Great book, some suggestions for test takers (and Todd)

[Stonewolf]

Heya, everyone.

Todd's book on CCNA is fantastic and really helped me nail down the topics necessary to pass. If you're on the fence about whether or not it's good for you, well, there you have it. But I have unfortunate news.

I missed the mark by 3% That is a piddly number to miss by and frustrating to no end.

I don't hold anything about the book responsible, but for future test takers visiting this site, I have a suggestion for you. Know your troubleshooting through and through.

One of the things that the book (or any book) can't really do well is show you exactly what to look for in specific situations. The simulations on the exam, however, are rife with broken topologies. As stated in the book, Cisco is looking for specific commands and I honestly don't know where I went wrong.

For example, one simulation had a misconfigured EIGRP setup. Clearly from the show outputs, the AS numbers were incorrect. Easily enough, I set up EIGRP routing on the correct AS number, but the simulation still didn't seem to work after that. After that, I couldn't figure out what to do, and that's likely where my 3% went.

One other point of note that isn't mentioned in the book is your severe time limit. You don't have much time to fuss about in a simulation, so you've got to know exactly where to go and how to fix it, or else you're sunk.

My suggestion for Todd is to simply add broken configurations in future editions of the book and work through some troubleshooting problems. The labs that are already in there will most definitely help you to configure your routers and switches and will help you look for problems, but the problems won't exist if you follow them to the letter. He's simply that good.

My retake is in two days and I'm having trouble finding resources to help me with troubleshooting. The fact that it's not exactly clear how Cisco wants you to fix problems doesn't help, either, so know your stuff.

Good luck to future test takers and thanks, Todd, for a terrific study guide.

[twh-ccna]

Hi everyone, I am currently studying Todd's CCNA Study Guide (Copyright 2005) to prepare for the CCNA exam in late November 2006. Are there any udates to the study guide, and if so where should I go to find them? Since I am roughly 30 days away from taking the test, I am looking for your recommendations for preparing to pass the exam successfully. Also, I have I've read Chapter 3 IP Subnetting and VSLM a couple of times and need a little more clarification on Class A and B subnetting. I'll keep rereading the study guide, but do you have any recommendations to really lock in this material?
Thanks,
twh
:)

[orastreet]

Heya, everyone.

For example, one simulation had a misconfigured EIGRP setup. Clearly from the show outputs, the AS numbers were incorrect. Easily enough, I set up EIGRP routing on the correct AS number, but the simulation still didn't seem to work after that. After that, I couldn't figure out what to do, and that's likely where my 3% went.


This one got me TWICE! I saw that the AS's were wrong, I fixed that and it didn't fix the issue. I suspect they had a bad IP in there also, and another thing is that you could not telnet by typing just the IP like everyone in the whole wide world does all day long. You had to type Telnet then the host address. Once I figured that out I got a little farther, but not much.

Since then I took it 2 more times (finally passed) and it was a different and someone easier test - HOWEVER - there where things in there that were not covered in Todd's book. I don't blame HIM for this, because he can't predict what would be on the test.

Some of these were -

A question that had 5 parts to it, all about switching. 1st question asked about a switch that was removed from the network, it was getting a tune-up, updated or upgraded (or something) and then needed to be added back in to the network. They showed you a copy of it's config. The config made it to be a VTP server, so they asked what will happen to the other VLAN's in the network with this switch is introduced back into the environment. I guess I got it right because I passed, but it looks like since it is a server, it's VLANs, listed in the config would be the VLANS available for the other switches in the network, provided they were in the same VTP domain.

Then they asked questiosn about Mac Addresses - so you must know your SHOW commands, especially show arp, show mac-address and show cdp neighbor. You had to figure out where the VTP info was coming from and if you did a show vtp statistics all you get is an ip address. Well, how can you tell who that is? show cdp neighbors. It was a tricky one, but I got it.

Also - they had a very fair and straightforward access-list question in which you had to set up an exteneded ACL on a router to allow only 1 host to access a web server on another network while disabling everyone else from all other networks web access to the webserver, but all other traffic is okay and you must do it in three lines or less. That was a very fair question and straightforward. You click on the hosts and a little browswer pops up, you type the IP address for the web server and it tells you whether you can get to the webserver or not. You must understand ACL placement, whether it's in or out and understand how ACL's are affected based on what interface they are placed on.

Good luck!

[orastreet]

Hi everyone, I am currently studying Todd's CCNA Study Guide (Copyright 2005) to prepare for the CCNA exam in late November 2006. Are there any udates to the study guide, and if so where should I go to find them? Since I am roughly 30 days away from taking the test, I am looking for your recommendations for preparing to pass the exam successfully. Also, I have I've read Chapter 3 IP Subnetting and VSLM a couple of times and need a little more clarification on Class A and B subnetting. I'll keep rereading the study guide, but do you have any recommendations to really lock in this material?
Thanks,
twh
:)

Hey Todd's book is great, and offers great explaination and is an easy read. Cisco books are so dry and boring. I did get the Cisco Press CCNA FLASHCARD book and that had testing software (decent) and had everything in there I needed to pass the test. After I learned everything in that book, I was ready to pass and I did! The flash card book is just pure fact - question and answer and does not have the patient articulate explaination that Todd gives in his. The testing software in there is decent also and has simulated questions and shows you how to setup ISDN SPids, Frame realy, LMI, vlans, switchport configs like setting it to trunk or access...it was good stuff.

[Katalysator]

Well, it sounds like you're talking about two VTP servers in the same domain. In that instance, isn't it the revision number that matters?

I might be wrong, I'm getting ready for the CCNA myself...

but doesn't the VTP server with the higher revision number overwrite the other server?

I imagine the newer server would have a lower revision number, but you'd probably be able to check in a simulation. Or maybe they show the vtp status of both servers, that would show the rev numbers

[aguilera]

Higher revisions do overwrite lower revisions.

If a new server comes into the VTP domain, the only reason it would have a higher revision is if you were creating, modifying and deleting vlans before you brought up your trunk ports.

You see when you bring your trunk ports up it doesn't automatically drop you down to a revision number of 0... it keeps your current revision number.

Best practice it to change your VTP domain name, set your server to client, connect bring your trunk links up then change your vtp domain back to the production vtp domain. Renaming your vtp domains ensures that your vtp revision is set back to 0.