Product Description

CCNA ICND2 Official Exam Certification Guide

Second Edition

 

• Master ICND2 640-816 and CCNA 640-802 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

 

CCNA ICND2 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition, is a best of breed Cisco® exam study guide that focuses specifically on the objectives for the CCNA® ICND2 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.

 

CCNA ICND2 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.

 

CCNA ICND2 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 CCNA ICND2 exam, including

• Virtual LANs and Spanning Tree Protocol
• Static and connected routes
• VLSM and route summarization
• IP access control lists
• OSPF and EIGRP configuration
• Point-to-point WANs
• Frame Relay
• VPNs
• Network address translation
• IPv6
• Troubleshooting

 

Companion CD-ROM

The CD-ROM contains an electronic copy of the book and 200 practice questions for the ICND2 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: CCNA ICND2 Exam 640-816

 

 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17670 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 744 pages

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). Wendell also has worked as a network engineer, consultant, and systems engineer, and as an instructor and course developer. He is the author of all prior editions of CCNA Exam Certification Guide, as well as the Cisco 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.

CCNA ICND2 Official Exam Certification Guide, Second Edition

Introduction

Congratulations! If you're reading far enough to look at the introduction to this book, 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, with more than 80 percent market share 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 perfect 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 in 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 options for the exams to get certified: a single-exam option and a two-exam option. The two-exam option allowed people to study roughly half of the material, and 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, most notably:

• 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: the Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician (CCENT) certification.

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 pass 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 those people with less experience a chance to study for a smaller set of topics at a time, whereas 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 will be useful for some certification candidates, Cisco designed the ICND1 exam with a much more important goal in mind. The CCNA certification has grown to the point that it tested knowledge and skills beyond what an entry-level network technician would need to have. Cisco needed a certification that was more reflective of 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 to show that you have the skills required for those entry-level jobs, Cisco created a new certification, CCENT, which is attained by passing the ICND1 exam.

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

Figure I-1
Cisco Entry-Level Certifications and Exams

As you can see from the figure, while the CCENT certification is available by taking the ICND1 exam, you do not have to first be CCENT certified before getting your CCNA certification—you can choose to just take 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, while ICND2 covers a more complicated use of subnetting called variable-length subnet masking (VLSM), so ICND2 must then cover subnetting to some degree. The CCNA exam covers all the topics covered on both the ICND1 and ICND2 exams.

While the popularity of the CCENT certification cannot be seen until a few years have passed, certainly the Cisco CCNA certification enjoys a position as 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—namely, routers and switches. It also proves that you have a 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 will give you some general instructions and then take you into a quiet room with a PC. When you're at the PC, you have a few things to do before the timer starts on your exam. For example, you can take a sample quiz, just to get accustomed to the PC and to 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 at which you can see a demo of the Cisco test engine.

When you start the exam, you are asked a series of questions. You answer a question and then move on to the next question. The exam engine does not let you go back and change your answer. Yes, that's true—when you move on to the next question, that's it for the earlier 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 answers. Testlets are questions with one general scenario, with multiple MC questions about the overall scenario. Drag-and-drop questions require you to click and hold the mouse button, move a button or icon to another area, and release the mouse button to place the object somewhere else—typically into a list. So, for some questions, to get the question correct, you might need to put a list of five things into the proper order.

The last two types both use a network simulator to ask questions. Interestingly, the two types 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 the problem. The exam then grades the question based on the configuration you changed or added. Interestingly, Sim questions are the only questions that Cisco (to date) has openly confirmed that partial credit is given.

The Simlet questions might well be the most difficult style of question on the exams. Simlet questions also use a network simulator, but instead of answering the question by changing the configuration, the question includes one or more MC questions. The questions require that you use the simulator to examine the current behavior of a network, interpreting the output of any show commands that you can remember to answer the question. While Sim questions require you to troubleshoot problems related to a configuration, Simlets require you to both analyze 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. At heart, the goal is to know...

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Customer Reviews

You've got to be kidding me.
Noticeably absent from these reviews are all the people who used these books to pass the exams. I believe that might be because these books are not very effective learning aids. I struggled to follow along on topics I was fairly familiar with. But when the books took me into topics I was unfamiliar with, I found myself rereading paragraphs - not once or twice, but 5 or 6 times! I've been in enterprise computing for almost 4 years now, yet this author used terms I've never seen or heard (some words I think he just made up.) But the real problem was the 40 to 50 word sentences loaded with commas and double negatives. Here is how the author introduces you to Classful Routing

"Classful Routing: When a packet's destination only matches a router's default route, and does not match any other routes, only use the default route if this router does not know any routes in the classful network in which the destination IP address resides."

That was when I said to myself, "I'm going to need another book to teach me this material because I can't take another 400 pages of this." So, I think what I will do is find another book to teach me the material, and use these books to fill in the blanks.

If you are looking for just a reference manual for Cisco devices, this book will probably serve you well. If you are looking for learning material, then my advice is to keep looking.

Good book, horrible Boson test engine
I passed the ICND1 test with Odom's book, and the included Boson Test engine test questions had me well prepared for the actual exam. The Boson test engine included with this particular book does not prepare you well for the actual exam, with hardly any scenarios where you are doing an actual beginning to end configuration of the various technologies that are part of the ICND2 exam objectives. It is also filled with bugs, and the Boson people have provided a bug reporting system. They do not respond and have not corrected any of the bug requests that I sent over five months ago. Read the book, but forget Boson as reliable gauge as to what will be asked of you on the exam.

This is the CCNA resource to use
I have read both of Wendell Odom's ICND1/2 books, and also the CCNA book by Todd Lammle. This book is very different. Much more thorough and detailed, and in my opinion a better resource for passing the exam. This book provides a comprehensive resource and study plan for passing the ICND2/CCNA exam.

There were a few errors. This book is in it's fifth printing, so most of the errors have been corrected over the previous two years. However there is a comprehensive errata document available for download that should be used to correct the few that have been discovered in this printing.

The "do I already know this" 6-10 questions at the beginning of each chapter I found very useful as a catalyst to pique my interest and keep me focused as I was reading through the chapter. (This may only be useful if you already have experience and/or intend to re-certify).

The overall structure and layout of the book is excellent. It is logically structured by chapter, linked to topics/learning objectives. The individual chapters are logically structured, introducing concepts first, then configuration, and finally troubleshooting. The index and table of contents are useful and laid out in a similar fashion.

The overall presentation of the material is also very well done. This is not just a re-packaging of information that is available in support articles or online documentation. The authors occasionally provide background material and history where it can be useful to grasp the concepts. They provide recommended approaches for troubleshooting the various technologies under discussion. They know when to dive deep and when to not inundate you with superfluous information. This is not a book that was slapped together in a couple of months. It is the culmination of years of knowledge and experience. It was written by an expert, and is very polished and professional in both content and presentation.

The Boson exam environment (BEE) is excellent. It is a spot-on realistic simulation for the real exams. Boson updates their exam environments frequently to fix any known issues and add functionality. (Make sure you download version 1.5 or later of the BEE from Boson). The exam provides 150 questions, with options such as randomizing the questions and answers, the ability to save your exam (if you want to resume later), and the ability to only show questions that were previously answered incorrectly.

The complete eBook is included in PDF format. The table of contents is hyperlinked. Another huge plus: when you are taking the Boson practice exam, and click "show answer", there is a hyperlink to the exact location in the eBook where the topic is discussed. Very nice!

I cannot figure out why this book + practice exam only costs $27. This is a tremendous value.

A final word. The Cisco exams are very challenging. Much more so than only a few years ago. The Boson exam helps prepare you for this, but you should read the entire book, understand the concepts, and take the practice exam. If you are re-certifying, you only need to take this one exam (ICND2). But if you are new, reading the ICND1 book and taking that exam first is highly recommended. The 640-802 (CCNA) is much more comprehensive than only the ICND2 exam, and is unforgiving if you are not prepared.