I've just passed the new Cisco CCNA Exam 200-301, And in this article I'm gonna give you some tips and tricks to help you in your preparation for the new Cisco CCNA 200-301 Exam. Today I took both the Cisco CCNA, As well as the Cisco DevNet Exam. Fortunately, I passed both of them so really happy about that. Some surprises, However, In this new exam, Some stuff that I thought was really good, Some stuff that I thought was strange.
Some unexpected stuff I'll talk about that in this article, So keep reading. If you wanna learn more about my experience taking the new Cisco CCNA Exam Let's go Now before we continue. If you enjoyed this article, Please consider subscribing to my EveDumps channel. Please like this article and please click on the bell to get notifications when I post a new article, But also share it with others. Let other people know about my experience of the Cisco CCNA Exam.
It covered a whole range of topics. I think, As a version one exam, T call this CCNA Exam version one. I thought it was a good exam.
However, There were things that surprised me Things that I didn't expect to see in the exam, But on the whole I thought it was a good exam. I write a lot of quiz questions. I'Ve written exam questions for vendors before It's very difficult to write, Good exam questions, It's much easier to answer any question than it is to write a question. It's much easier to criticize a question than it is to create a question, So I thought t did a great job. A whole balance of various topics Covered a wide range of topics in their list of topics that you need to know, But some hints would be concentrate on the new stuff Spend time on the new stuff.
Don'T get bogged down in trying to memorize huge amounts of commands, So first up is learn the new stuff, Especially like wireless, Make sure you understand wireless, Make sure that you understand security topics Now another tip. What do you need to prepare Is Packet Tracer enough And, I would say, Definitely Spend time using Packet Tracer. So do you need GNS3? Do you need VIRL? Do you need Eve-NG? Do you need physical equipment? I like those products. I, Like the new VIRL I'll, Be creating a article on the new VIRL.
Very soon, I've already got access to VIRL 20 great product. I love GNS3, I love Eve-NG. Those products are great. I really think you should use those products for CCNP For CCNA. However, I think Packet Tracer's enough If you can get access to physical equipment that always helps If you can get access to GNS3 or VIRL - that's great as well, Because it'll have options that you won't see in Packet, Tracer, So I think Packet Tracer's enough.
I don't think you need to invest in buying hardware, Even though I think it's recommended It's not a requirement, I don't think you have to buy VIRL. However, Again, I would suggest that you do that as soon as you can, Because Packet Tracer's great, But it's at this level and then VIRL, GNS3, Eve-NG and physical equipment is at this level. So if you wanna really increase your knowledge, If you really wanna increase your understanding, I'd recommend that you get those products, But it's not required for the CCNA Exam. For my CCNA course, I'm gonna concentrate exclusively on Packet, Tracer labs.
So in the past I used to use GNS3 labs, But a lot of people struggled with those labs, It's quite difficult to set up, Especially if you're new to Cisco, So I'd recommend Packet, Tracer Easy to set up official product from Cisco, Brilliant simulation. Software Allows you to simulate many many topics specifically for this CCNA. I would highly recommend Cisco Packet Tracer and that's what I'm gonna base my course on Now.
One of the best places to look if you're preparing for a Cisco Exam is the Cisco Outline or Cisco Details of the exam. Exam is 120 minutes 200-301. This kind of stuff you know already One of the first things I would do.
If I were, You is have a look at the exam topics And I've downloaded the exam topics here, And this is where it got interesting. So, Let's start with one topic straight away: EIGRP There is no EIGRP and no VTP. Now, When preparing for the exam, Ghly recommend Wendell Odom's Official Cert Guides, I strongly suggest that you buy these guides and you use them Lots of good information in here. I spent a bit of time going through these and I might've missed some stuff, But even then I was quite surprised by a few things: so in Wendell Odom's Official Cert Guide, He does mention EIGRP multiple places Such as when he discussed metrics. So I purchased both the physical box as well as the PDF, So I like having both So in this example, I'm looking at the PDF version, So that I can share it much more easily in this article Notice.
He's got this table here where he talks about the different types of routing calculations, EIGRP calculates based on bandwidth and delay. So, Even though EIGRP is not in the list of topics for the exam, He actually covers it in the Official Cert Guide. So on the left.
Here, I'm doing searches for EIGRP and what you'll notice is there's a whole bunch of entries for EIGRP such as administrative distance. Now it's difficult to understand administrative distance. If the only routing protocol you're gonna talk about is OSPF Here we have a table of the administrative distances for various routing protocols Notice. We have both BGP and EIGRP as well as IS-IS, So don't just learn OSPF in isolation and just say: I'm gonna learn OSPF and ignore EIGRP. Ignore BGP, Ignore IS-IS.
Make sure that you understand administrative distances. Make sure that you understand that if IS-IS advertises a route to you, OSPF advertises a route to you and EIGRP advertises a route to you and BGP advertises a route to you that you know which route is gonna, Be selected. And why Now I've previously created articles about this? I'Ve created quiz questions about this. Have a look at this article and example, Where I explain why, For instance, OSPF is chosen over EIGRP Or why RIP is chosen over EIGRP Or over OSPF when choosing the best route Make sure that you know route selections? You really need to understand this stuff. For the CCNA Exam So make sure that you know AD, Don't just say I don't need to learn EIGRP Make sure you understand it Again.
While talking about EIGRP, I mentioned VTP So doing a search for VTP, There's a whole section here talking about VLAN trunking protocol And he says "Before showing more configuration. Examples "you need to know something about a Cisco protocol, "called VTP" And he discusses a whole bunch of stuff, Including VTP mode transparent. So it's not as if you can just ignore VTP. He discusses it in multiple places in his student guide, And he says: "This book does not discuss VTP as an end "to itself for different reasons". He says "It's not currently in the blueprint "and. Additionally, Many enterprises choose to disable VTP "However.
It still has an effect". My personal opinion is that I won't remove VTP from my new Cisco CCNA course I'll reduce the amount of information about it and reduce sort of some of the trouble shooting scenarios stuff like that. But in my new course I will definitely cover VTP. Now, Going back to the Cisco Exam topics, Make sure that you know the new stuff Make sure that you spend time learning the new things As an example make sure you know about controllers, Make sure that you know about Cisco DNA Center and wireless land controllers, But Also, Don't forget about traditional stuff, Like what's the difference between TCP and UTP. What's the difference between other protocols, So, Like DHCP versus DNS, Do you actually understand how those protocols work? Do you know what t're about I mean all this stuff is covered in the outline, So I found that the exam covered a broad range of topics.
I was surprised by some of the topics that are still asked in the exam, But when it comes to addressing - and I missing it right now is subnetting Make sure that you know your subnetting. If I give you an IP address - and I say "Here's an IP address "192168130/28" - Make sure that you know network first host last host and broadcast address. Make sure that you know that information. Make sure that you know if you were given a routing table or a subnetting diagram that you know where devices are in the network? Use tables, I'm not a big fan of tables, But I will be creating articles and publishing them on EveDumps, As well as my course with subnetting tables to help you do this stuff quickly.
You gotta be able to look at a routing table. You'Ve gotta be able to look at a network diagram. You'Ve gotta be able to know where a host is So subnetting is always important and it's still important Big topics Wi-FI Make sure that you know Wi-FI topics Such as encryption. So what encryption protocols are used on wireless? Make sure that you understand the theory of wireless but make sure that you also understand how to configure stuff through the wireless land controller.
Don'T skip that section New section in the exam Make sure that you spend time on wireless And topics such as virtualization. As an example, I mean that's, Not pure routing and switching, But we've got this convergence of technologies, So you need to understand virtualization as well. Traditional topics such as quality of service are also important. My exam is very balanced.
A lot of topics from a whole range of areas, For example: routing: Do you understand how routing works? Do you understand a floating static route versus a route such as default route or a route that was added by a routing protocol? Do you understand OSPF, Because OSPF is the only main protocol in the CCNA, Make sure that you understand OSPF really really well Make sure that you understand elections, Neighbor adjacencies Different types of links, So here t mention point-to-point. If you enable OSPF on a ethernet interface, What kind of network will it be If you enable it on a point-to-point link? What kind of link will it be And that's important, Because once again, A lot of WAN technologies have been removed from the course PPP has been removed from the course. But here we've got a point-to-point link in OSPF. So how would t test you about a point-to-point link? If you don't have some kind of point-to-point link, The OSPF network type could be point-to-point, Which means you need a point-to-point link. So don't just throw out all the old technologies and say I will not touch anything that has a HDLC or point-to-point type of connection.
I personally will keep a little bit of that in my course, But it's not as big as it was previously. Big section is security fundamentals. I would spent a lot of time on security fundamentals. It's 15% of the exam Make sure that you understand VPNs, Make sure that you understand wireless security protocols make sure that you know how to configure wireless lands using WPA2 using pre-shared key via the GUI. Make sure that you understand triple A as an example.
Do you know the difference between authentication authorization and accounting, So I would spend a lot of time on security fundamentals, Big part of the course now And then automation and programmability. This is where things are going, So you would need to know like certain what is a northbound API? What's a southbound API, What protocols would be used on northbound southbound? My big advice would be make sure you understand what a controller is. I'Ve discussed this stuff and I'll create a article showing you a bit of history if you're interested, But I spoke about this stuff on this article many years ago. What's the difference between separation of control, Plane data plane, What is a management plane? So if you have a controller traditionally, We have a device like a router with the management plane, The control plane and the forwarding plane or data plane within the device.
But with a controller we take the control plane out of the device we put it in a centralized controller. Now, In the original open flow model, The controller was the brain and the switches became dumb or the routers became dumb. That didn't work very well didn't scale.
So OSPF kinda died a death, That's in the past now, But the idea with a controller is we can have a controller that, For instance, Controls some aspects of forwarding, So in Wendell's CCNA book he spends a lot of time on SDA Lot of information on SDA. I don't know if it's necessary to know it at that detail, But make sure that you understand what is an underlay network, Essentially physical devices, Routers and switchers running traditional stuff. You can, However, Get rid of spanning tree and run a layer three network as the underlay. Then you run an overlay on top of it. Now it sounds all complicated, But it's just traditional stuff.
That's got a new spin on it. I would say So in the old old days and we've done this for years. The internet think of the internet as an underlay, It doesn't understand what's going across it necessarily, Especially if we put it in a tunnel.
So let's go back even further. In the old old days we had a traditional telephone network where the switches in the cloud were intelligent and the phones were dumb. Then the intelligence was put on the phones and then using Skype as an example and the networking core became dumb And we just simply made calls across the internet using Skype, So the traditional telephony network was intelligent was replaced with an IP core that was essentially dumb. It didn't understand all the applications going across it, And then we made calls across the internet using Skype, With the intelligence in the endpoints Or in the controllers, Which could be as an analogy core manager express or whatever controller we're using to set up the calls using Ip devices Now here in SDA we've got an underlay Think of that kind of like the internet, So we've got just switchers routers. T are dumb to a point And then we put an overlay on top of it.
So we build a whole network on top of it using VXLAN. Now it sounds complicated. It's just tunnels, But the intelligence is that can automatically be built to apply policy.
So we could have a policy on a SDA server, So we could have a policy on a controller and then apply the policy to the overlay, Not to the underlay. So, Rather than trying to manually configure access lists on individual devices, We apply the policy And this is the whole idea with intent-based networking. We apply a policy on the controller and then that's going to configure the devices with this overlay network. So from me to you, There might be 20 switches or 20 routers on the internet as an example, But when we set up an IP set tunnel, Logically, It's a hop from me to you Same kind of idea.
Here We've got a whole bunch of physical devices as the underlay we put an overlay on top of it Make sure you understand those concepts, Make sure that you understand REST bit of REST In the DevNet Exam. There's, Obviously a lot more about that. Make sure that you understand differences between Puppet Chef and Ansible, So Ansible as an example doesn't need an agent, It's an agent-less implementation, So I've created a whole Ansible course so I'll take some of that experience and knowledge and add it to my new CCNA course Make Sure that you understand that with Ansible it's kind of like with Python scripts, I can just SSH to the devices and make configuration changes on them, But with Puppet and Chef with Puppet, You can do some interesting things.
But the idea is, You run an agent on the device and you don't use SSH to talk to the agent using HTTPS so using a web based protocol rather than traditional SSH. So the idea is, Is your controller or your controlling device, Or your management device talks to the agent on the device that then configures the device, But with Ansible it's agent-less We're not running an agent or special software on the routers and switchers We're connecting directly to Them from a server Make sure you can also interpret JSON encoded data. I was quite surprised by that one, But make sure you spend a bit of time on automation and programmability, But don't get stuck on this topic. It's a new topic in the exam.
Don'T get stuck on it Notice security fundamentals has more information or is more important. It's 15% IP services is 10% Talking about traditional stuff, Like DHCP DNS, NTP, SNMP, So SNMP's been around for years. Do you understand which underlying protocols are used by these upper layer protocols? So which protocol does SNMP use? Is it UTP? Is it TCP Which protocol does SSH use TCP UTP, Make sure that you understand various protocols and the underlying protocols under them? So I mean I could list all of these topics. I mean my exam was very broad, Covered a whole bunch of topics. I think it was a very balanced exam.
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