Paul W Browning - 101 Labs for the Cisco CCNA Exam: Exam - 200-125 CCNA - 100-105 ICND1- 200-105 ICND2

Paul has taught over 2,000 Cisco engineers with both his classroom courses and online Cisco training site, www.howtonetwork.com . Paul lives in Australia with his wife and daughters.
Farai is a dual CCIE in both Routing and Switching and Service Provider. He currently works for one of the worlds largest telecom companies as a network engineer. He has written workbooks for the CCNA, CCNP, and Cisco Security exams. Farai lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

How to Use This Book First, this book is designed to cement the theory you have read in your CCNA study guide. If you dont have a good-quality study guide at the moment, then we highly recommend one of our CCNA study guides CCNA Simplified or Cisco CCNA in 60 Days which you can purchase on Amazon in printed or Kindle format. CCNA Simplified is targeted at those who want to approach the exams at a leisurely pace, while CCNA in 60 Days is available to those who want to pass the exams quickly and need a well-defined structure to follow as opposed to working on their own study plan. The goal is to dramatically improve your hands-on knowledge and speed. We dont have the space here to cover the theory at all, so please refer to your CCNA study guide to get a good understanding of the learning points behind each lab. Every lab is designed to cover a particular theory issue, such as configuration requirements of RIP passive interfaces.

As the labs progress, common commands such as how to create VLANs or add IP addresses to interfaces will not be repeated. This not only saves space but after a couple of labs, you should really know how to do these commands. I am telling you this because I had a few complaints from readers about not spelling out how to add an IP address to an interface, but by the time you are configuring advanced access lists, you really should know how to do that without being prompted! If you want to take the two-exam route, Section One of the book covers the ICND1 topics, while Section Two presents the ICND2 topics. Each lab is followed by a solution so you can check yours against ours. Please bear in mind that Cisco has some subjects listed in both the ICND1 and ICND2 sections, such as native VLANs. Cisco also reserves the right to ask questions on the exam that are not even in the syllabus.

Im mentioning this because I sometimes get an e-mail from an angry student blaming me for the fact that something came up on the exam that I didnt cover. Cisco also inserts test questions into the exam that are not marked, so dont sweat too much if something out of the ordinary appears. I took a Cisco switching exam once and an EIGRP routing question appeared on the screen! Do your best to answer it and move on. As you progress through the labs, you will be given less and less configuration commands to follow, and instead you will simply refer to steps from previous labs. This is to cement the learning for you as well as to save space and time. The ICND1 and ICND2 sections finish with challenge labs but with a running configuration instead of a full solution.

Look at the challenge and configure as much as you can without looking at the solution. After you finish, check your solution against ours. Sometimes there is more than one way to configure a particular technology, so dont kick yourself if your solution works but is different than ours. Hands-on Options The best solution is to have your own home lab featuring Cisco routers and switches that you can cable up. Cisco tests you on the 15.X IOS release and the 2960 model of switch. There are various companies selling kits on eBay so check those out.

You can resell them after your exam. GNS3 is a free router emulator. You can drag and drop routers and switches to easily create different topologies. You need to supply your own IOS and these are only legally available via Cisco, so this may prove a challenge to many students. Try it out for yourself though. Router simulators are available from a small number of companies.