About to go for the ICND1 (CCENT) I hope I'm ready

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I'm getting ready to tackle the ICND1 but naturally I'm a little worried.

I want to take it before Aug 12th. I'll be traveling to the U.S. and I'm going to have a lot of study time. I figure I would like to either pass it and study for ICND2 while I'm there or give it my best shot, fail it and know what I need to improve on for another go. So I'll aim for Aug 7th as a test date. That gives me just over two weeks to make sure I'm up to speed.

I'm a master at subnetting. I can go through questions on subnettingquestions.com in under 30 seconds sometimes just a few seconds each. I'm 100% accurate unless I make some stupid mistake counting. I'm like a ninja with subnetting. You're eating breakfast and I'll jump in through your window and tell you what your first and last host are on your subnet and be gone before you knew what happened. You'll be walking your dog in the park and I'll jump down from a tree and whisper in your ear how many networks and hosts you have but you'll never see me. I'm that good.

Overall knowledge about CCENT stuff I'd say I'm pretty good, I think I can handle the general stuff they throw at me.

My weakness and I'm sure what will kill me if I fail is going to be the sims. I'm going to sit down with a friend who really knows this stuff and run through a bunch of labs this weekend I hope.

I've got CBT nuggets and like it, I've got packet tracer and I've got a little bit of time. I also have a 851w to practice on.

I suppose my biggest question at this point is how will I know I'm ready for the sims? If I can go through all the labs easily without having to look a single thing up? Do I need to be extremely good with the CLI etc? Is there any indicator that I'm ready?

I know this has been posted before so I'm going to apologize for that. I also wanted this thread to track my progress and tell you guys how I do etc. You were a huge help when I did the A+ way back when.

 

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If you are familiar enough with the CLI so you can stumble around using question-mark help, and you've worked through the labs you've got, I'd think you should be good to go as far as the sims are concerned.

Classic. Repped.

 

LOL, this is awesome! What method do you use for subnetting?

 

I would guess "Binary-Fu".

 

Haha thanks Michael, yeah that's basically what I was thinking, I can stumble through almost everything. I think a few more runs through the labs and I'll be set. Worst case I fail and figure out exactly what I need to work on.

In regards to which method of subnetting I use Michael was spot on. Specifically it's "tiger style" "Binary-Fu"

In all seriousness though.. I used the CBT nuggets method first. Change it to binary and all that fun stuff. I could write it out in detail but I'm about to leave the office and won't finish this post in time.

After I learned that method I switch the cheat sheet chart and I like it a lot better. I'm really glad I understand what is going on though and the fundamentals or the sheet wouldn't mean much besides a correct answer.

Basically I write 128,64,32,16,8,4,2,1 across the top and 128,192,224,240,248,252,254, 255 down. Below that I write 2 4 8 16 32 etc going down farther.

Then if it's /25 for example you find out how many there are in the final octet and count down. /25 would be 1 in the final octet so "128" thus your subnet is 255.255.255.128. count right 1 space and you see that the interval is 128. If you know that then you know your host ranges broadcast etc etc. You use the numbers farther down to determine host / networks but I don't have time to explain it right now.

www.subnetting-secrets.com I think is the exact same one.

And michael if there is some evil reason I shouldn't use this technique please tell me, it works great for me. I understand the science behind it from learning through a painful process (balancing buckets of water, kicking trees, hours in the lotus position on mountain tops) so I'm not worried about the science behind it.

 

No, that's pretty similar to the method I use... halves and doubles up and down the CIDR tree.

 

Yeah I've tried I don't know how many ways to work subnets and this is by far the easiest. I could do it about 3 or 4 ways easy enough it just took longer and had more room for error. I'm someone who really struggled with subnetting in the begining (well I guess that is the norm) and feel like a light came on when I found this method. I think that it's vital you know the logic behind it but I would say anyone who wants a good method uses this one. When I realized how easy it is compared to doing the whole thing with binary I got worried. I was scared you were going to say it's the "braindump of subnetting" or something hahaha.

Of course some people prefer a different approach and I am not going to suggest one thing works for everyone. Try them all and pick your favorite would probably be the best advice.