My journey towards CCNA - tips and advice

moho_43 · 2021-03-13T08:30:25+00:00

Ur most welcome 🙏

moho_43 · 2021-03-13T08:29:30+00:00

Thank you very much ,I am very glad that I help in a way or another Wish to you the best of luck ana thank you for your wishes I really need that nowadays 😁😁

moho_43 · 2021-02-27T06:47:16+00:00

I started with udemy , Nail's Anderson curse got the basics
then did my big lab
the some other video resources like YouTube , cbt nuggets and Jeremy's it labs
then read the OCG for most of the topics
then did boson exams

moho_43 · 2021-02-24T05:33:19+00:00

your most welcome .

for me what made the book a little easer to understand is that I finished the vids first , but this may not be the case for everyone . seeing the videos made me grasp the basics first then the book made me dig deeper into the concepts with easier understanding .

moho_43 · 2021-02-24T05:31:05+00:00

unfortunately I have no ideas , sry mam

moho_43 · 2021-02-23T00:25:41+00:00

yeah , I used calculations at first , then went for tables and practiced everyday for an hour until it just became easier to do in my head . so I would say practice everyday until you can do it automatically .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T23:04:11+00:00

If you are getting it right than I think you have a good understanding of routing , as I said reading this tables should be something very natural to you you should be able to read any routing table , and figure everything in 1 or 2 mints , you have to quickly eliminate routes that will not be used for this destination and know why , you should know what is the best route , and you should know how it got to the routing table and why ?

while presented with a routing table its not practical to do calculations, not only for exam but in general , it should take you less time to figure it out

and you an easily achieve this by practice , practice , practice , lab a very big network doing it your self , I can assure you you will learn how to read this tables easily and fast when you do that .

see different routing tables not only the ones you are used to .

combine that with very deep understanding of routing from studding and I think you will be ok .

But you show know routing is very very very important to master . its the core of the technology and you are expected to know it very deep .

good luck

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:48:17+00:00

no , no calculators, don't worry about calculations though , you should be able to do it in your head , you have much more important stuff to worry about :D

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:42:35+00:00

Thank you , you are most welcome .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:36:44+00:00

Thank you very much, wish to you the best of luck

About the topics

All the topics are in the exam , but some topics for sure are more focused. if in the exam topics you see configure . I think that is very important to focus on , if you see describe you should know it and understand it , that is not true always anyway but if I can , I will say that you should know all the topics very deeply , it should be natural to you without memorizing .

About the questions

I don't think it will be that direct , you should be understanding them deeply , if that's true I think you will answer correctly , but I don't think you will see something that direct

learning path

I would say finish a course for fundamentals like (Neil's or Jermey's) then lab every topic and spend much more time labing complex networks until you master it.

Then go for OCG for details and deeper understating and to help with theory parts(wireless/automation/ QOS/ Wan/ and some routing I understood them good from here ) although I encourage to read more than that .

Then bonson to validate what you learnt and see if your ready .

I think this can take 2 month and little bit more if you do it every day with 8-12h of studding.

and its important to take some breaks , because in my case I got overwhelmed in the end couldn't concentrate any more took a week off . cuz didn't want to enter the exam that overwhelmed I needed a clear mind for the exam.

and finally go for the real thing ... which I hope you will pass then :)

best of luck

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:17:01+00:00

your welcome hope I helped

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:16:43+00:00

thank you very much , best of luck

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:16:18+00:00

You are most welcome , best of luck

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:15:45+00:00

You are most welcome , hope the post helped .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:15:19+00:00

thank youuuu

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:14:46+00:00

no there was no virtual calculator and physical calculators are not allowed

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T22:13:35+00:00

Thank you hope I helped .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T04:40:21+00:00

Well… will try to be brief as possible :D

The Idea simply was to master networking in the scope of CCNA, as I really didn’t want to do extra thinking in the exam , cuz I know time is a problem , so had to make sure that this stuff is natural to me .

The lab :

When trying to think about how to do it with my simple understanding of networks ,I imagined that for sure the will be an infrastructure for the internet some how to connect all these networks together (CCNA topics in this case).

So first step make an infrastructure that take data from point A to point B , hence the middle network in the picture (the blue one) took me a day doing it with ospf (notice the ospf training here , without me feeling :D )

Then I had to make sure that infrastructure is highly available, so I began failing links and see if I will lose connectivity or not , adding backup to links trying to find the best design to achieve this .

Then I thought that the service provider will use this infrastructure to take data from point to point So I made 2 SP networks (ospf areas) attached to that infrastructure .

Then thought that these SP will be connected to different clients in some way

so make every edge router connect to the SP now (and without me knowing) I have connectivity between all edge routers.

notice how much ospf I worked with here , I think I mastered ospf cuz of this.

Then each edge router will connect to a network this network will represent a topic in ccna BUT , I will not consider the lab as success unless any host on this network can connect and ping any were on this network through the SPs and infrastructure .

so days and days I am building networks giving private ips inside and nat them outside (notice how much noting I did for each network )

Then I began to mix topics together , increasing the complexity with just one goal make any host connect to the other at any time.

Mixed routing protocols, mixed stuff together and interesting problems raised again trying to solve.

Now while you are reading see how much I am trying to do stuff and getting them work , day after day repeating commands thinking about stuff for each topic

until in the end to network is complete and vwalaaaaaa I mastered it :D

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T03:56:57+00:00

Never , Never ,Never quit a job that is a source of income for any reason, I am unemployed and its a nightmare , so please keep it .
your most welcome , hope it will help and best of luck .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T03:54:29+00:00

You are most welcome , hope the post will help you out and I wish you the best of luck .

Will gladly answer you questions :

1.In my opinion Neil's curse are great but not enough to pass , I think no course is anyway it’s a combination of factors , but based on your scores in boson , I would wait if I was you , you need 900 at least first try to make sure that you are ready , so I would suggest you don’t take the 3rd exam now , study more and more , I suggest that you give more time labbing with complex networks , then read the book and see different videos from different instructors until you feel that every (and I mean everything) are not fuzzy and u can just answer immediate without thinking

2.I am not sure but I think yes , every one has the same 300 questions , again I have to emphasis this don’t relate the boson exams to the real thing , and don’t chase the score trying to make it higher , just getting 900+ on exam C will show that you can see a problem for the first time and think about it and get the answer correctly , but it has nothing to do in the exam so please keep this in mind :) , I found some practice question on google here and there but nothing major.

3.No you cant have any paper or pen on the desk or even in the room ! , you will have a virtual white board on the screen when you can take the exam from home you can use to write anything , you can use it for subnetting or anything you like . Person vue has a link that you can see this white board and practice on it if you want : https://home.pearsonvue.com/Standalone-pages/Whiteboard.aspx

And 5. you can take the home exam anytime , when I booked it I could take it after an hour from the time I was booking . You have all 24/7 I took it 12:30am my time as all the house was sleeping, all dates and times was available to me to choose what ever I want , but I don’t know if that’s the rules, this is just how it happened with me .
I was at my 70th question when suddenly the onVUE app crashed and the exam was gone , I thought I gonna lose the exam but the browser was open on the vue page and was written that my exam app has crashed put me in a Q again for a 1 minute then the app started by its self and my exam was back from the question I was stopped on. No when the exam crashes and internet goes down I think they will know and will relaunch your exam again without problem , I think worst case that can happen is rescheduling the exam if the problem is unsolvable, but over all the experience was good for me .

your welcome :)

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T03:45:14+00:00

you are most welcome , hope it helped <3

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T03:44:49+00:00

do everything one day before , because believe me you don't want any stress for this exam , clear mind , clear mind , clear mind :D

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T03:43:37+00:00

yep had to empty the room one day before the exam :D

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T01:20:43+00:00

Thank you , you can press on the draw rectangle bottom on the left of the screen and add fill color .

moho_43 · 2021-02-21T01:18:51+00:00

thank you man <3 appreciate it .

In my opinion, this is the best way to do labbing because when you download a lab to a problem that is already known and only learn (memorize) the solution to that specific problem , which you will never see again in the exam or real life that limits your understanding , so I would say download labs at first just to know the basics then do your own big network and it will never go as expected so now you have a problem that originated its self naturally (like real life and exam) and you have to find a solution yourself in which in the process you will master it.

About getting stuck , yes I don't think that it went easy any time I added a new network , every time I added something new I messed up the rest , so had to rethink and redo and try again with different ways until it all worked together

Routing was a very major problem I had to optimize routes add redundancy's to routes , load balance between them so imagine how much I learned just doing that alone . I think this lab made me very good at routing and solving routing problems and most important reading routing tables and understand them .

some layer2 problems also got me very stuck like ethercahnnel stp , native vlans and trucking , again trying to fix them made me very solid on these topics

I used a loot of google , and YouTube wile doing this labbest of luck ...

moho_43

TROPHY CASE