I've recently passed the ccna exam, And I wanted to share what I've learned with you. Specifically. I want you to know what to expect the morning of the exam, And I also want you to be prepared for the types of topics that you'll see on the exam and then, Lastly, We're going to go over some ways that t're going to try to stump. You and how you can get past them. Let's dive in at the end of february, Cisco changed the ccna curriculum by eliminating the specialty certifications such as ccna wireless and ccna security, And t rolled that information into the 200 301 ccna exam.
So I want to let you know what to expect on the morning of the exam, So you can be prepared and not get hung up any details and panic at the last moment as you're trying to start the exam due to the pandemic. You'Re now able to go in schedule and take the exam online. When you sign up for the exam, You don't do it through cisco. You'Ve got to go to pearsonview as you're scheduling the exam. One of the options you have is to test your system, Which I would recommend it's a basic test that goes through verifies that the resources on your machine will support the software that is required to take the test and to monitor you, And it's also going to Verify that your webcam webcam's working and the audio is working and it's just a minor test.
So after actually scheduling and making payment, You will receive two confirmation: emails, One of them for payment, One of them for the actual exam. In that, It's going to have the instructions that you need to follow on the morning of the exam. What t recommend - and I highly follow that up with a second - is that you log in 30 minutes prior to your exam time, Start sign in, And then you have to go through a few preliminary steps. One of them is verifying your system again. This time it takes it a step further and it's looking for applications that may be running in the background, So everything must be closed down.
I did have a problem where I had a snagit application that was running in the background and I couldn't find where to kill it. So I just went in and uninstalled the application, As I was running out of time, Whatever is required. If you are familiar with your machine and and can figure out when all applications are definitely not running, Even in the background do that ahead of time, It's a headache you won't have to worry about after you go through those first few steps, Your proctor is going To contact you via chat, T will let you know t're going to send you a text, The text that t send. You contains a link, And that link is where you upload all of the photos t ask you to take.
So t ask you to take your phone: do a headshot, Take a close-up photo of your identification and then a four-way shot of your work area. Then you upload them using the link t supply. If t don't like any of them, T will ask you to upload them again, Once that's complete and you're just about ready to take the exam, The proctor is going to ask you to lift up either your webcam if it's separate or your laptop whatever.
Whatever your camera is attached to, And you will have to do a 360 degree pan of the room to ensure nobody else is in there. Nothing funny is going on and to ensure that your cell phone is there in case. T need to contact you, But it is physically out of your reach during the exam. So it was a little strange having to take pictures of everything and pan around the room, Knowing that t're loading software on that's reading me, There's actually someone sitting there looking at me through my camera, So it was a little uncomfortable at first, But I got over It - and I do understand it - it's very important for cisco to retain the integrity of the certification and not having a proctor standing there reading you there's a million different ways to cheat, So t do take many many precautions to ensure that everything is on the up And up there is a brief tutorial that you'll go through before the exam starts. That generally shows you how to answer questions and it's very low level. I think everyone understands how to answer multiple choice and drag and drop, But the important thing is at the end of the exam on the last page, Where it shows your score you're going to celebrate.
When you see that score, Don't forget at the bottom there's a button that says end exam and if you don't click that button, You never took the exam, So you're going to want to make sure you do that as well. Now, Let's talk about some of the topics you should expect to see on the exam. Major points are going to be wireless and network security. Those were both covered under separate specialty, Certifications previously, But now a lot of that information has been rolled in here. So for wireless you're going to want to make sure you know the all the basic things about ssids, What non-overlapping channels would be used with 24 gigahertz you're also going to want to know the different types of access points? What modes? A lightweight access point can be put in also wireless security, You're going to need to know everything from wep to wpa3.
As far as the protocols used for encryption and the the details of those, The last thing in in wireless that you're really going to need to know is wireless lan controllers, And this is new to the ccna exam. This time around, You will need to know how t communicate with access points. What what jobs? The wireless lan controller, Does versus what jobs? The access point does and you'll also need to know how to configure a wireless lan using the wireless lan controller, And that is something I will say that the questions that I had on the exam would have been impossible for me to absolutely know the answer. Unless I had done the lab in cisco packet tracer, So there are some questions that t expect your level of knowledge to be that of experienced in configuring it another major area is routing. What t like to do is make sure that you understand how routers make routing decisions that you understand the concept of the longest matching prefix in the route table is the one that wins.
Another thing you need to be careful of. That is, If you see a question and and you're asked to choose, And you select that longest matching prefix, You want to make sure that the destination address t're, Using as an example, Actually is a part of what is defined by that route, Because t will go Either way there, T will give you one where, The destination does fall in that range and t will give you another one where it may not fall in that longest range and the correct answer won't be the longest prefix match, But probably the one just below That another major point for routing is administrative distances. You will see multiple questions on administrative distances, It's imperative that you have those memorized and you know which one is preferred over another, Including static and connected routes, Not just the routing protocols.
As far as routing protocols, Eigrp ospf isis and rip at a minim bgp would also be good to know. Routing is obviously a a major point of cisco, Ccna and routing in general, So t will cover that heavily and you are going to see multiple questions on those topics so do be prepared. The latest kid on the block is network automation, And this general category is something that has not been on the ccna exam before. So you will want to review these carefully and t will want you to know about network controllers. I would say, Really concentrate on dna center you're going to want to know the general differences between traditional versus controller-based networking and the separation of the data plane and the control plane.
You'll need to be able to look at json output and tell whether or not the syntax is correct or not, Or be able to tell what type of value an item is based on the output rest apis will also definitely be covered there. Intent based networking is also going to be covered and you'll need to understand the concepts of underlay overlay and vxlans. All of these topics I mentioned so far, Are actually published in a list by cisco and you can find that out there on the web.
One thing you need to be aware of is that, Although the majority of the topics in that list will show up as test questions on the exam, That doesn't mean that all of the exam questions come from that list, So it was rumored that there are topics, Not on the list that are on the exam things such as eigrp, Vlan, Trunking protocol, The difference between radius and tacac servers, And I'm just here to let you know that the it's not a rumor, It is true. All of those topics were on the ccna exam and there were multiple questions on those topics. None of those are in the official cisco blueprint. So you do need to be aware that there there are things that may be covered that are not in cisco's official list and to take that list, Not necessarily with a grain of salt, But realize that it is only a partial sum of everything that you're going To see on that exam, Another quick topic that that caught me by surprise was passwords. Now there isn't anything, That's easier than passwords, Yet somehow cisco found a way to make these questions difficult.
So I would recommend that you fully understand the difference between manually entering a password or a secret via the command line versus pasting in a password or a secret that was already previously encrypted. There's there's a a distinct difference that t want you to be aware of. So I would look into that as well. Again, Passwords are very simple: leave it to cisco to find a difficult way to ask something about it.
The last thing here is that cisco is definitely going to try to stump you with some questions . I believe that perhaps the point is: nobody gets a hundred percent on my exam that that may be the philosophy behind it, But you need to expect that there there may be a question or two that pop up on this exam that seem like t. T could be from the field of nuclear physics rather than routing, And switching that is is to be expected. So when you do see something like this, It's it's not a moment of panic.
Look at it if it's you've never seen it before absolutely you've got two choices. You can either go ahead and try to apply the art of test taking judo and eliminate a couple of the answers. Then you're only doing a 50 guess or you could just say in the back of your mind, I have never seen or heard of this before the answers be and move on. If you do that, You save lots of valuable time.
So my point behind this is cisco: purposely puts questions on there that are designed to grab you right in the gut and make you panic and make you think. I haven't. I'Ve studied everything wrong and that's not the case.
T'Ve got some of these sprinkled in there and you don't need to worry or panic about them, There's not enough that are going to make an impact overall if you've got a solid, Steady plan and you've applied yourself correctly, You're not going to have a problem passing This exam and you don't need to worry about those haha gotcha questions, But I do want you to be aware that t will. T will show up - and I say, There's there's those two schools of thought either actually give it the old college try or just and move on b c, Whatever move, Whatever the most common answer, Seems to be click that move on. So my overall view of the ccna exam is that in general I would call it a fair exam. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's easy would never say that, But it is fair. Now some of you are saying but you've been teaching it for 12 years and and you have all this experience - and I agree there - there's probably some bias there.
So what if you haven't already, I would highly recommend you check out a article from one of our students. S name is nathan nicely and he explains his experience going from zero to engineer in ever so slightly over three months. He came into the program with no experience in the field at all and in a little over three months he was certified and employed in the it industry.
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