When you sit for a Cisco certification exam, you will be sitting in a large room with other Cisco professionals. Most people are already familiar with multiple-choice questions. Some questions just have a single correct answer, and others have a number of right answers. Luckily, Cisco will usually tell you exactly how many wrong answers there are, and usually the exam engine will also tell you whether you made the right choices. There will probably also be an answers sheet and the exam will be timed.
On the other hand, Cisco exams can be long and difficult. Even with experience, some people find themselves having to take multiple Cisco exams. If you feel as though you might not have done enough study and preparation, or if it feels as though you may have underestimated the challenges involved in Cisco exams, there is good news. The people who run these professionally-level exams are certified by the same people who conduct Cisco professional exams. They have had enough time and experience to gain the knowledge and skills necessary for passing the exam. And so they are qualified to give you the questions to prepare for.
For those who are certified by Cisco, you might be wondering what you need to pass one of these exams. In fact, you should have a lot of personal experience, education and training before even considering attempting one of the recommended exams. While certification requirements no longer have formal prerequisites, recommends that candidates attempting to be certified by Cisco should: Pass two to three years of college. You should be able to pass this exam with ease, although employers are more likely to hire someone with a degree than someone without one.
Two of the most important Cisco certification courses you should take, Wireless Network Associate (WNA) and CCNA Tools of the Trade (ctt), require that you pass a certain exam pattern. These patterns are long and detailed, requiring that students spend months upon months studying for them. Because of this, they are sometimes referred to as the CCNA Rubix, or CCR. Cisco’s official website does not mention any official study schedule. However, it is strongly suggested that students follow a study plan to pass the exam and to better prepare for future certification exams.
The third type of exam that students need to pass before qualifying for Cisco’s professional services certification is the CCNA Routing & Switching Model exam. It is not difficult for many candidates to pass this exam, because it covers many of the same topics as the other two courses. In fact, the only difference between these three exams is that the first one requires that candidates must answer a question about routers before they can proceed to the second part of the exam. The second one does not require a router question.
To understand why Cisco’s exam cost so much, it is best to understand how CCNA certification works. First, candidates must demonstrate their knowledge of how network hardware and software work. Cisco’s CCNA certification tests do not just ask for a bunch of numbers, such as what operating system or hardware each machine runs. Rather, they use an exam designed to test an understanding of how networking works and what is involved in designing a reliable networking system. To pass the CCNA exam, candidates must demonstrate their knowledge of routing protocols, including how to troubleshoot certain types of failures and how to configure IP networks using routers and switches. They must also demonstrate their ability to troubleshoot security systems, including how to set up firewall policies and how to use anti-spyware and sniffers to discover hackers’ techniques.
Candidates who want to earn one of Cisco’s professional services certifications need to be prepared to spend months studying for this exam. Then, even after they pass the exam, they still have to take the CCNA or CCIE Routing & Switching 2.0 training course and complete several months of on-the-job learning at Cisco’s World site. Candidates who want to earn the CCNA enterprise security certification, however, don’t have quite as much time. For them, the best option is to buy CCNA exam study guides online that are affordable and which contain step-by-step tutorials that can be completed in a week. Buying a quality study guide from a trusted vendor like Cisco Technology helps ensure that the material it contains is written by Cisco experts and not amateurish material that might prove useless when it comes to answering the questions that will appear on the real CCNA exam.
