Now before I go any further if you're not planning on taking the new Cisco CCNA exam then skip this
video.
If you're only taking this course for information.
In other words, you're trying to learn networking but you're not interested in taking the CCNA exam.
Then skip this video.
Otherwise continue watching and I'm not going to discuss the new Cisco CCNA exam.
In this video, I'm going to discuss my experiences taking the new Cisco CCNA exam.
I took the exam on the day that it was released by Cisco and then published my thoughts to YouTube.
But I'm going to add that video to this course so that you also have that information.
I'll also give you some updates.
One of the questions that I've often been asked is how many questions are there in the exam.
And before we continue please note I have to be careful because of the Cisco NDA or Non-Disclosure Agreement.
I'd love to tell you a lot more information about the exam but I have to be really careful because of
the NDA.
I will say this.
There are over 100 questions in the exam.
In other words, there are many more questions than the previous release of the CCNA exam.
You have 120 minutes.
In other words you get about a minute per question.
You have to be really careful with your time management.
There are some other surprises in the exam with regards to simulations.
So I can't say too much.
But please note that there are differences compared to the previous version of the exam.
I personally thought that the exam was easier.
It covered a breadth of topics but wasn't as difficult as the previous releases of CCNA.
Firstly because it doesn't cover as many topics and also because of the exam question types that were
in the exam.
But I have to be careful saying more than that.
But let me tell you you still have to be well-prepared for the exam new topics such as wireless.
There's a greater emphasis on security and network automation are new topics that you need to make sure
that you understand and learn about.
We'll be covering those topics in this course.
So you'll have that information.
I've also added the blueprint or list of topics to the course.
So download that I highly recommend that you go through that before you take your exam.
This course will cover all the topics in the blueprint but it's well worth your time making sure that
before you take the exam that you understand all the topics on the outline or blueprint.
OK.
So I'm going to cut to this video hopefully it helps you. I'm David Bombal and I've just passed the new Cisco
CCNA exam 200-301.
And in this video I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to help you in your preparation for the
new Cisco CCNA 200-301 exam.
Today, I took both the Cisco CCNA as well as the Cisco DevNet exam
Fortunately I passed both of them so really happy about that.
Some surprises however in this new exam some stuff that I thought was really good.
Some stuff that I thought was strange some unexpected stuff.
I'll talk about that in this video so keep watching.
If you want to learn more about my experience taking the new Cisco CCNA exam
Now before we continue.
If you enjoy this video please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel please like this video and
please click on the bell to get notifications when I post the new video.
But also share it with others.
Let other people know about my experience of the Cisco CCNA exam.
Hopefully this will be of benefit to you and others hopefully you'll learn something.
Okay so let's get started.
Let me state this right in the beginning.
I felt that the exam was very balanced, covered a whole range of topics I think it's a version 1
exam they call a CCNA exam version 1.
I thought it was a good exam.
However there were things that surprised me.
Things that I didn't expect to see in the exam but on the whole I thought it was a good exam.
I write a lot of quiz questions I've written exam questions for vendors before it's very difficult to
write good exam questions.
It's much easier to answer any question than it is to write a question.
It's much easier to criticize a question than it is to create a question.
So I thought they did a great job a whole balance of various topics covered a wide range of topics in
their list of of topics that you need to know but some hints would be concentrate on the new stuff spend
time on the new stuff.
Don't get bogged down in trying to memorize huge amounts of commands.
So first step is learn the new stuff especially like wireless.
Make sure you understand wireless make sure that you understand security topics.
Now another tip.
What do you need to prepare is Packet Tracer enough? And I would say, definitely, spend time using Packet
Tracer.
So do you need GNS3?
Do you need VIRL?
Do you need EVE-NG?
Do you need physical equipment.
I like those products.
I like the new VIRL I'll be creating a video on the new VIRL very soon.
I've already got access to VIRL 2.0.
Great product.
I love GNS3 love EVE-NG
Those products are great.
I really think you should use those products for CCNP. For CCNA
however, I think Packet tracer enough if you can get access to physical equipment that always helps.
If you can get access to GNS3 or VIRL that's great as well because it'll have options that you won't
see in Packet Tracer.
Okay so I think Packet Tracer enough.
I don't think you need to invest in buying hardware even though I think it's recommended.
It's not a requirement.
I don't think you have to buy VIRL.
However again I would suggest that you do that as soon as you can because Packet Tracer is great but
it’s at this level, and the VIRL, GNS3, EVE-NG and Physical Equipment is at this level,
So if you want to really increase your knowledge if you really want to increase your understanding I'd
recommend that you get those products but it's not required for the CCNA exam for my CCNA course
I'm going to concentrate exclusively on Packet Tracer labs.
So in the past, I used to use GNS3 labs but a lot of people struggled with those labs.
It's quite difficult to setup especially if you're new to Cisco so I'd recommend Packet Tracer.
Easy to setup official product from Cisco.
Brilliant simulation software allows you to simulate many many topics specifically for the CCNA.
I would highly recommend Cisco Packet Tracer and that's what I'm going to base my course on.
Now one of the best places to look if you're preparing for a Cisco exam is the Cisco outline or Cisco
details of the Exam.
Exam is 120 minutes 200-301
This kind of stuff you know ready.
One of the first things I would do if I were you is have a look at the exam topics and I've downloaded
the exam topics here and this is where it got interesting.
OK so let's start with one topic straight away EIGRP.
There is no EIGRP and no VTP now when preparing for the exam I highly recommend Wendell Odom's official
cert guides.
I strongly suggest that you buy these guides and you use them lots of good information in here.
I spent a bit of time going through these and I might have missed some stuff but even then I was quite
surprised by a few things.
Okay so in Wendell Odom's official cert guide he does mention EIGRP in multiple places such as
when you discuss metrics.
So I purchase both the physical books as well as the PDFs.
I like having both.
So in this example, I'm looking at the PDF version so that I can share it much more easily in this video.
Notice he's got this table here.
Where he talks about the different types of routing calculations EIGRP calculates based on bandwidth and delay.
So even though my EIGRP is not in the list of topics for the exam he actually covers it in the official
cert guide.
So on the left here I’m doing the searches for EIGRP.
And what you'll notice is there's a whole bunch of entries for each EIGRP such as administrative distance
now it’s difficult to understand Administrative Distance if the only routing protocol your gonna
talk about is OSPF.
Here we have a table of the Administrative Distances for various routing protocols
notice we have both, BGP and EIGRP, as well as, IS-IS.
So don’t just learn OSPF in isolation, don’t say, I’m gonna learn OSPF and ignore EIGRP, ignore
BGP, ignore IS-IS,
make sure that you understand administrative distances, make sure that you understand that if IS-IS advertisers
are route to you, OSPF advertisers are route to you, and EIGRP advertisers are route to you, and BGP advertisers
a right to you that you know which route is going to be selected and why.
Now I've previously created videos about this I've created quiz questions about this.
Have a look at this video.
example, where I explain why, for instance, OSPF is chosen over EIGRP, or why RIP is chosen over
EIGRP or over OSPF
When choosing the best route make sure that you know routes selections.
You really need to understand this stuff for the CCNA exam so make sure that you know AD.
don’t just say, I don’t need to learn EIGRP
make sure you understand it. Again, while talking about EIGRP, I’ve mentioned VTP, so doing a search for
VTP
There's a whole section here talking about VLAN Trunking Protocol and he says before showing more
configuration examples you need to know something about a Cisco protocol called VTP and he discusses
a whole bunch of stuff including VTP mode
Transparent so it's not as if you can just ignore VTP.
He discusses it in multiple places in his student guide and he says this book does not discuss VTP
as an end to itself for different reasons.
He says it not currently in the blueprint.
And additionally many enterprises choose to disable VTP.
However it still has an effect.
My personal opinion is that I won't remove VTP from my new Cisco CCNA course I'll reduce the amount
of information about it and reduce sort of some of the troubleshooting scenario stuff like that.
But in my new course, I will definitely cover VTP going back to the Cisco exam topics.
Make sure that you know the new stuff make sure that you spend time learning the new things.
As an example make sure you know about controllers make sure that you know about Cisco DNA center and
wireless LAN controllers but also don't forget about traditional stuff like what's the difference between
TCP and UDP?
What's the difference between other protocols so like DHCP versus DNS.
Do you actually understand how those protocols work?
Do you know what they're about?
I mean all this stuff is covered in the outline.
So I found that the exam covered a broad range of topics.
I was surprised by some of the topics that are still asked in the exam but when it comes to addressing
and I missing it right now is subnetting.
Make sure that you know your subnetting.
If I give you an IP address and I say here's an IP address 192.168.130/28
make sure that you know network, first host, last host, and broadcast address.
Make sure that you know that information.
make sure that you know if you were given a routing table or a subnetting diagram that you know where
devices on the network. Use tables
I'm not a big fan of tables but I will be creating videos and publishing them on YouTube as well as
my course with subnetting tables to help you do this stuff quickly.
You’ve got to be able to look at a routing table, you’ve got to be able to look at a network diagram.
You’ve got to know where the host is. So subnetting is always important and it is still important.
Big topics Wi-Fi.
Make sure that you know Wi-Fi topics such as encryption.
So what encryption protocols are used on wireless.
Make sure that you understand the theory of wireless but make sure that you also understand how to configure
stuff through the wireless LAN controller.
Don't skip that section new section in the exam.
Make sure that you spend time on wireless and topics such as virtualization as an example.
I mean that's not pure routing and switching but we've got this convergence of technologies so you need
to understand virtualization as well.
Traditional topics such as Quality of Service are also important.
My exam is very balanced.
A lot of topics from a whole range of areas for example routing.
Do you understand how routing works?
Do you understand a floating static route vs. a route such as default route,
or a route that was added by a routing protocol?
Do you understand.
OSPF; because OSPF is the only main protocol in the CCNA
Make sure that you understand who OSPF really really well.
Make sure that you understand elections, neighbour adjacencies. different types of links.
So here they mentioned point to point.
if you enable OSPF on an Ethernet interface, what kind of network will it be?
If you enable it on a Point-to-Point link
what kind of link will it be?
And that’s important because once again, a lot of WAN technologies have been removed from the course.
PPP has been removed from the course
but here we’ve got a Point-to-Point link, in OSPF. So how would they test you about Point-to-Point link
if you don't have some kind of point to point link so SPF network type could be point to point which
means you need a point to point link so don't just throw out all the old technologies and say I will
not touch anything that has a HDLC I'll see your point to point type of connection.
I personally will keep a little bit of that in my course.
But you know it's not as big as it was previously.
Okay big section is security fundamentals.
I would spend a lot of time on security fundamentals it's 15 percent of the exam.
Make sure that you understand VPNs and make sure that you understand wireless security protocols make
sure that you know how to configure wireless LANs using WPA2, using PSK, by the GUI.
Make sure to understand AAA as an example.
As an example do you know the difference between authentication authorization and accounting?
So I would spend a lot of time on security fundamentals big part of the course now and then automation
and Programmability
This is where things are going so you would need to know like what is a northbound API.
What's a southbound API.
What protocols would be used on northbound southbound.
My big advice would be make sure you understand what a controller is.
I've discussed this stuff and I'll create a video showing a bit of history if you're interested but
I spoke about this stuff on this video many years ago.
What's the difference between separation of control plane data plane?
What is a management plane?
So if you have a controller.
Traditionally we have a device like a router with the management plane the control plane and the forwarding
plane or data plane within the device but with the controller, we take the control plane out of the device
we put it in a centralized controller.
Now in the original OpenFlow model the controller was the brain and the switches became dumb or the
routers became dumb.
That didn't work very well didn't scale so OSPF kind of die to death
That's in the past now.
But the idea with a controller is we can have a controller that for instance controls some aspects of
forwarding.
So in Wendell's CCNA book he spends a lot of time on SDA lot of information on SDA.
I don't know if it's necessary to know that detail but make sure that you understand what is an underlay
network.
Essentially physical devices routers and switches running traditional stuff.
You can, however, get rid of Spanning Tree and run a layer 3 network as the underlay
Then you run an overlay on top of it.
Now it sounds all complicated but it's just traditional stuff that's got a new spin on it.
I would say. So in the old old days and we've done this for years.
The internet.
Think of the Internet as an underlay.
It doesn't understand what's going across it necessarily.
If we especially if we put it in a tunnel so let's go back even further in the old old days we had a
traditional telephone network where the switches in the cloud were intelligent and the phones were dumb.
Then the intelligence was put on the phones and the using Skype as an example.
And the networking core became dumb and we just simply made calls across the Internet using Skype.
So the traditional telephony network was intelligent.
It was replaced with an IP call that was essentially dumb it didn't understand all the applications
going across it.
And then we made calls across the Internet using Skype with the intelligence in the endpoints or in
the controllers which could be as an analogy call manage express or whatever controller we're using
to set up the calls using IP devices.
Now here in SDA we've got an underlay think of that kind of like the Internet.
So we've got just switches routers they are dumb to a point and then we put an overlay on top of it.
So we build a whole network on top of it using VXLAN.
Now it sounds complicated it's just tunnels but the intelligence is that can automatically be built
to apply policies so we can have a policy in an SDA server. So we could have a policy on a controller and
then apply the policy to the overlay not to the Underlay.
So rather than trying to manually configure access lists on individual devices we apply the policy and
this is the whole idea with 10th based networking.
We apply a policy on the controller and then that's going to configure the devices with us overlay network.
So from me to you, there might be a 20 switches or 20 routers on the Internet as an example but when
we set up the IPsec tunnel logically it's a hop from me to you.
Same kind of idea.
Here we've got a whole bunch of physical devices as the Underlay.
We put an overlay on top of it.
Make sure you understand those concepts.
Make sure that you understand REST. In the DevNet Exam, there's obviously a lot more about
that.
Make sure that you understand differences between Puppet, Chef and Ansible. So Ansible as an example
doesn't need an agent.
It's an agent less implementation.
So I've created a whole Ansible course so I'll take some of that experience and knowledge and add it to
my new CCNA course.
Make sure that you understand that with Ansible it's kind of like with Python scripts I can just SSH
to the devices and make configuration changes on them.
But with Puppet and Chef with Puppet you you can do some interesting things.
But the idea is you run an agent on the device and you don't use SSH to talk to the agent using HTTPS.
So using a web-based protocol rather than traditional SSH.
So the idea there is your controller, your controlling device or your management device talks to the agent
on the device that then configures the device but with Ansible it's agentless.
We're not running an agent or special software on the routers and switches we are connecting directly
to them from a server.
Make sure you can also interpret JSON encoded data.
I was quite surprised by that one but yeah make sure you spend a bit of time on automation and programmability
but don't get stuck on this topic.
It's a new topic in the exam.
Don't get stuck on it.
Notice security fundamentals has more information or its more important.
15 percent IP services is 10 percent.
talking about traditional stuff, like DHCP, DNS, NTP, SNMP, so SNMP has been around for years
Do you understand which underlying protocols are used by these upper-layer protocols?
So which protocol does SNMP use?
is it UDP, is it TCP? Which protocol does SSH use, TCP, UDP?
Make sure that you understand various protocols and the underlying protocols under them.
So I mean I could list all of these topics.
I mean my exam was very broad covered a whole bunch of topics.
I think it was a very balanced exam.
I think it was a good exam. Okay so hopefully you've learned something.
If you have please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel once again please like this video and
please click on the bell to get notifications.
I'm David Bombal and I want to wish you all the very best.