CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, 2nd Edition - Hardcover

Odom, Wendell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1587201828 ISBN 13: 9781587201820

Publisher: Cisco Systems, 2007

Synopsis

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide

Second Edition

 

• Master ICND1 640-822 exam topics with the official study guide
• Assess your knowledge with chapter-opening quizzes
• Review key concepts with Exam Preparation Tasks
• Practice with hundreds of exam questions on the CD-ROM

 

Wendell Odom, CCIE® No. 1624

 

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, is a best of breed Cisco® exam study guide that focuses specifically on the objectives for the CCENT™ and CCNA® ICND1 exam. This fully updated edition presents complete reviews and a more challenging and realistic exam preparation experience.

 

Senior instructor and best-selling author Wendell Odom shares preparation hints and test-taking tips, helping you identify areas of weakness and improve both your conceptual knowledge and hands-on skills. The material is presented in a concise manner, focused on increasing your understanding of exam topics and preparing you for the numerous challenges the exams present.

 

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, presents you with an organized test preparation routine through the use of proven series elements and techniques. “Do I Know This Already?” quizzes open each chapter and allow you to decide how much time you need to spend on each section. Chapter-ending Exam Preparation Tasks sections help you drill on key concepts you must know thoroughly and help increase your speed in answering questions, a difficult hurdle many exam candidates face on the new exams. A Final Preparation chapter guides you through tools and resources to help you craft your final study plan. Special troubleshooting sections help you master the complex scenarios you will face on the exam.

 

The companion CD-ROM contains a powerful testing engine that allows you to focus on individual topic areas or take complete, timed exams. The assessment engine also tracks your performance and provides feedback on a chapter-by-chapter basis, presenting question-by-question remediation to the text. The bonus DVD contains more than

60 minutes of personal video mentoring from the author focused mainly on bringing difficult subnetting concepts to life.

 

Well-regarded for its level of detail, assessment features, and challenging practice questions, this book provides you with more detailed information and more realistic practice exercises than any other CCNA study guide, enabling you to succeed on the exam the first time.

 

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, is part of a recommended learning path from Cisco that includes simulation and hands-on training from authorized Cisco Learning Partners and self-study products from Cisco Press. To find out more about instructor-led training, e-learning, and hands-on instruction offered by authorized Cisco Learning Partners worldwide, please visit www.cisco.com/go/authorizedtraining.

 

Wendell Odom, CCIE® No. 1624, has been in the networking industry since 1981. He currently teaches QoS, MPLS, and CCNA courses for Skyline Advanced Technology Services (www.skyline-ats.com). Wendell has worked as a network engineer, consultant, systems engineer, and instructor and course developer, and has taught authorized Cisco courses for the majority of the last 14 years.

 

The official study guide helps you master all the topics on the CCENT and CCNA ICND1 exam, including

• TCP/IP and OSI networking models
• Operating Cisco routers and LAN switches
• Ethernet switch configuration and troubleshooting

• Wireless LANs
• IP addressing and subnetting
• Routing protocols
• Router configuration and troubleshooting
• Network Security
• WAN concepts and configuration

 

Companion CD-ROM

The CD-ROM contains an electronic copy of the book and 200 practice questions for the ICND1 and full CCNA exams, including simulation and testlet questions, all available in study mode and test mode.

 

BONUS DVD

The DVD contains more than 60 minutes of personal instruction from the author.

 

This volume is part of the Exam Certification Guide Series from Cisco Press®. Books in this series provide officially developed exam preparation materials that offer assessment, review, and practice to help Cisco Career Certification candidates identify weaknesses, concentrate their study efforts, and enhance their confidence as exam day nears.

 

Category: Cisco Press–Cisco Certification

Covers: CCENT and CCNA ICND1 Exam 640-822

About this title

About the Author:

Wendell Odom, CCIE No. 1624, has been in the networking industry since 1981. He currently teaches QoS, MPLS, and CCNA courses for Skyline Advanced Technology Services  http://www.skyline-ats.com). He has also worked as a network engineer, consultant, systems engineer, instructor, and course developer. He is the author of all previous editions of the

CCNA Exam Certification Guide, as well as theCisco QOS Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, Computer Networking First-Step,CCIE Routing and Switching Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, and CCNA Video Mentor–all from Cisco Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide,

CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition

Introduction

Congratulations! If you're reading this Introduction, you've probably already decided to go for your Cisco certification. If you want to succeed as a technical person in the networking industry, you need to know Cisco. Cisco has a ridiculously high market share in the router and switch marketplace—more than 80 percent in some markets. In many geographies and markets around the world, networking equals Cisco. If you want to be taken seriously as a network engineer, Cisco certification makes sense.

Historically speaking, the first entry-level Cisco certification has been the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification, first offered in 1998. The first three versions of the CCNA certification (1998, 2000, and 2002) required that you pass a single exam to become certified. However, over time, the exam kept growing, both in the amount of material covered and the difficulty level of the questions. So, for the fourth major revision of the exams, announced in 2003, Cisco continued with a single certification (CCNA) but offered two certification options: a single exam option and a two-exam option. The two-exam option allowed people to study roughly half the material and then take and pass one exam before moving on to the next.

Cisco announced changes to the CCNA certification and exams in June 2007. This announcement includes many changes; here are the most notable:

• The exams collectively cover a broader range of topics.

• The exams increase the focus on proving the test taker's skills (as compared with just testing knowledge).

• Cisco created a new entry-level certification: Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT).

For the current certifications, announced in June 2007, Cisco created the ICND1 (640-822) and ICND2 (640-816) exams, along with the CCNA (640-802) exam. To become CCNA certified, you can pass both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams, or just the CCNA exam. The CCNA exam simply covers all the topics on the ICND1 and ICND2 exams, giving you two options for gaining your CCNA certification. The two-exam path gives people with less experience a chance to study for a smaller set of topics at one time. The one-exam option provides a more cost-effective certification path for those who want to prepare for all the topics at once.

Although the two-exam option is useful for some certification candidates, Cisco designed the ICND1 exam with a much more important goal in mind. The CCNA certification grew to the point that it tested knowledge and skills beyond what an entry-level network technician would need. Cisco needed a certification that better reflected the skills required for entry-level networking jobs. So Cisco designed its Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices 1 (ICND1) course, and the corresponding ICND1 640-822 exam, to include the knowledge and skills most needed by an entry-level technician in a small Enterprise network. And so that you can prove that you have the skills required for those entry-level jobs, Cisco created a new certification, CCENT.

Figure I-1 shows the basic organization of the certifications and the exams used to get your CCENT and CCNA certifications. (Note that there is no separate certification for passing the ICND2 exam.)

Figure I-1
Cisco Entry-Level Certifications and Exams

As you can see, although you can obtain the CCENT certification by taking the ICND1 exam, you do not have to be CCENT certified before getting your CCNA certification. You can choose to take just the CCNA exam and bypass the CCENT certification.

The ICND1 and ICND2 exams cover different sets of topics, with a minor amount of overlap. For example, ICND1 covers IP addressing and subnetting, and ICND2 covers a more complicated use of subnetting called variable-length subnet masking (VLSM). Therefore, ICND2 must then cover subnetting to some degree. The CCNA exam covers all the topics covered on both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams.

Although the popularity of the CCENT certification cannot be measured until a few years have passed, certainly the Cisco CCNA is the most popular entry-level networking certification program. A CCNA certification proves that you have a firm foundation in the most important components of the Cisco product line—routers and switches. It also proves that you have broad knowledge of protocols and networking technologies.

Format of the CCNA Exams

The ICND1, ICND2, and CCNA exams all follow the same general format. When you get to the testing center and check in, the proctor gives you some general instructions and then takes you into a quiet room containing a PC. When you're at the PC, you have a few things to do before the timer starts on your exam. For instance, you can take a sample quiz to get accustomed to the PC and the testing engine. Anyone who has user-level skills in getting around a PC should have no problems with the testing environment. Additionally, Chapter 18, "Final Preparation," points to a Cisco website where you can see a demo of Cisco's actual test engine.

When you start the exam, you are asked a series of questions. You answer them and then move on to the next question. The exam engine does not let you go back and change your answer. Yes, it's true. When you move on to the next question, that's it for the preceding question.

The exam questions can be in one of the following formats:

• Multiple choice (MC)

• Testlet

• Drag-and-drop (DND)

• Simulated lab (sim)

• Simlet

The first three types of questions are relatively common in many testing environments. The multiple-choice format simply requires that you point and click a circle beside the correct answer(s). Cisco traditionally tells you how many answers you need to choose, and the testing software prevents you from choosing too many. Testlets are questions with one general scenario and several multiple-choice questions about the overall scenario. Drag-and-drop questions require you to click and hold, move a button or icon to another area, and release the mouse button to place the object somewhere else—typically in a list. For some questions, to get the question correct, you might need to put a list of five things in the proper order.

The last two types of questions use a network simulator to ask questions. Interestingly, the two types actually allow Cisco to assess two very different skills. First, sim questions generally describe a problem, and your task is to configure one or more routers and switches to fix it. The exam then grades the question based on the configuration you changed or added. Interestingly, sim questions are the only questions (to date) for which Cisco has openly confirmed it gives partial credit for.

The simlet questions may well be the most difficult style of question. Simlet questions also use a network simulator, but instead of having you answer by changing the configuration, the question includes one or more multiple-choice questions. The questions require that you use the simulator to examine a network's current behavior, interpreting the output of any show commands you can remember to answer the question. Whereas sim questions require you to troubleshoot problems related to a configuration, simlets require you to analyze both working networks and networks with problems, correlating show command output with your knowledge of networking theory and configuration commands.

What's on the CCNA Exam(s)?

Ever since I was in grade school, whenever the teacher announced that we were having a test soon, someone would always ask, "What's on the test?" Even in college, people would try to get more information about what would be on the exams. The goal is to know what to study a lot, what to study a little, and what to not study at all.

Cisco wants the public to know the variety of topics and have an idea of the kinds of knowledge and skills required for each topic, for every Cisco certificati...

About this edition

• Publisher: Cisco Systems
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1587201828
• ISBN 13: 9781587201820
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 641