Recommendations On Study Materials

Hello All,

Below are links to the resources I reference in the video.

1. Boson exam simulator
2. official Cisco Press books
3. Ultimate router/switch configs 
1. landscape photo of router w/ markup (jpg)
2. Ultimate Router Config (gdoc)
3. Ultimate Switch Config (gdoc)
4. Exam Objectives for 200-101 (pdf)

I forgot to mention in the video that the Cisco Press books also have a CDROM at the back that has videos, an Exam Simulator, and a Network Simulator.  Lots of value for your $25!!!  The vids are alright; I didn't really use them and you can find better/more on YouTube.  The Network Sim I can't really review as I only used Packet Tracer and that is what I'd recommend.

The Exam Simulator however, I loved as the questions were hard and the explanations were decent (not as good or thorough as Boson, however).  You could also easily export (copy/paste) the explanations to a document if you wanted; with Boson they've locked it down a bit more so you can't copy any of the text, but you could print it to a .pdf, then copy/paste it from there to a doc.  You also got more questions in the form of the DIKTA (do I know this already) questions at the beginning of every chapter; 10 or so questions/chapter.  Also, more questions from the 200-120 exam that was included.  If you purchase both books (sheeze, I sound like I'm doing an advertisement for them... honestly, I'm not getting anything for this...) you get 4 CCNA exams (2/book) plus 3 ICND1 (book 1) & 3 ICND2 (book 2) exams; 10 exams total!!!  That's a lot for the money!

I'd recommend:

1. ICND1 Book              = $ 25
2. ICND2 Book              = $ 25
3. Boson ExSim x 2         = $200
4. Packet Tracer Simulator = $  0
5. Total to get CCNA       = $250

This is a way better deal than if you went to a training center (take a look at the Boson site, they charge $7000) or community college (maybe $5K).  This, however doesn't take into account the value of your time, however you'd still be putting that in no matter what route you chose.

Finally, one last disclaimer, while I did create that exam objectives pdf available (with the comments) I didn't really look at it or review from it... it was the creating of it that helped me obtain and "retain" the knowledge... it forced me to go back to the book or to my configs and review the information again.  I hope I'm not doing you a disservice by providing it; it should still help as long as you review it again and again and really know it... and not only know it (as in memorization), but rather "understand" it as well.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments in the comment section below.

How I learned the “show” commands

Here's a couple memorization techniques I used during the last stages of my studying just prior to taking the ICND1 exam.  One was for memorizing a list of TCP/UDP port numbers and the other was for memorizing the show command output.  It's kind of "low-tech" and "old-school" but it got the job done.

I've made the files available below:

1. show commands
2. Show Command Memory Cheat Sheet

Subnetting Table & Technique

Hello all,

As if you hadn't already seen a million videos and read a million articles on how to subnet... here's my take on it and some of the techniques and charts I created and used in my exam prep.

Subnetting Chart

Also... I forgot to talk about this in the video, but there's a cool technique I learned in the ICND1 book put out by Cisco Press (written by Wendell Odom) where you can get the subnet multiplier by simply taking the value in the last octet and subtracting it from 256.  So if you have a mask of 255.255.255.192 then you can simply... 256-192=64... so the subnet multiplier is 64; so our subnets are 0, 64, 128, 192.  If you are given a /26, then you'll just have to convert it to the .192 first then subtract it from 256.

Cisco Games

Hello all,

here's a video demonstrating the fun and educational games that Cisco has available at their site; you'll need an account to access these on the Cisco Learning Network.  It seems like they've added some since I last visited it about 6 months ago, but I could be wrong.  In any event, these are could be a nice study-break for you and yet they will still keep you learning and moving forward toward your goal.  I like how they also pit you against the clock so as to make you learn to do it fast; could be a real boon come test time.

Please have a look and feel free to leave comments below.