How to Prepare for an Exam

Preparing for any Cisco- related test requires that you obtain and study materials designed to provide comprehensive information about the product and its capabilities that will appear on the specific exam for which you are preparing. The following two sites can help you study and prepare:

• The Cisco Web site at www.cisco.com has an enormous amount of material available to CCNA candidates. Configuration simulators, practice tests, program updates, and career path guides are just a few of the resources available at this Web site.

• The exam-preparation advice, practice tests, questions of the day, and discussion groups on the www.examcram2.com e-learning and certification destination Web site.

In addition, you might find any or all of the following resources beneficial:

• Classroom training ” Third-party training companies (such as Wave Technologies, Learning Tree, and Data-Tech) all offer classroom training on Cisco certifications. Although such training runs upward of $350 per day in class, most of the individuals lucky enough to partake find this training to be quite worthwhile. Cisco also offers classroom training through vocational schools and community colleges. If you have a school nearby that offers Cisco training, you should definitely explore the programs available.

• Other publications ” There's no shortage of materials available about Cisco products and technologies. The "Need to Know More?" resource sections at the end of each chapter in this book give you an idea of where we think you should look for further discussion.

What This Book Will Not Do

This book will not teach you everything you need to know about data communications, or even about a given topic. Nor is this book an introduction to computer technology. If you're new to Cisco products, technologies, and looking for an initial preparation guide, check out www.quepublishing.com, where you will find a whole section dedicated to the Cisco certifications. This book will review what you need to know before you take the test, with the fundamental purpose dedicated to reviewing the information needed on the CCNA certification exams.

This book uses a variety of teaching and memorization techniques to analyze the exam-related topics and to provide you with ways to input, index, and retrieve everything you'll need to know in order to pass the test. Once again, it is not an introduction to data communications.

What This Book Is Designed To Do

This book is designed to be read as a pointer to the areas of knowledge you will be tested on. In other words, you may want to read the book one time, just to get an insight into how comprehensive your knowledge of computers is. The book is also designed to be read shortly before you go for the actual test and to give you a distillation of the entire field of Cisco router and switch configuration basics in as few pages as possible. We think you can use this book to get a sense of the underlying context of any topic in the chapters ”or to skim-read for Exam Alerts, bulleted points, summaries, and topic headings.

We have drawn on material from Cisco's own listing of knowledge requirements, from other preparation guides, and from the exams themselves . We've also drawn from a battery of third-party test-preparation tools and technical Web sites as well as from our own experience with Cisco technologies and the exam. Our aim is to walk you through the knowledge you will need ”looking over your shoulder, so to speak ”and point out those things that are important for the exam (Exam Alerts, practice questions, and so on).

The CCNA exams make a basic assumption that you already have a strong background of experience with local and wide area networking. On the other hand, because the field is changing so quickly, no one can be a complete expert. We have tried to demystify the jargon, acronyms, terms, and concepts. Also, wherever we think you're likely to blur past an important concept, we have defined the assumptions and premises behind that concept.