CCNA Intro tomorrow - any advice please?

Hi all. Finally getting round to taking intro tomorrow. Did the course ages ago, but never got round to the cert. When I heard about the expiry coming up I was kicked into action, thinking "it's now or never" so have spent the last few weeks revising. Decided to do the two exam route to break it up, so I will book ICND in a few weeks.

I think I know the stuff quite well, done lots of practice exams from the certification guide and used the CCNA prep centre online, but I was wondering if anyone had any experiences or advice on tackling the exam to share?

Any wisdom would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Hey Gruffallo, long time no speak
You might have gone off to do the exam by the time I write this, but in case not all the best of luck with it and a little tip I picked up from some of the howto pages out there on the net. Apparently when you go in they give you time to compose yourself and get ready. Ask for blank paper. You can use that time to write out, from memory, your subnet tables and anything else you think might help you during the test. The time you take to do so does not count toward the exam. As long as you don't take the papers away with you afterward this is quite legal. Also the actual exam offers you a walkthrough of some example questions to get you used to the question format and the exam platform before the exam proper begins. It is a good idea to do this rather than diving straight in.
Let us know how it goes!

It was suggested to me to take the one test route. What have others done?

Thanks for that. Good news - I passed with a score of 966! Couldn't belive it as I didn't think I'd done anywhere near that well.

As soon as I sat down I wrote out a class c subnetting table, basically a spreadsheet with columns for bin value, dec value, / notation, no. networks and no. hosts per subnet. Found that really useful for some of the questions.

The thing I found difficult was the mental arithmetic under pressure, working out binary values to calculate subnets. I could do it fine at home, but when the test started the first question was a big simulation, with subnets to calculate and addresses and cable types to assign. It took me a bit by surprise and I had to calm myself and focus. I suppose I was hoping for a couple of easy ones to warm up on.

The first two questions took me nearly 15 minutes, which didn't help the stress levels, but in the end I finished with 10 minutes to spare.

Many thanks to everyone at firewall.cx, the resources and the ability to didcuss here really helps.

Oh well, better get that ICND book out, but perhaps there's time for a celebratory pint first. Cheers!

Nice job!

Congratulations mate!