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Home > Archive > CCDA/CCDP > November 2000 > Ok, finished it. Comments.
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Ok, finished it. Comments.
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| I passed my CCDA today and figured I'd drop a couple of stream-of-consciousness comments. First off, I have to say that now that it's done, I'm actually fairly disappointed in the CCDA, more than several exams I've done and certainly more than I ever expected to be with a Cisco certification. Basically, it's a Cisco advertisement at least as much as it is a design cert. I come from the field - a few years network analysis and design experience already, so that might help explain my viewpoint, but I did find the test's Cisco-marketing angle almost ridiculous at times. Anyway. Comments:
- The case study coverage is indeed too heavy. I am, in fact, one of those that's a very "wordy" type, especially for a tech-oriented person...I love to read. And even I had a hard time following the studies and keeping my attention from drifting. I got 4 of them, with a good 60% of the test (it seemed) focused on questions relating to them. They are very long to read, contain ridiculous amounts of extraneous information, and they WILL eat up your test time before you know it if you let them. As for the related questions, they seemed to fall into 3 categories: actually having to do with the case study material and relevant (~33%), covered in the material but really kind of stupid and irrelevant (~33%), and completely idiotic or not requiring the case study material to be able to answer (~33%). I finished my test about 20 minutes early, but only because after halfway through, I just got so incredibly bored and fed up that I started blasting my way through the case study questions, passing mark be damned. Like I say, I'm word-oriented by nature and even I was fed up...I can just imagine how frustrating the test would be for someone who doesn't like to read or for whom English is a shaky second language.
- The Boson tests are widely being said to be the best question material available for the CCDA, and that may well be true, but I can tell you that I was surprised at how much of the stuff on the exam wasn't really covered in Boson (I'd say ~70%).
- I personally got a lot of SNA questions...more than I expected (and it's pretty much my weakest protocol, knowledge-wise). Two of my case studies focused heavily on it. :P
- You don't have to memorize the Cisco product line as in-depth as you might be worrying...the questions are fairly broad when it comes to product selection. Eg. you won't be asked to pick the best model out of the 2800 series, but whether a 1600, 3600, or 7000 would be the best choice. That kind of thing. Broad overall knowledge.
- Yes, some CCNA knowledge overlap. Not as much as you might hope though...I'd say 20%.
- Hmm...come to think of it, I got a fair bit of token ring on the exam too...another somewhat weak one for me. :| Source-route bridging, soft error tolerance, hmm...not sure what else. Maybe IBM sponsored my exam, those little b*stards.
- I used TDND, Sybex CCDA (bought before discovering their marketing games and deciding not to again) and the brand-new (and incredibly, amazingly awful) CCDA Training Kit from Cisco Press. The first two aren't bad, but the kit is so bad that it's embarrassing for Cisco Press (which I normally love). Bugs galore, missing info, mis-edited, questions that are just plain wrong...you name it. Unreal. :P
I got 853. I kid you not, until the very moment that printout came out and I saw the pass, I thought I failed. Not only was I just blasting through the black hole of case study questions, but a lot of the other ones were just vague and on technologies I normally am not strongest on. I was actually kind of depressed when I ended the exam and was psyching myself to think how I'd prepare for the retake of this yucky exam again, believe it or not. But no, I passed and there you have it. I'm happy it's done, but it's not as satisfying overall as I'd hoped. I think Cisco needs to rethink some of their CCDx testing strategy if they want to inject life into it. Cut down on the shameless self-marketing, fine-tune the questions and streamline the case-study-oriented material. 2 cents from a guy having done this for a living. Anyway...back to life for a little while. 
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| Congratulations!! I noticed from your comments that you must not appreciate the marking approach that Cisco uses in their exam format, I agree, it is a little much.
I think that this exam will weed out those who do not like to read, because there is a lot of reading. Not a typical Cisco exam in that respect. What is next for you ? | |
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| Did you have any appletalk or any apple questions in general. I heard they were being phased out but I don't want to skip apple talk question then find out its all appletalk. Congrates.
Dube | |
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| What's next for me? Life. I'll probably do the CCNP/DP thing soon enough, but for now I feel like living a little. Tired of working and studying all the time (which is what it seems like the last few years have all been about). I only did the CCDA as an aside, to kind of put a certificate to stuff I already knew to a large part I guess. As I said, I did expect better from it though, but still...no regrets or anything.
Appletalk: yes, there was definitely some of that on the exam. I don't know about it being "phased out"...in fact I'd say don't count on it. It might have been the case for CCNA 2.0, but CCDA 1.0 is still a fairly recent exam and I don't remember seeing anything anywhere about any revamp to it...it's just a common misconception (or wishful thinking ). The good news is it's nothing spectacularly difficult...basic network/node/socket, know about RTMP, AURP's tunneling, and zones. I just got general high-level overview questions on Appletalk myself. And although I harbor a special hatred for Macs (having been put in a position to implement Appletalk across the board on a 150-user NT/Novell LAN for only 3 vocal Mac users), I have a harder time with things like SNA, which I got a ton of. Frankly, so much of my exam was based on "esoteric" (ahem) technologies/protocols like these as opposed to straight IP, that if I had known that my exam content would be like that in advance, I probably wouldn't have scheduled it. But hey, live and learn, and it turned out ok, so hey. Like I say, good news is it's nothing super-detailed.
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| I thought I would reply to this post. I passed my CCDA by nearly the same score (854). More importantly, you have described my exam experiences perfectly. I promised a post about my exam but work emergencies intervened. My brain was mush anyway. I felt guilty so back I am. However, after reading you comments, I would say that any further critique I could muster would be obvious.
On to CCNP and, first, Routing (ordered the new Cisco Press Prep Library--due in 1 week.)
If I may submit one last thought: the mastery of the mechanics of CCDA test-taking is half the battle.
Good luck to all of you,
Lawrence | |
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| Hi Kyle and Lawrence,
Would appreciate if a break down of each individual items can be shown. I took my CCDA twice. First time I got only 624 and 1 week later I took the test again and I got 907.
I was weak in WAN technologies and Bridging & Switching, got only 20% the first time.
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IGRP
MCSE CNE5 MCNE CCNA CCDA CLP |
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