Just passed my CCNA on the first attempt

:D I just passed my ccna on the first try it was the 640-607 test which is now being replaced by the 640-801, but I thought that it might be helpful for some to see what I used to study. I taught myself I really havent had any contact with anybody who has any sort of knowledge in this field except for an intro to networking class in college. Subnetting I found to be very simply explained at http://vanier.mjcatholic.ca/~clapoin...-explained.htm
This doesnt include every aspect of ip addressing that you need to know but i found it to be an excellent starting point. I hate to suggest other discussion forums but I found the posts at http://www.techexams.net/index.shtml to be very helpful. By far the best resource was Celtic Rover at http://www.celticrover.com/tig/ccna/ccnareviews.asp I found this to be very helpful and if you can successfully pass the exam practice questions on this site than you will do just fine on the exam. I also thought that http://users.froggy.com.au/djjit/tips.html was very helpful to as it helped me to get an idea of what things I had forgotten to cover. My router sim was boson which I thought wasnt of very good quality but allowed me to practice enough to do well on the router sims on the test. For text books i would have to recomend Todd Lammle and Sean Odom's book CCNA exam notes. I also thought that Chiarella's book CCNA self-study guide was well written also and i would recommend that it be read before Todd Lammles book as his was a little bit more technical. To have access to Cisco's exam study information was helpful also as a supplement to what the study guides dont cover well. I would recommend the ccna certification for anyone interested in networking as i learned an enormous amount of stuff that I had always wondered about. :cool:

Well... Congrats! It's always a nice feeling to pass certification exams IMHO.

So what's next on your list of certs?

Congrats from me also. I would love to get some certs, I just haven't ever pursued it. I think if I did it I would have to take a class, because I hate to read and I can't just go out and by a book, read it, then take a test. I have to experience things. Congratulations again and best of luck on your future endeavors.

I really dont know what cert I am going for next I am probably going to look for a different job first and I also have some other projects that I have been tinkering with that I have to finish first. I am thinking about it though and maybe i will go for my mcse or maybe another one of cisco's certs I am not really sure. Has anyone ever heard of someone going for their mcse without taking a class and just studying for it themselves? Does anyone have any good ideas for certs to get that would compliment my ccna?

The MCSE can be passed without the expensive courses to compliment them. I recommend the ExamCram books for the MCSE, I've found them to be most helpful in passing the MCSE exams.

Half.com has got some great prices for these books, in most cases you can pick up the ExamCram books for under 20 bucks! I'm not sure about that for the 2003 cert books...but for the 2000 certs that is the case.

all_smiles,

Congratz man.. Currently i'm following some courses to get that cert too.

Was it hard ?

It was hard and I really studied my a$$ off but that is because I really didnt have much knowledge in this area, I have a CS degree but most of my classes and experience was in programming. When I sat down to take the test I really wasnt sure how I would do I had all of the book learning stuff down pat and that exam sims werent that hard it was just some of those questions that really made you think. That hurt me because sometimes I like to skim the question hit the answer and move on and that is not the thing to do on this test. Like I said before if you can do pretty well on the celtic rover practice tests and sims then you wont have a problem on the test.