It seems like the question every new Cisco CCNA student has is what is the best way to prepare for the CCNA exam? So I would like to take some time in this article to discuss my thoughts on what will help you achieve your goal in obtaining your Cisco CCNA certification.
The CCNA exam was created to illustrate that you understand and can perform the topics relating to routing. Not that you can memorize questions and answers from brain dumps! So where do we start?
Study Guide – Well you will need a full blown CCNA study guide. These are about 800 pages in length so don’t expect to blow through them in a week. It is not light reading. Some good choices out there for study guides are the Sybex CCNA study guide for a low cost solution written in layman terms, the Bryant Advantage Study Package for a well written total package and the CiscoPress CCNA guide for a solution that is written very techie.
Real Routers and Switches – How can you really be confident and work on Cisco equipment if you never opened a Cisco router or Cisco switch? If you do get a job working with Cisco routers, will you be intimidated by the router the first time seeing it knowing you never actually worked on one? That said, there is so much to learn about these units by having the actual hardware. You can’t duplicate what happens when you have a serial cable come loose or are using the wrong type of cable(straight-thru versus cross-over) daisy chaining switches with a simulator. I don’t know about you, but I learn so much more effectively using real equipment. I also find that most CCNA students say the same. The only way to actually see routing and such work and know that you made it work is to have real Cisco routers and switches for your Cisco certification training lab. What I find is that when I mess up a lab about 10 times in a row due to a typo or trying to enter a command at the wrong level of the IOS, when I actually figure out what I was doing wrong….well, I am never going to forget that again! This is actual real hands-on experience! That translates into you actually understanding what went on and helps you obtain the troubleshooting skills so you can methodically work through issues. Again, there is no way to recreate this by just reading a book and understanding theory. So to help you pass your Cisco certification exam, I suggest you invest in some Cisco routers and switches for your lab. You will find it to be some of the best money ever spent on your education! At www.CiscoKits.com you will find CCNA kits to fit every budget. So head on over to CiscoKits to see their many kits and tons of free certification articles and videos. For more information on which routers to pick for your lab, you can checkout this article CCNA Lab Suggestions.
Lab Workbook – Something I never understood on eBay is people will buy solutions which are advertised as CCNA lab kits that have no corresponding lab workbooks that match the equipment that is being offered. What good is it to have a collection of equipment if you can’t perform labs on them? So you need to make sure the kit comes with a lab workbook. All the kits at CiscoKits have lab workbooks with them. You can see a sample of the topics covered on in the lab workbook at 640-802 CCNA LAb Workbook.
Test Engine – Now there is a BIG difference between a test engine that will help you understand the CCNA concepts and what you are missing and brain dumps! The test engines that are just the exact questions from the test are garbage! All that proves is that you can memorize questions and answers. If this is the route you choose to achieve your certification, you will ultimately choke on the job as you won’t really know the material to perform your job. You need to understand why an answer is right and why one is wrong.
CRAM Sheet – This is a great addition to your CCNA exam prep material. A CRAM sheet should consolidates all the major concepts from the 800 pages of a full blown study guide to a easy to carry sheet or two for you to review all hours of the day and night! Here is a link to a great CRAM sheet product, the CCNA 640-802 CRAM Sheet. Here you can see all the product details and concepts covered. This is very handy to carry around with you when you have a few free minutes to study here and there so you are not lugging around a big bulky book. You can also easily bring the CRAM sheet with you to cram to your exam. In fact, we suggest you do use it to brush up on the main concepts just before you pass your CCNA 640-802 exam!
CCNA CBT – If you can’t afford $3,000 to sit an actual class, the next best thing is a Video CBT of the CCNA course. Historically these CBTs run about $250 each. But a great tip is CiscoKits includes a CBT that normally is $250 with many of their lab kits for about $50! So you can save $200 on the cost of the CBT training! Here is a link to the CBT description CCNA CBT DVD Now just look for one of their kits that has it included as it only costs about $50 when you get it with a kit.
Ok, now that we covered the major tools you will use in your ICND1, ICND2, and CCNA self study journey, we are going to provide you some guidance on how to use them effectively. Here is a suggested study plan….
1. Read the first few chapters of the full blown CCNA study guide you purchased. These first three or four chapters are usually mostly your base theory and then around the third or forth chapter you get into basic router configuration and how to login to the router.
2. At that point you will want to configure your Cisco CCNA hardware lab. You will pick out some of the corresponding labs in the workbook to follow along with the study guide you purchased. That is why we wrote the lab workbook in a generic sense as there is no way we can know what study guide you will be using or what actual hardware you will have. But now you should be able to perform some of the basic CCNA labs in the lab workbook. Continue through your study guide performing the corresponding labs that are in the lab workbook.
3. One you complete the study guide, now you should go through one of the CCNA Test Engine exams such as CCNA exam A*(Important note, only do one exam!). After you complete the exam, you want to print out the entire exam so you can review the sections and concepts you got wrong. Also note what your score was for that exam.
4. Now go back to the study guide and brush up on the concepts you scored poorly on in exam number one.
5. You should now have a baseline of where you were at with the test score. We want to make sure you are scoring about an 80% before you even think about attempting the real Cisco CCNA exam at $125 a pop.
6. Here is where you will want to start to work in additional items such as the CRAM sheet and videos. These tools will present the information to you from a different perspective as everyone learns using different techniques and via different communication mechanisms. Some will benefit from the full blown study guides, some from the hands-on of the labs and workbook, some from the videos, others from the full color CRAM sheet and finally some from the test engine. You want to use all the tools at your disposal for all they are worth.
7. Once you reviewed all the material once, now go back and take CCNA exam B. Hopefully you are scoring close to 80% by now. You will then want to repeat the above process of printing out the exam, reviewing the sections or concepts you scored poorly on and again leveraging the tools at hand.
8. You should see how you can continue to repeat this methodology while learning and not memorizing the questions. If you memorize the questions, you defeat the purpose of trying to learn the actual concepts. I am quite sure if you follow this road map, you will be scoring close to 80% by the time you get to exam C. Just continue refreshing the material and in no time you will be holding your passing exam score for your CCNA certification!
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