Study Update # 8

I've been doing the same routine everyday for the most part, even though I haven't been posting blogs about it as much. I begin every morning by completing a lab from this LAB workbook I've found along with going through 10-20 practice exam questions after wards. I then follow up in the evening by going through 10-20 more practice exam tests. This really helps give me a feel on what the test should be like and what I need to brush up on. I'm actually going through the Boson exam sims included with the CCNA ICND2 book. If it's anything like the CCENT Boson exams it's about 30% harder then the actual test which is a good thing. I'll be honest though the simulation labs in the Boson exams are KILLING me so far. It's taking way to long to figure out the issues or even worse I can't figure out the issues at all. i need to focus on my troubleshooting steps if I'm going to pass this thing!

Hell Week...day 4

Well I finished up pretty much all the memory tables and open ended questions so I'm pretty much done with hell week. I ended up labbing a simple VTP topology followed by some practice questions regarding OSPF this morning. I later completed a simple OSPF and EIGRP lab this evening along with going over some EIGRP questions.

Hell Week...day 3

I couldn't really find time post yesterday so I decided to do so early this morning. I had some friends come in from out of town so I wanted to show them around a little bit. Yesterday I went through some more memory tables from the ICND2 book along with a few practice questions and a lab. It's going to be more or less the same process for the next few days so I may not make a post until that's all done. I finally decided to schedule my test to which is exactly two weeks out so we'll see how that goes!

Hell Week...day 2

I finished quite a bit of work today and I believe I'm going to take a different approach to finishing up the material. When I took my CCENT I wrote down a a lot of the answers to questions that was included in the bonus CD's, this took the majority of my time. Now I'm going to try and answer the questions in my head and look up the answer if I can't figure it out. One thing with the Cisco exams is that they want you to be quick, doing things this way will probably be better in the long run. I've accomplished twice as much as I normally would I didn't feel burned out on writing like I had with the CCENT. I accomplished so much that I'm thinking about taking the ICND2 exam sometime early next week, only time will tell!

Hell Week...day 1

Well just like I did with the CCENT, I finish up my material by going back through all of the books tables, scenarios, open ended questions, and late night labs. This is the time were I take all of the theory I've learned and put it all together. I go through the whole book again basically while setting up multiple complex labs and answering dozens up dozens of questions that's included.

Today I spent most of the time with VLAN's and STP, I finished up the day with going through one of the complex scenriaos included with the Cisco Press book. This lab was a mix of VLSM and OSPF along with manually figuring out routers IP addresses and subnets by looking at a network diagram. About 5 hours later and I'm finally done for the day part, I end the day by configuring a simple lab before I hit the hay. Tonight is going to be the easiest night, I'm just setting up a router with the basic initial setup and configurations with Telnet and so on.

Study Update # 7

Well I've finally read through both official CCNA ICND books, well over 1000 pages! The next few weeks it's going to be crunch time.. I need to narrow down on my weak points and make sure that I understand the theory, configuration, and troubleshooting thoroughly about each topic. I'm pretty nervous about this test but anxious as well. There won't be to many in-depth updates because I'm not really learning completly new materials as much as I'm going back over material. I have however landed my first Cisco related phone interview which I was very nervous about. I was asked tons of questions but I was able to answer most of them right. I tripped my self up a few times and missed a couple of easy questions but oh well. I was also asked about protocols not covered by CCNA such as MPLS and BGP so I decided to study those a little bit on the side.

NAT Configuration

I finished chapter 16 of the ICND2 book regarding NAT/PAT configuration, one more chapter to go! NAT wasn't to bad actually the hardest part is remembering all the commands to setup NAT the various different ways. Like most routing configurations setting up NT statically was the simplest but at the same time could be the most time consuming. Then there was Dynamic NAT and PAT configuration which were about the same besides one syntax. Honestly most people would choose PAT because it provides the most flexibility while saving tons of public IP addresses. Next up is IPv6 which I already have some understanding of but I need to learn the basic configuration.