Doing a CCNA with a half hearted attitude?

stewski said:
Oh OK, now instead of simply dismissing all points as irrelevant you're picking one and saying no one agrees. :)

In summary I thought the CCNA was a piece of cake and I scored accordingly.

Those outside the Uni (external students) past it after a couple of weeks training and much of it is putting words in boxes based on their category/meaning, a simple language exercise. Probably part of the multichoice mentality that pervades a number of IT quals.

Frankly my degree I hold in higher regard than the "Company Certified" qualifications that mad up some chunks of it.

Still if you renewed 3 times, to each their own...
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Wow, you must be very clever if you genuinely found the CCNA a piece of cake. Quite an ostentatious boast. I can't recall ANY of my CCNA exams being putting words in boxes, weird.Kinda like comparing Draytek with Cisco lol, weird?
 
newbiejim said:
Wow, you must be very clever if you genuinely found the CCNA a piece of cake. Quite an ostentatious boast. I can't recall ANY of my CCNA exams being putting words in boxes, weird.Kinda like comparing Draytek with Cisco lol, weird?
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And the externals passing in 2 weeks, were they all very clever too?

And who compared draytek with cisco? Sorry did I question your scripture without being high enough in your church?
 
CCNA in two week?! Really??

Bootcamp courses are not the best, there is so much matirial in ICND1 alone which they probably didn't have time to drill down in to you properly before starting icnd2 lol

CCNA is really for people who know the spectrum of topics already, new people are always better starting with ICND1 and then 2, so they can digest it properly

Sounds like some of these people were braindumping a lot of info.

Icnd1 to a newbie would take them by surprise and quite a lot of the time fail their first ever Cisco exam, because of the format, they didn't know they had sims, time running out etc, its quite common
 
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Bootcamp wouldn't be my choice either, but it was done by people with a background. As I said I'd been working in IT for 15 years before starting the course and I knew my way around an rfc or two.

Yes timed sims can be high pressure, but unlike CCNP they're fairly routine/drilled stuff.
 
FoxEye said:
Is there anything genuinely exciting in the IT sphere? I can't say I've met anyone that was genuinely excited about their job after more than a couple months doing it :p

Jumping for joy is probably an unrealistic expectation for any job :p
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Depends on the client doesn't it. The actual work itself is unlikely to be exciting but you can absolutely derive enjoyment from the end result or the people on your team.
 
DJMK4 said:
There are some chapters or areas which I loath. I'm on the 2nd exam (switch) of CCNP at the moment and one of my pet peeves is spanning tree, get and can work fine with it but need to brush up more, routing side I'm OK with still need to practise bgp stuff and when I get some in work, fine with ospf, eigrp and most other stuff.

I love networking, iv been a network engineer and still enjoy the job, there is loads more to networking than Cisco but I do love Cisco, saying that I hate revision a lot of the time as its time consuming

I have to do it some chunks, its all been self learnt, although I was working with it prior to anyway. But still

I used CBT nuggets videos, I have watched them, labbed them in gns3, I have all the lab ready to spin up through each scenario through icnd1 and 2 and ccnp route. Watch videos, lab, read online, read book, lab , practise questions

I'm 45% way through videos on switch exam for CCNP but sometimes it's hard to motivate myself, I will get a pattern going though hopefully
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Learn spanning tree to get through the exam, then realise it's terrible and use VXLAN in every opportunity you get.
 
You're not a fan of this then?
I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.
A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.
A tree that must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.
First, the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.
Least-cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree, these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me,
Then bridges find a spanning tree.
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stewski said:
Bootcamp wouldn't be my choice either, but it was done by people with a background. As I said I'd been working in IT for 15 years before starting the course and I knew my way around an rfc or two.

Yes timed sims can be high pressure, but unlike CCNP they're fairly routine/drilled stuff.
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But they're not timed SIMS in the exam, you have a finite amount of time to do the whole exam. I`m sure that's just a mistake tho for one who found the exams a piece of cake :)
 
I looked in to doing the ccna years ago and downloaded some course work. Even with the existing knowledge of freebsd pf and iptables I found it difficult. Cisco switching is relatively easy it's the wan stuff that is complicated, well last I looked. Most wan devices,non cisco, come with a nice web interface and its logical. Cisco I find more confusing to work with.
 
newbiejim said:
But they're not timed SIMS in the exam, you have a finite amount of time to do the whole exam. I`m sure that's just a mistake tho for one who found the exams a piece of cake :)
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There is an exam timer while you are doing a sim, I must have really touched a nerve detracting from the beloved Cisco for this level of nitpick?
 
I'd expect CCNA to be a piece of cake if I'd worked in the field for 15 years. I'm due to take mine this year and the mock tests I'm doing are a lot easier than I thought, and from people I've spoke to who've done it (our IT trainers who work for us) it's not that challenging.
 
Ayahuasca said:
I'd expect CCNA to be a piece of cake if I'd worked in the field for 15 years. I'm due to take mine this year and the mock tests I'm doing are a lot easier than I thought, and from people I've spoke to who've done it (our IT trainers who work for us) it's not that challenging.
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Maybe you are more intelligent than I (genuinely), however there is a lot to learn and remember IF done properly, I know more than a few guys who have "worked in the field" for years and have failed spectacularly, not that they aren't smart enough, just that they didn't prepare for the actual exam. I know personally one guy who failed twice but is in a very good role in networking and is far from stupid.
 
It will be hard work, doing it with a half hearted attitude as there is a lot of information to take in and retain. Probably 75% from my group either dropped out or deferred.

I did the CCNA via the OU, follows the same syllabus but the testing is more thorough and the final exam is a written rather than multiple guess. Technically I haven't passed as I still need to do the ICND1/2 exams in order to get the proper paperwork. Need to get round to that at some point, maybe.

Although I didn't find the content particularly hard, trying to find time among work/family life was.
 
I know the feeling. I've just thrown away a little over a grand to do a sql server course.

I'm currently on day 4 of five. The first three days were a waste. As I was familiar with everything that was covered. I don't completely regret taking up the course as the are a couple of modules that I would like to review.

Go forward though I can easily say that I will be going back to my self studies.
 
newbiejim said:
LOL, nice try.Piece of cake really.
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This is desperate now, as other have said, with background it's not that challenging, especially when you have all the time in the world to study.

Is it really so hard to take some criticism of the CCNA? It's not as if I've said it's not worth doing even. I just pointed out some flaws as I see them, your counter just seems to be about me which is a bit boring to be honest.
 
stewski said:
This is desperate now, as other have said, with background it's not that challenging, especially when you have all the time in the world to study.

Is it really so hard to take some criticism of the CCNA? It's not as if I've said it's not worth doing even. I just pointed out some flaws as I see them, your counter just seems to be about me which is a bit boring to be honest.
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Has anyone who has sat the actual exam said that?
 
Coming up on next hour's episode of "jsmoke - internet diary": "I can't decide what to have for lunch. Should I wear the red jacket, or the black one? Oh won't the internet tell me what to do!"
 
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