I PASSED THE CCENT EXAM!! - ICND1 Exam Tips

About this video

Chuck interviews his brother Cameron about passing the CCENT / ICND1 exam a few weeks earlier. Cameron, who already held CompTIA A+, says studying took about six months, partly because he first studied for the older 100-101 version and missed its deadline before the CCNA v3 revision; with more focus he estimates three to four months, and he scheduled the exam a month in advance to create a deadline. He contrasts A+, which he found more factual and allowed returning to review or flag questions, with Cisco exams, where each answer is final and cannot be revisited. His resource sequence was: video training first for a foundation — he preferred INE with Keith Bogart for stricter fundamentals, after also using CBT Nuggets with Jeremy Cioara for motivation — then Cisco Press books to fill gaps, including the chapter pre-quizzes and Exam Cram / practice tests near the end. For labs he built his own networks in Cisco Packet Tracer, breaking and fixing them, and found that more useful than pre-made purchased labs; he never set up GNS3. On his exam he reports 56 questions including simlets built around show commands rather than configuration, mostly simple Class C subnetting, with fundamentals — OSI and TCP/IP models, how routers forward packets, layer 2/3 behavior — hit hardest and NTP as a weaker area. Readiness, for him, was being able to scan every exam topic and feel able to answer on each; the night before he did not study, he relaxed and played games to avoid overthinking.

Key takeaways

• Sequence study as videos for foundation, then a detailed book to fill gaps, then practice exams close to test day
• Schedule the Cisco exam about a month ahead to force a deadline instead of studying indefinitely
• Prepare for Cisco’s no-review format: every answer is final, so slow down especially on multi-question simlets
• Lab by building your own Packet Tracer networks and fixing what you break, not only following guided labs
• Focus revision on fundamentals — OSI/TCP-IP models, routing and switching behavior, and fast (about one-minute) subnetting — and check readiness against the full exam topics list

Episode details: published October 1, 2017 · 20:19 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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