What’s on the test?

From first graders to grad students, one of the first questions or thoughts about any upcoming test is what’s on the test. In case you hadn’t noticed yet, Cisco recently released new Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) cert tests, which begs the question as to what’s on the tests. First, since it’s my first day of my planned month of blogging here at Network World, let me say thanks for taking the time to read at least a few paragraphs. The folks at nww.com said I could focus on Cisco certification topics, so I’ll probably spend a week or two looking at CCNA, and then move on to discuss some CCIE R/S topics, as both have changed here in the last several months. However, I’m willing to get discussion about anything relative to how attack/survive/succeed/etc the Cisco cert maze. Some question sticking in your head? Post away. I’ll also do a few surveys just to get a little more objective sense of what you’re thinking. OK, so there’s a lot we can discuss here, but I’ll start out with content on the CCNA exam. For those of you that haven’t looked closely at CCNA before now, briefly, there’s an option to take 2 exams to get your CCNA cert, or to take 1 exam. Most everyone in the past has taken the 1-exam route – the CCNA exam, with old exam number 640-801, and new exam number 640-802. The old exam is available through early November, at which point it goes poof. You can take the new exam now. (More detail at www.cisco.com/go/ccna). So what’s on the exam? Well, the official answer comes from Cisco’s published list of exam topics – for CCNA, check http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/current_exams/640-802.html. In this case, More depth/breadth on OSPF and EIGRP IPv6 basics Wireless LAN basics Security basics Troubleshooting Of all these, most people I’ve talked to so far seem to have the most heartache over IPv6. Historically, IPv6 represents a bit of a “Back to the Future” effect – multiprotocol networks (aka multiple layer 3 protocols) became popular by the early 1990’s, but then IP became so popular that many enterprises run IPv4 as the only layer 3 protocol. Now, companies are migrating to use two layer 3 protocols – IPv4 and IPv6. And to be honest, it’s probably not going to be a migration in the traditional sense – it’ll probably be coexistence for many years. Two CCNA exam topics specifically mention IPv6: one referring to IPv6 addressing and one referring to IPv4/IPv6 coexistence and migration. Learning IPv6 addressing requires just a little reading and some memorization of the various types of addresses. The coexistence topic requires a basic knowledge of tunneling, which is also covered slightly for the VPN topics on the exams. However, Cisco’s web site mentions that exam topics are guidelines, and may not specifically mention all topics that you might see on the exam. So, if you read about IPv6 addressing, coexistence options, and fill in your knowledge with some related features and a little router configuration, you should be well prepared for IPv6 questions on the new CCNA exam. If you know IPv4 pretty well, it’d probably take a few hours to understand the details. So, what’s your biggest concern about taking the new exam instead of trying to pass the old exam? What do you see as the biggest surprises in the exam content (per the exam topics)? Anything technical points bugging you regarding a particular topic? Let me know what’s on your mind. I’ll continue this thread regarding content a little more tomorrow, focusing on troubleshooting, and anything else ya’ll want to discuss. And one favor before I go – we are talking about content on the exams here, and the exams have a non-disclosure agreement that you have to click before taking the exam. So, please don’t post items like “what do you think the answer to this question is”. However, we can all speculate about what the posted exam topics mean, however, so feel free to jump in the discussion.