Mentioned regularly by employers and hiring managers as one of the most popular certifications in the IT industry, the CCNA is one of the most valuable certifications you can have on your resume. Furthermore, it’s needed for most higher-level Cisco certifications like the CCNP and CCDP (and, by extension, the CCIE). Making the CCNA demonstrates that you have the capability to configure and support a series of Cisco network devices, together with a strong basic knowledge of networking, network security, and wireless networking– all of which are required to support the contemporary enterprise network.

Before you can end up being a CCNA, you need to pass Cisco examination 640-802 (or, alternately, tests 640-822 and 640-816 together), which is required in order to earn the certification. The CCNA examination is challenging, and passing it certainly needs a lot of work and effort.

Set a Course of Study
Cisco provides a syllabus for the CCNA certification, with a list of subjects that are covered. Keep in mind– if it’s not on the curriculum, it’s not on the examination, so restrict your studies to the subjects that Cisco highlights.

Determine Your Weaknesses
An excellent next action is to identify those areas where you’re weakest (hint: try a practice examination to help determine those locations) and make them the focus of your study and practice., but by turning your weaknesses into strengths you can dramatically increase your chances of passing the CCNA examination.

Make Time for Study
The CCNA isn’t an easy exam to pass, and it covers a great deal of ground. And, like any technical discipline, if you do not work at it on a constant basis, your understanding and abilities will fade. Set aside a consistent, routine time for study, and ensure that you keep to it. Approved, it can be difficult to keep this time blocked out, particularly with all of the everyday obligations and distractions that all of us deal with. But the secret to passing the CCNA is frequent and constant study and practice, so it’s vital that you set this time aside, restrict your distractions, and adhere to the job at hand.

Focus on the Details
It’s not enough to know the theory behind the principles presented in the CCNA curriculum. To successfully pass the CCNA exam, you require to how to finish tasks and understand how things get performed in the world of Cisco. That’s an important point due to the fact that basic networking ideas and the method Cisco does things are not always the same– so it’s crucial to understand the details and particular techniques and procedures for implementing various networking technologies, within the Cisco environment.

Get Access to Gear
That’s why it’s important that you get practice time (preferably a lot of it) on Cisco equipment so that you can execute what you study within the actual Cisco IOS environment. You can purchase or rent pre-configured sets of real Cisco routers and switches that include all of the equipment you’ll require to practice for the test, and these sets are not as costly as you may believe.

Likewise, there are also some excellent simulators out there, that let you configure virtual routers and switches from your computer. Take a look at Packet Tracer, which is an outstanding tool offered from the Cisco Academy, and Graphical Network Simulator 3 (GNS3), which is a free open-source tool that provides a simulated Cisco IOS environment (you can also utilize it to mimic the Juniper JunOS platform also).

Practice All of the Topics on the Exam, Firsthand
As soon as your practice environment is up and running, ensure you take full advantage of it and practice executing every protocol and configuration possible, so that you can see how everything deals with the real gear. Remember, things in real life don’t always work the same as they do ‘on paper’, and even if a book or guide tells you that a given setup will produce a provided outcome, absolutely nothing beats seeing it on your own, specifically on those (ideally rare) events when the books get it wrong.

The key to passing the CCNA exam is preparation and lots of it. To pass the test, you’ll require to understand networking theory, facts, and practice, and be able to easily make use of the Cisco IOS user interface, consisting of specific commands and syntax. But, if you make the effort to really learn the product and be familiar with your method around Cisco routers and switches ahead of time, you should discover the test reasonably simple to pass.