I'm going to talk to you about my experience, Taking the new CCNA exam online, The CCNA 200 301 exam. I passed it on April 23rd, Which is about ten days ago, And I got a lot of questions about the material I used and you know about the exam itself on reddit. First, You want to say thank you to everybody who congratulated me. I got a ton of support ton of upvotes. You know all that kind of good stuff, So this is my way of giving back to you and you know I don't cover anything that you had questions about.
Firstly, I highly recommend purchasing the books by window Odom, There's two volumes Volume one and volume two. If you purchase them both, I think t're called like the library or something you get a discount. The books are definitely a must.
I mean he puts all the information that you need for this exam in those books. So essentially, If you can just read through the books - and you know really comprehend what he's telling you you should be good, You should be good, So definitely recommend the books with the books come. You know some practice, So I think t include some labs and some flashcards or whatnot, But, Most importantly, What t include are the Pearson VUE practice exam questions, So you know that website and that software definitely helped me a lot. I mean I'm the type of person of just likes to drill questions anytime.
I study for an exam, Especially an exam of this magnitude. You know after I get through the material the, But the thing I found to work for me is just doing practice questions. So their practice questions were definitely a goal to, Especially because because t're included with the purchase of the books so that's that's just another bonus for buying the book, So I definitely recommend that the other two things that are used were the udemy course by Neil Anderson his course was great.
I heard good things about David bumble and other people, But I using the only understand it was great. He has practice labs at the end of every section, So I would definitely go with him and the last thing that I use that I heard mixed reviews about and I'll give my opinion on it in just a few is alpha prep, So alpha prep is just You know a practice exam software that you can purchase it cost about forty five dollars for a month subscription. It comes with other stuff too, But I just bought the practice questions strictly and that's what I used it for so I'll.
Just go over some of the questions that were asked of me on reddit, And you know I'm. I will just take it from there. So how will you rate the difficulty of the Pearson VUE questions in comparison to the real exam? Did t prepare you well or would you suggest purchasing others? I would say t're good. T did prepare me.
I would say . T definitely did prepare me well. I bought the Alpha postions just because I felt like t were getting repetitive and I knew the answers before you know even finishing the question, And you know I noticed that once you get to that point, You you're not really learning the material. I mean you might be, But you're you're, More or less just memorizing the questions and that's not really gonna help you. So I wanted to go to Alpha Prep in order to just get to more questions and some new ones and you know, Get a fresh twist on you know the types of questions that we're gonna be asked to me, And I found that actually alpha prep had A lot of outdated questions you know kind of like let's say about like serial interfaces and PPP and hdl-c, Which is good to know, But if you're strictly just trying to pass the 200 - 301 CCNA exam.
You know those topics aren't on the blueprint. So but you know it doesn't hurt to learn so with that being said, Alpha prep did also reuse. A lot of the questions that I saw on Pearson.
Vue practice exam questions, So you know you're gonna get some overlap there, But I feel, Like both of those sources really did help. I just wish alpha prep had more stuff related to Wireless and network automation. T didn't have too many questions, But you know another thing that you know it's kind of overlooked. What and you know what I kind of like about house of peppers.
T have like this exam day, Ready meter. So once you start taking the exams, The better you do, The higher that meter gets and once it reaches like a seven out of seven. T say your exam, T ready, But another thing that t do, Which I thought was cool.
Is t make the questions harder? The better you do on their exam, So if you get like, You know, 90 on their practice exam. The next test is supposedly supposed to be harder than the previous one, And therefore you know you're, Probably not going to do as well, And that kind of motivates you to just like you know, Keep trying and keep trying to get better. And you know when I did see that seven out of seven the exam day ready meter, You know it did kind of give me the motivation. I was like what you know: I'm probably ready for this exam.
It's the software's telling me, Then you know I must be, But you know I'm not saying just rely on that, But it was just a little added bonus and I did actually I do like the idea behind that. So let me get to the next one. Next question here is: : did you use the virtual whiteboard for subnetting? If so, How was it so I used it once I just felt like it kind of slowed me down, It was a little too complicated for me to use. I didn't really, You know, See the need for it.
I learned a while back. How does something that in my head, And I'm just able to kind of just step through those questions, But it's there if you need it and if you just want to just like you know, Know what a few things and keep it on your screen, While you Taking the exam, I guess it's good to use. If I was able to use a paper and pen, I would probably have used the paper and pen more so than I would have used the whiteboard for sure. But just because it's like a little weird and like I didn't like it personally, But it's there if you need it, What was your networking knowledge prior to this and how long did it take you to prep? So you know I took a few courses in my university in regards to networking, I wouldn't say I had too much extent.
You know nothing too extensive. As far as you know, My previous knowledge, You know I just had the basics down like. I knew what the old side model was. Anyone subnetting was, I would say, A lot of the information I had about.
Networking relates, More so towards the Network+ exam than it does the CCNA, But you know it took me about four four months to prep. For this exam, Like I started kind of in the beginning of the year - and I you know when I first started - I like wasn't really starting no studying too hard but starting kind of in February. I started really. You know allocating a lot of time into this. I readed the articles straight through Neely understands articles, I readed them straight through then I went. I read the both books, You know from front to back.
I took notes while reading and then I just started drilling questions and you know sometime. I guess you know mid-april. Maybe early a probable alpha prep and once I got to that seven out of seven, You know exam day, Ready meter.
I knew I was ready and I just booked the exam for April 23rd and I was able to pass it on my first try so about four to five months. I would say: take your time don't rush into it. It's a it's a tough exam. It's definitely a tough exam and it will challenge you and you do need to know you know all the material you can't just get away with.
You know not knowing certain things and trying to skip over the material. That's harder. I would say you know just grasp everything from the books and you know then, When you, When you feel like you're ready, Then take it. So how was the online proctored version I enjoyed it? You know I had no issues. I got there early.
I logged in 30 minutes early. I got everything ready. I took the pictures once I got the software loaded up.
The proctor called me in about like two three minutes and she said . You know everything looks good. Your pictures were uploaded. Fine, I'm gonna get started any minute here and she said: do you have any questions? I told her no and she's like , Best of luck and that's really all you know the conversation I had with the proctor. There was one point in the exam where I had to ask them a question and you know t're t just pretty much.
It was a question about the material, Just something I wanted to clarify. You know to kind of test the waters and t pretty much told me that t're not privy to the exam information, And you know t can't really help me. So I was just like all right. And I just kept moving, But you know I have no issues, It was pretty straightforward and everything worked out well. So this is a question that was asked a lot hat.
What about Pearson and alpha prep exams, Which ones were similar to the actual exam? Like I said, Both of them you're never gonna get a perfect correlation between you know, Practice exams and the actual exams. Because then it wouldn't be, You know, An actual. You know wouldn't actually be a hard exam to pass if you had like direct correlations, But you know I would say, Use both. You know t both have overlap, Meaning that some questions you see at alpha, Prep you'll, See at Pearson and the other way around, But t are a good source of information and a good way to practice. So that's about it.
Those are like the main questions that I got you know so, Like I said I'll just quickly. You know tell you how I did it and then you know, If you have any other questions, Just leave a comment. So I started reading the books initially, But I found that books were a little complicated.
You know, Especially if you don't know Cisco, Stuff or you're, Not that you know into networking, Or you don't have that much previous experience with networking. I would say you know: go through the articles first, Especially Neal's like he explained everything clearly and you know the labs at the end of each chapter, Kind of helped, Cement that knowledge even more and then once you're done with the articles. You know I, You know what I did was read the books, I just like read the books and there were certain topics that were really easy to read through because I already understood them and there were certain topics like QoS or Wireless that were a little tougher To understand specially the security part about Wireless, That was a little tough for me, But you know just read it and take notes while reading, Because before you take the exam, If you have notes, You can just look through everything and it kind of just helps. You know cement all that information, And you know if you read something like a month ago and then you're gonna take the exam a month later. You might not remember if you have like notes about the key topics which window Odom's does. He does specify key topics in his book, So I would say, Pay attention to those and maybe make notes about those, But just take the notes and review them before you take the exam, Maybe like a week or two before you're gonna take the exam.
Just start going through the notes and breeding and just you know, Memorizing those key details that you're gonna need in order to pass it. And then you know that's what I did and then once I got through the books, I started taking the Pearson VUE exams, That's when I decided to pull the trigger I signed up for the online proctored exam and I passed on the first.
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