08-10, 10:13 pm

In my opinion, the Sybex books by Todd Lammle were the best investment I made in my pursuit for the CCNA. I primarily studied the Study Guide and bought the Exam notes a few weeks before I took the exam as a general review. I had a friend that sat the exam the same time I did, he used the Cisco Press book by Odom he passed with a 968 and was singing the praises of the Odom book. I'd say either one of these books is the way to go. As far as the Cisco Netacademy curriculum goes, I found quite a few mistakes and typos in the First Year Companion Guide, If you buy this book make sure you get the supplement paperback that goes with it, lots of corrections in it and some additional material. I have a hard time recommending the Cisco Net Academy to someone, unless your going to be in college anyway and need the technical electives. For one thing the Net Academy classes are very slow paced compared to most COSC classes and it takes a full 2 years to complete all 4 semesters. That's a long time to wait on a CCNA. On the other hand you get lots of invaluable hands on lab time and I felt this helped me during the exam because I had actually used the cli commands on a router and probably messed them up a time or two as well. Overall, if your a college student and need some electives take the Net. Academy classes, but; if your in the industry already and looking for your CCNA (which I think is the majority), never mind the Net Academy, get yourself some Lammle books, and try to get at least a little hands on somewhere and you'll probably do better than you think on the actual CCNA.

The Ghost

2001-08-11, 2:33 am

Regarding your C# comment :
Actually, like most people claim C# to be(Java's little sister) , I think It's more of it's mother

, I was reading the C# doc the other day and it really got me , All I can say is with C# out java won't be alone in the world!

The Ghost

2001-08-11, 2:35 am

Ok which Net Academy book are you talking about?
I've also found some erorrs in ICND book by Steve McQuerry and tons of typos!!!

raydawg30

2001-08-11, 8:01 am

The network Academy book I was refering to was: "Cisco Systems Networking Academy: First-Year Companion Guide" ISBN#: 1-57870-126-0. The supplement that I was refering to has an ISBN# of 1-58713-015-7. There is also a third book I got with the Networking Academy curriculum, The "Engineering Journal and Workbook, Volume I" but, I never really used this workbook, we were required to keep a more conventional journal containing all of our material for the course. I took semesters 1 and 2 last schoolyear and these books were actually optional for the course and the professor I had didn't reccomend them because of the cost and the fact that all of the most current material is contained in the online curriculum anyway. http://cisco.netacad.com

bencher

2001-08-11, 5:17 pm

Congrats and thanks for your review.

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