CCNA Routing and Switching Certified

 

In my last blog post I wrote about getting the Network + Certification and the Security + Certification from Comptia and I noted that my goal was to get my CCNA in 2019. Well I did it! Last Friday I sat for the exam and I passed the second of two exams and am now Cisco Certified CCNA in Routing and Switching!

I started studying in December of 2018 for the ICND1 which is the first test in the series. I mainly used Nexgent's class with Jacob Hess teaching and the Cisco Press book. I really enjoyed Jacob's lessons as he brings much energy and passion to his teaching on network skills and makes it very interesting to learn some things that may not be the most exciting to most people. I say that as many nights I offered to read my girls a bedtime story from the Cisco Press ICND1 book which they quickly declined saying it was boring and would rather I read to them from one of their Magic Tree House books. If I were being honest sometimes I would rather read that too, but I digress. I also read the Cisco press book and occasionally looked up some material online to supplement some things I was having a more difficult time with. I scheduled the test mid January after doing many practice test and I was feeling confident about the exam.

On test day, I was nervous but I got to the testing center about an hour before the exam and I went ahead and took the exam. It was very cold in the room so I was glad I had my jacket. I quickly wrote down professor Messor's 7 second subnetting sheet on the provided whiteboard and started the exam. I did pretty well on the fist couple of questions, but then I had the first simulation and I was having trouble getting the windows to stay open and I kept accidentally closing the wrong window and to make a long story short I wasted too much time on the first sim question. I'm pretty sure I got it right and the rest of the sim questions weren't that bad. I had several questions that were confusing and some I'd never seen before and by the end of the exam I was pretty sure I had failed it. I clicked next and it read you passed! I was elated, I'm not sure how but I passed scoring an 874 which isn't bad. 

I immediately started studying for the second test using Nexgent's videos, however this set had Rob Riker as the presenter. Rob is a very smart guy with a couple of CCIE's, however he didn't have as much energy and some of the videos were kind of long so I was losing interest. I went ahead and signed up for CBT Nuggets and Jeremy brought back the excitement to my studies. I really enjoyed his videos and learned allot in the process. I went back and finished Nexgent's videos and started doing some practice test but I was only earning in the 70's even though I thought I was comfortable with the material. I did some research and many people recommended David Brombel videos on Udemy and they were running a special on it so I went ahead and did it. I liked his videos as well, but what I think really helped were his labs that are built into the course. I got very used to entering show commands and looking at outputs trying to troubleshoot issues.

I went ahead and signed up for the test on March 22nd and as the day approached I got pretty nervous. I called my brother who is a CCIE too and he quizzed me on some things and told me he thought I was ready for the test. I took the test and the sim questions were easy, I felt very confident I passed it and I did scoring an 829. It wasn't as good as I thought I did but I passed, meeting my goal of obtaining a CCNA in 2019. 

What next? Well I haven't decided as of yet, but there is a new version of ITIL out now and as an ITIL expert I'll need to take the bridge exam to keep my certification current.

 - Brian Neal Bond