Education

Oh yes they surely have !

The worst is that the exams now contain real simulations that require the candidate to memorise commands! There is very limited help and the good old "tab" to complete commands is not available!

This will surely make a lot of people think twice about sitting for the exams!

For those interested, here is the url that explains in details the recertification options available:

www.cisco.com/en/US/learning/le3/learnin...cation_training.html

Well,

I sure am glad I have kept my RouterSim program and got the upgraded versions. I will obviously need them.

So I bought a CCNA Exam 640-607 book which means that the 640-607 exam will only cover whats in that book but the exams following will have different if not more info? If so how do you keep up then? Buy a book and make sure you take the test before the deadline. Kind of confused how it all works.

ZiPPy

Zippy,

Unfortunately this is how it works.

You buy the book and make sure you sit for the exam before the exam expires.

In your case, as much as mine too, the 640-607 exam expires on the 30th of September, which is the date I'll be sitting for it at 330pm local time (!). If I fail, then its back to square one as I need to sit for the new exam available before the 14th of December which is when my CCNA expires.

Well i signed up to recertify before the two test system comes in (from today) as well.. you get 45 days within which to do the exam after registering. I'm sitting for it on Nov the 5th

Frankly I think the new test system will work better for the community, firstly, its broken into stages which allows people to study in parts, secondly the new exams contain a lot of new and revised material...

If you're a first timer.. perhaps you should sit the new exams.. you will learn new, relevant things... if you're one of the old dogs then damn you're wondering why they just dont go like CompTIA and give you lifetime certifications lol

Good luck for your test today Chris.. doubt you'll need it though

Cheers,
Sahir.

btw its Sept 30th here in Bombay

Well its been two days since I sat for the exam.......

Yes I did successfully pass the exam with a score of 924, which was exactly the same score I got 3 years ago ! (doh .. and I thought I knew more than what I did back then!)

I must admit, this last exam pushed me to the limits.

I found the questions very tricky and they clearly focus on VLAN's, switching, routing and IP addressing.

I received 2 simulations, the 2nd one on questions 59/60, which really freaked me out since I had only 18 minutes left.

By the time I finished the exam, there was just under one minute remaining!

What I did notice though, which really struck me, was while I was in the 2nd lab, I entered a "show run" and saw something I thought was impossible .....


interface Ethernet0
description Private LAN Interface
ip address 192.168.1.3 255.255.255.0
clock rate 56000

I had 6 minutes left and I was dealing clearly with an exam error as its impossible to set the clock rate on an Ethernet port !

I couldn't believe what I was looking at so I reissued the "show run" command .....same output... So what do I do now ?

I couldn't call anyone cause I was the only one in the exam room, the closest person was one floor above me... so entered the Ethernet interface and issues a "no clock rate 56000" as silly as it might seem. Naturally I got the following message:

% Invalid input detected

After that, I went back to the privileged exec prompt, issued another "show run" and the error had vanished!

My suspicion is that Cisco has a few errors in their flash powered lab sims, and I'm sure it wasn't put there intentionally.

Sahirh, if your already booked for the exam and haven't sat for it, visit www.celticrover.com/tig/ccna/ccnareviews.asp . This site is all you need to prepare for the exam. Its got around 350 questions and 20 lab simulations.

I found quite a few of its questions in the exam, but slightly modified to confuse the hell out of the candidate!

Also, the pass mark has been increased from 822 to 849. Thank God its all over.. I'm now going to finish my MCSA and then consider the CCDA.

Cheers,