CCENT/CCNA ICND1 100-105 Official Cert Guide Har/Dvdr Edition

Using this book, I passed the ICND1 exam in August 2018. My description here on out entails what it took to get a passing grade. A brief background of myself, I have a college degree in IT, I’ve been a NOC Tech at a telecom company, primarily dealing with physical layer WAN issues. Then I moved to a simpler networking job of strictly monitoring for network outages, no configurations necessary. I also have CompTIAs holy trinity of certs, Net+, A+, and Sec+, but they are all the GFL versions. With that said, I have practically no work experience with configuring Cisco routers and switches.I started studying for the exam at the beginning of May 2018, using this book as my sole resource at first. This book includes practice questions via the included CD, however, if you create an account and register this book online, you will have access to those same practice questions via a web browser. I ultimately used the online version rather than the PC software as I found it more convenient to do so when I had spare time at work or when I’m out and about with time to kill. The book does read a bit dry, but in my experience, most technical manuals are like that, and trust me, I’ve ran into some snore fest books which would put this one to shame. I actually finished reading this book by mid July, though I had re-read many chapters to try to ingrain the multitude of information into my head. In a way, I may have read this book twice by going on page counts alone.Due to not having a strong grasp of the concepts after a first read through, I spent extra time on the following topics: VLANs, router-on-a-stick configurations, DHCP, NAT, and ACLs. The topics pertaining to IPv4 and IPv6 were areas the book didn’t seem to convey a lot to my memory, or perhaps I felt I needed to see other resources to get a better grasp of breaking down subnets and such. Google is your friend, as I was able to find a plethora of topics regarding IPv4 and IPv6. In particular, I studied IPv4 to an extent where it was like second nature on how to break an IPv4 address down just by looking at it. Google “subnetting practice”.The book includes a discount coupon code for Pearson Network Simulator software. I purchased it at a reasonable price in my opinion. The labs certainly helped a lot, and I’d highly recommend you purchasing the labs if saving money is of high concern for you, as it was for me. I was worried at first that I’d have to spend several hundred dollars on hardware to do lab work, which is of the utmost importance, luckily, the Network Simulator helped keep costs down, for now at least. Just keep in mind, that the labs are hard coded, meaning legit commands on the Cisco CLI may not work in a particular lab because that lab is not coded for those specific commands. You are also not building custom networks using this simulator. I think of these labs as more like a repetitive drilling tool for learning CLI commands, as such it’s a great tool for a beginner such as myself.A month before the exam, I found and installed GNS3 on an Ubuntu partition (it’s free!). Don’t bother installing GNS3 on windows, it’s a pain in the... In any case, Google is your friend again, so I recommend for you to seek this tool out for your own learning experience. With GNS3, I was able to freely configure many situations represented in the book, by not only doing it on a lab like basis, but stringing together different configs together in one big network using the book as a reference and the commands I learned from the Pearson Network Simulator labs.As mentioned earlier, I was using the included practice tests for my studies, but as with any practice test, you start memorizing answers when you do them repetively. I searched the interwebs and found Boson Exam Simulator as a highly recommended test software for the ICND1. It is pricey though, but I was able to catch a summer sale they were having. I’d have to stress, that using practice exams are very important before taking the test, at least for me, it puts me in a test taking mindset before the real deal.I’ve also found a great video series on YouTube regarding CCENT. I used it as a refresher of Cisco concepts in-between labing and test practices as my exam date neared. Do a search, I just looked for more recent videos regarding CCENT.After all my preparations, looking back at the ICND1 exam, there were a few topics on the exam which I was near clueless on answering. Thus, I could not imagine someone just using this book only for study and passing the ICND1 successfully. The author does mention for you, as the reader, to seek out other resources, and it is indeed good advice to do so. Time wise, I started preparing for the exam at a snails pace, and ended at a sprint, where I was studying up to 4-6 hours a day for the last two weeks before judgement day.TLDR—Ultimately I think this book is a great resource to base your studies around, but it is imperative for you to seek out other sources for self study. Read (this book), lab (Network Sims), watch (YouTube), and practice tests (Boson), then you’ll set yourself up for success, at least for me it did.

First off, i only give this book a 5 because of the content covered. Thats it.SO, with that being said, lets begin.I am taking my test March 6th 2018. I am not yet certified and have never taken a cisco test. Keep that in mind when reading.I am also not an avid reader. I learn by seeing, hearing, doing, and repetition. I read very, very slowly.Theres no discussion about the amount of material in this book. It does have a lot of what you probably would need to know for exam day.My problem is that some of the topics i think are more than extensive. There are some missing things from the book that i have seen from some o the courses i have from Udemy.com.With my last statement, if you are familiar or are working in the field, maybe the book is all you need. I would also recommend getting a Udemy account if you need a course as well.The way the book is worded by the author is a personal issue I have. I am technical, but the jargon gets to be a little much. I can understand being an official author for something like this to show knowledge, but i wish the the author was a little more friendly when it comes to expressing the knowledge and examples.I do not like how the examples in the book are sometimes mentioned in much earlier chapters, then are spoken about for reference. what im trying to say here is that you might be reading chapter 20, and having to fumble to chapter 6 to look at a reference example. This would be more of a poor editing job. i just dont like having to go back and find the page. If this is not an issue for you, then this wont even matter.Going back to the examples of pulling ideas together of the chapters can be tough. what i mean here is that the book tells you how to commands work, but go no further than that. Sometimes you have to go back and REALLY interpret what is happening in the examples, they fail outright tell you. This can leave you with more of a headache and mental drain than youd like.Everyone has a different learning style so im not trying to knock on that. I spent about 4 months reading the book and highlighted the key topics and the important bits. This book has a lot of filler in it.If you have a learning style like i do, which is seeing and hearing and doing, get a Udemy account.my personal rating would probably be more like a 2 or a 3 because I hate the wording of how cisco throws the material at you.however, it also prepares you for the exam so you have a better idea of how the questions will be presented on exam day.

Great book to use to study for the test according to my certified co-worker. It's a large book and can be a bit dry, but it does well covering all the topics for the test. The CD that came along with the book is helping me prepare too. Definitely purchase this and acquire some videos to use to study. I'm also going to purchase flash cards of some type too for the multiple choice type questions. It also helps if you have some experience with switches too, but not necessary.

Passed my ICND1 this morning. This was my primary study resource, along with Boson exam and netsim and Exam Cram. The labbing was absolutely critical, but apart from labs, I think all you really need is this book and the accompanying practice exams. I also attended Mr. Odom's live 2-day IPv4 subnetting webinar through OReilly - fantastic and I can't recommend it highly enough. Good luck to anyone trying to knock out ICDN1 before next year.

Just got the book last week and have started going through it. I will update as I get further though. Although the first snag I am hitting is the provided DVD in the back of the book. My PC does not have a disk drive. My coworkers PC's do not have disk drives. The Pearson Network Simulator Lite is available on the provided disk, but seems that it's not available as a download directly from their website. The provided activation code gives access to Pearson Test Prep practice test, but not the NetSim Lite. Maybe I can go find an old PC at the library that still has a disk drive and get the Lite NetSim moved to a flash drive......

This book was recommended on a blog and a you tube channel. I'm cramming to get the CCNA before the deadline next February and this book is fantastic. Explains the material in straightforward approach !