Terry's personal blog

A firend of mine named Tesl and me are currently working away at our CCNA, and hope to get it within the next couple of weeks. We are trying to read all the material we can get his hands on, but we are a little worried that we need to buy some more.

We are using the Sybex CCNA 4th Edition by Todd Lammle. Has the exam changed enough to justify buying the 5th edition? Ideally we don't want to have to fork out more if its not really necessary.

We've read that book through front to back three times now, twice in the past week. We've a fair bit of background in networking so feel like We've picked it up really quickly. But is that book really enough to pass with? (HWe really can't afford to buy any equipment right now, HWe've 0 money until We start my new job in Japan in a few months time).

How much of a Cisco background do we have?

Admittedly, not that much. Obviously the N+ helps and W've limited experience with simple cisco router configurations, but since We don't have our own equipment its hard to practise. Our new job is actually not in the IT field, although we will be looking for work in the Networking/Linux field not too long after arriving in Japan.
We've spent quite a bit of the time in the past writing a lot of networking code, including a linux kernel module that altered how the OS would respond to certain TCP/IP requests (for security reasons).
Some of that was a while back though, and obviously doesn't help with things like WAN technologies and the equipment/protocols used within those. We would say that is our weak point.

What are we using to prepare for the sims (the practical element of the exam)?

Alas, not that much. More or less just what we can find online, since we don't have access to the equipment right now. We would honestly love to hit ebay and buy some bits and pieces, but it really isn't ideal right now. Once we get my own place to live sorted out, we may buy some cisco gear and set up my own lab once in Japan =)

Have a read through similar topics on the net and take some practice tests to gauge our knowledge.

We were away for a week where we picked up that book for the first time in about a year or so, and read it twice through. Doing the practice tests on the net we are scoring anywhere between 65% - 90%. Not really good enough.

The CCNA(List of Cisco CCNA Exams: 640-802, 640-822, 640-811, 640-821, 640-801, 640-816) doesn't strike us as being difficult per se, there is just quite a wide variety of information that needs to be memorised.

Source: TechExams