The Cisco CCNA Exam Today: What You Need to Know to Pass the First Time

Date: Jun 10, 2005

When preparing for Cisco's CCNA series of exams, it can sometimes be overwhelming trying to figure out what to study, how much to study, and where to begin. This article offers a brief overview of what is on the CCNA exams, and where you can look for the information you need.

Know them broad, know them deep, know how to apply them to different scenarios, and know them fast—"them" being the CCNA® exam topics. This article takes a look at those four key tips to passing the CCNA exam and how to best prepare.

Evolution of the CCNA Exam

For anyone teaching Cisco Systems® official courses, it's been obvious since CCNA's inception that the exam covered a lot of the same topics as the five-day ICND introductory course. The same holds true today, except now Cisco has two introductory courses—INTRO and ICND—for a total of nine days of class time. The CCNA exam has added more breadth while getting deeper on some topics such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), OSPF, NAT, and LAN trunking. As a result, the exam can cover not only many more topics possible but also and many more topics with greater coverage.

The original CCNA exam typically included questions that could be answered as long as you remembered all the facts about one particular topic. Today, the CCNA exam requires candidates to apply their knowledge of many areas to a unique scenario when answering a test question. For example, earlier exams might have asked a simple question about STP such as, "Which of the following are valid reasons a switch port would be in an STP forwarding state?" The answers might include definitions about how STP works, such as

It is a port on the root switch
It is a non-root switch's root port

Today's test might ask about STP and other topics via a scenario. For example, the question might show a sample network diagram of a set of interconnected switches, and a scenario such as, "Assume that switch 1's priority is 4387, and that switch 4's fa0/3 interface settles into a blocking state," ending with the question: Which of the following are true of this network? The answer options would include

Switch 3 interface fa0/2 will block
Switch 1 will become root
The cable between switches 1 and 2 must be a straight-through cable

Both questions require knowledge of how STP picks the root, and how each switch picks its root port, but the second style requires mastery of STP, as well as other topics, to answer correctly.

Several years ago, I seldom heard comments about people running out of time on the exam, with the one exception being when the candidate could not do subnetting quickly and confidently. Speed is now an issue for more CCNA candidates, for many reasons. The exams now have questions that require hands-on skills, with questions using a router/switch simulator. The simulator questions tend to intimidate candidates who've not had a chance to practice hands-on skills; these questions also require more application of knowledge and simply more time to work through.

Also, many people have heard comments from current CCNAs that they just memorized lists and facts from a book, took some practice tests, and passed. While that style of preparation may have worked in years past, today's scenario-style questions require more thorough understanding and review, with more time to answer those questions for some test takers. For example, a friend of mine who's in IT, but just getting into networking, recently took the CCNA exam, and from his scores, guessed that he missed 1 or 2 out of the 35 questions answered. But he ran out of time, not answering all the questions, and did not have a mathematical chance of passing the test. Simply put, the exam takes more time today, giving the better-prepared candidate an advantage.

Evolution of CCNA Preparation Strategies

So how does one study for the current CCNA exam, with broader and deeper topic coverage, simulated questions, more complex scenarios, and the added time pressure? Well, looking at it that way, the task sounds a bit scary. The flip side is that with the proper time, effort, and study, you can pass with confidence. Cisco Press offers many products to help candidates prepare, the CCNA Certification Library being the most comprehensive single tool for CCNA exam preparation. This library contains both the CCNA INTRO and CCNA ICND Exam Certification Guides.

The CCNA Certification Library has been designed for newbies to networking, as well as those with some experience. Newbies need a book that explains the basics before getting too deep. To pass CCNA, both the newbie and the experienced reader need a book that doesnt sacrifice technical details and depth. Earlier editions of my books were written assuming the reader had actually been to the ICND class, and just needed to be reminded of some details, so true newbies had difficulty at times. I changed the latest edition of the books, first adding a lot more basic information. I also reorganized material into much shorter chapters to help the reader from getting lost. At the same time, I expanded the technical depth and explanations in the book, even though earlier editions already had a great reputation for technical depth.

Interestingly, back in 1998 when I first spoke with Cisco Press about writing a CCNA book, we all agreed that it (and the entire Exam Certification Guide series) couldnt just be a book about how to pass the test that it had to be a book that helped you really learn networking, with additional features to help you remember and practice so you could readily pass. (The first few editions were probably too deep for people who only cared about passing the exam.) Today, the CCNA pendulum has swung back toward a deeper technical knowledge, and the CCNA Certification Library addresses that with many examples, detailed explanations of concepts and commands, and command output on the routers and switches.

So to prepare for the exam via self-study, you need to study using books like the CCNA Certification Library—something that covers the breadth and depth of exam topics with easily understood language, but without the compromise by being too light on technical details just to be perceived as an easy read. But just reading the books isn't enough. You need practice, plain and simple. An old and very loud coach of mine used to say that you dont practice doing it wrong, you practice doing it right. So for CCNA preparation, you need lots of practice that reflects the actual exam, including a CD-ROMbased test engine with simulation questions and the applied/scenario type of questions. The CD-ROM included with the CCNA Certification Library has more than 500 questions.

Another important practice element is hands-on skills. For that practice, the library includes an evaluation version of the Boson CCNA NetSim product, with several labs enabled for your use. The library also includes sample lab exercises for people who have their own lab equipment with which to practice. For those who want more simulation experience, Cisco Press publishes the Cisco CCNA Network Simulator from Boson Software, which delivers more than 100 CCNA labs and allows you to choose from 45 different router and switch models and design a network with up to 200 routers and switches.

The final element of practice is speed. There are a couple of key activities for getting faster. For starters, you must absolutely know how to subnet, quickly and with confidence. Questions in the Appendix of each Exam Certification Guide offer good practice. Answering all the questions repeatedly on the CCNA Certification Library CD-ROM testing engine helps, particularly with all the simulation and scenario questions in the Library's exam bank today. Another helpful exercise is to make a list of the tables from a section of the book and the types of information in the tables, wait a day and then try to re-create the tables from scratch. That forces you to memorize the facts and speeds recall on exam day.

While the CCNA Certification Library is designed to be a standalone package for CCNA preparation, many people feel the need to use multiple products for exam preparation. Cisco Press publishes a wide variety of other tools, including the CCNA Preparation Library, which contains two books based on the Cisco INTRO and ICND courses, and the CCNA Flash Cards and Exam Practice Pack, with more questions for additional practice. These tools provide plenty of opportunities to deepen your knowledge, hone your hands-on skills, and develop the confidence to pass CCNA. You'll also be well-positioned to start preparing for the CCNP®, CCIP®, CCSP™, and CCVP® exams.

To learn more about the CCNA exam and self-study products from Cisco Press, visit www.ciscopress.com/ccna.