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Exam Tips
The CCNA exam has changed a lot over the last 3 years, the current one is now
dubbed 640-801, and this page is a list of tips and helpful notes on what you
need to know and how to learn it all.
Firstly, the
goals of what you need to know. The following list is the things you need to
know really well - in other words, you should be able to recall these things
instantly.
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Subnetting, You need to be able to calculate subnet numbers
( subnet address, broadcast address, first and last useable IP addresses ) in
your head, and fairly quickly for any IP class and number of subnet bits.
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Routing protocols, These include RIP, RIP2, IGRP, EIGRP and
OSPF. You'll need to know the types for each ( distance vector, link state,
hybrid ), the metrics ( bandwidth, speed ) and administrative distances for
each one. A fair idea of the types of tables that each uses will be useful.
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WAN protocols, Know all the encapsulation types ( PPP, DLCI,
Frame Relay, etc ) and the quirks of each one. In particular, remember the
default encapsulation for router interfaces.
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The Approach
As in my first exam, I bought the
Cisco book and Todd Lammle's CCNA book ( published by Sybex ), the combination
of which I must say was excellent. The review questions and practical exercises
were great. But note this : the exam was a little harder than the questions in
the book and trial exams on the CD.
The Practice
Get some practice
on routers and switches in our lab. You need to practice setting up and
fault-finding on routers and switches. You should practice until you can fully
configure a pair of routers from scratch to talk to each other over serial
interfaces within a minute or two.
Switches are
much simpler than routers, and you may be able to get away with not having one
to practice on depending on how confident and experienced you are.
The good
thing about this is that you can actually touch and see the cables, power-off
the routers, and do stuff like messing with the configuration register and
recovering the enable password. Great fun.
Various
companies sell simulators which are very good.
Routersim and
Boson are examples. I haven't used these,
but many people recommend them.
I've heard
that there's some sites on the Internet that run paid-for router labs where you
can access real equipment ( or maybe very good simulators ) over the Internet.
The Cisco web site has a
Learning
Center which is worth exploring for trial tests and (very basic) simulators.
The Exam
While various agreements prevent me from giving away details,
here's some tips which may help you in the actual exam:
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Get comfortable before you start. You've usually got a bit
of time to do a "test introduction" - its a good idea to do this just to calm
your nerves and get used to the types of questions that you'll be facing.
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Watch your time. You could be very busy : I found the exam
took more work than the trial exams in Todd Lammle's Sybex book or in Cisco
Press book by Wendell Odem.
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Use pencil and paper only when you need to. Because there
isn't much time to work things out by hand.
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You can usually eliminate one or two of the multi-choice
answers straight away. Get used to this process by doing lots of trial exams
and eliminate answers quickly and consistently in you head ( not on paper,
remember? ).
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If you see questions that you haven't studied for, then
eliminate the bogus answers, take your best guess and move on. Don't sweat it
out. Some questions are "trial" questions which may be outside the current
CCNA syllabus and you won't be marked on these.
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Be prepared for "complex" questions. For example, single
questions that demand knowledge of subnetting and routing protocols or
questions that may show a moderately complex network and ask you to find the
fault in it.
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Quick Links
A few quick links to get you started.
Cisco CCNA page
Cisco CCNA
Prep Centre
Pearson - for booking
exams
Well, that's
about it. The good thing about the CCNA exam is not that it teaches you a lot
about Cisco specific products, but that you will learn a lot about TCP/IP
networking. And these days, such knowledge is really essential to get a good job
in IT. I've met many people in IT that don't understand basic things like
subnetting, VLANs and WAN protocols and they often get into trouble when
tackling simple problems and designing what should be simple solutions.
Good Luck
But when you know your stuff, luck isn't necessary.
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