CCNA advice

Hi all,

Great website this - gotta be the most informative for networking that I've found

Well...I took my CCNA exam a few months ago now and failed miserably Now I'm kind of unsure where to go. I saw a friend a while ago who was top in my Cisco class and he's failed it FIVE times I think! He said the most he's got is 75% and he just can't be bothered with it anymore. I don't particularly want to leave it after studying for so long though but the fact that you have to renew it every 3 years is kind of putting me off.

My questions are..do I need to study anything further to take the new CCNA exam and has it really changed that much from the last? Will I need to study for whole new material all over again? It was the 640-607 exam that I took. Sorry for the long post hehe Thanks

5 times !! Nah.. no way.. its really really not hard at all.. its just common sense. I don't know why there's this perception that the exam is difficult.. if you know your basic networking and your way around a switch / router.. you'll come out with flying colours..

Take it easy.. do practice tests.. you'll do fine.

Cheers,

5 times !! Nah.. no way.. its really really not hard at all.. its just common sense. I don't know why there's this perception that the exam is difficult.. if you know your basic networking and your way around a switch / router.. you'll come out with flying colours..

Take it easy.. do practice tests.. you'll do fine.

Cheers,

I know, that's exactly what I thought. I mean I heard he failed it 5 times but didn't quite believe it. Although tbh, him failing it at all surprised me because he was pretty knowledgable - a lot more than me at least! I suppose I'll just have to put in a lot more revision and see how it goes, do you know how much it has changed since the last exam though?

Well from what I've seen of the new course, they've made it a lot more relevant... the WAN technologies section has been jazzed up to the point where I don't know whether I'd pass that section

The basic stuff has remained the same.. the exam on the whole is not harder.. just more up-to-date.. you have the option of taking the split exam if you think its too much material to cover.. however if you have been working with networks for anything more than 6 months.. it should not really be anything groundbreakingly new for you to learn.. of course WAN technologies is a different ballgame altogether since not all of us have the pleasure of regularly configuring frame relay, atm and isdn...

Cheers,

What's the split exam? Sorry, I haven't heard of that myself. I remember seeing something about a bridging course for the new exam?

Hey!
Since you've studied before i believe that you won't have a problem.
The split exam means that you can sit for two exams in order to obtain your ccna, it consists of INTRO(640-821) and ICND(640-811). I think you should go for the composite exam(640-801), and because the material has changed buy a CCNA self-study guide from cisco press or Sybex.
Don't worry it's not that difficult
cheers & good luck