Where I am at now....

[darrenchess]

Hi Guys,
I am new to the IT field and have been working in healthcare for the last 17 years or so. I was told that this site is very good and does a decent job of having questions very similar to the actual exam.
So far I have gone through CBT Nugget's ICND1 with Jeremy Cioara. I find Jeremy to be ok but he seems to glaze over certain topics while over-emphasizing others. His enthusiasm for the subject is probably why I watched his entire 76 hour video marathon.

I also have some lab equipment and an older version of Packet Tracer. I like the simulations/emulations because I can go through them much faster than actual routers and switches. That and I don't have any serial ports on any of my routers....go figure. I'm not going to buy and install interfaces for outdated devices.

When I hit this site, I noticed that the questions where quite different than the material I studied. Like I said, CBT Nuggets seemed to hit the high points and move on. At first, I was a little frustrated by this.
The material on this site appears to be related to what I studied but some of it is totally foreign. I find myself going back and having to read up on IPV6, for instance. I'm not sure why they don't cover IPV6 more in depth on CBT Nuggets. It almost seems like a separate but related topic. I keep smacking CBT Nuggets around but I just feel they kinda missed this one in my opinion.
...But I am glad I have this site to look at and study before I take the exam.

So I probably have another month or so at this point. If I fail, I can turn around and take it within 24 hrs again...I think. Have any of you taken it a few times in a row?

Anyway, feel free to comment. Cheers.

[goodglarp]

Welcome to the IT world!
I have no experience with CBT Nuggets, but if you are finding IPv6 to be surprising, then you are working with out of date sources. There were several questions on the subject in the ICND 1 (100-105) this past week.
The Wendell Odom books are very good, but taking the test I still encountered gaps in what needs to be covered in order to pass the exam.
There is a "cooling off" period of about a week between when you fail an exam and can take it again, obviously to work on what is holding you back. It's too bad that the post-exam feedback is so poor from Cisco because aside from your own impressions you really don't know what you don't know.