Hours of Study per week

[TSQR]

Hello ALL:

I am an MCP, and just switched to Cisco, to study for my CCNA. I am doing Self Study(Cisco Study Kit and Routersim 2.0, alongwith Todd Lammle's Study guide, to study from), and taking a couple of 10 week apeice college,Cisco routing courses, at a local college.

I am in no hurry to test, but would like to test by the end of June 01 at the latest>

How many hours per week should I study to meet that deadline?

TIA,

Jess
TSQR1951@AOL.COM

 

[wybnormal]

If you are serious and will do the required labs.. figure 5-10 hours a week. This would be split between study time and lab time. The labs on OSPF, EIGRP, access-lists and such will suck up the time as you make mistakes and try to debug on your own. For my CCNA I put in over 40+ man hours. My score showed results with 2 questions missed.

Spend much time on the subnet masking and getting it cold.

Mike S

 

[TSQR]

THANKS MIKE FOR THE GOOD ADVICE. I will probably study a little more than ten hours per week. I am taking a college level, Introduciton to Cisco routers course, starting Jan 13, 01. I have the router sim 2.0 and cisco Study guide, Todd Lammles book, and a few other things.

Regards,

Jess

 

[wybnormal]

While the router sims are ok.. I have the switch sim right now myself, You must have hands on time. Either buy a pair of routers , three is better because one an be setup to a frame switch and you certainly will need to know frame config. Or get a package deal from someone like Mentor Labs where you rent time on their systems via telnet and they provide structured labs with the time. It's not very expensive to tighten up some loose areas. I bought my own routers which has paid off in many ways. A server for MS and Linux, a couple of workstations and laptop makes for a very complete lab. I use the laptop as my "remote" workstation. I got for a song and dance as it was fairly beatup and only a 150mhz but it takes so little room it's worth every penny. The servers and workstations are a KVM switch. I did break down and bought a used 1900 cisco switch in order to get VLANs. They are still somewhat pricy compared to the rest but worth it.

Mike S

 

[TimothyR]

I have recently passed my CCNA. One recommendation is to check out the brain dump and test sites like:

http://cramsession.brainbuzz.com/

http://www.boson.com/

The testing sites give you sample questions to practice with. I have spoke with some people who buy the full practice exams and love them and others who said that they did not help.

I took the CCNA 2.0 exam. Rumour has it that it was tougher than the 1.0 exam. More switching, less subnetting.

 

[wybnormal]

I took V2 for my CCNA and it's tougher in the sense there is less time, less questions but harder questions. Yes there is switching but I had several subnet questions. The best advice I can give is to get a shortcut method( I have one to offer) and when you sit down BEFORE the clock starts running, start doing your brain dump to the scrath paper for the subnetting and IOS model ( know all 7 layers)

Mike S

 

[TimothyR]

Very good point. Just because you sign up for a test at a specific time, you do not have to rush. Just as wybnormal states, take the first 10 min. or so and dump all the important things to the scratch paper that they give you before you even touch the test computer. This is not cheating; it is allowed. If you do not have the subnetting charts memorized, then remember them and dump them to the paper. That way you don't lose time and are less likely to make a mistake. Also, I absolutely agree with the last point that wybnormal made.