ICND1 (ver 1.1) any one here taken this recently?

[Jay]

Looking to get my CCNA and going to start with ICND1, any advice for me, best reading etc?

Thanks

[oolon]

If you don't have any real hardware to play with get yourself a home lab of all switches/routers from ebay. You can by from most test centres you can by the Cisco books for not much money at all.

[e-LAN-go]

I'm looking to take my CCNA exam soon as well but the rather the combined exam.

I'd recommend trying the mock exams which you can find here http://www.examcollection.com/cisco_exams.html and it gets regularly updated with newer ones as well.

http://www.9tut.com/ is another decent resource, worth a look.

[badass]

Download GNS3.
Download a torrent of IOS images.
OR
Go to Ebay, buy cheap used cisco switches and routers.

resister here http://www.howtonetwork.net/public/department95.cfm
Get the sybex 640-802 book. forget ICND1.

Read the sybex book, do all of the excersises and make sure you fully understand at each stage before moving on.
Use the revision booklets provided by the learn CCNA in 60 days and make sure that everything that must be memorised is memorised.
The hardest part of all of this is getting GNS3/dynamips working properly. It's very fiddly. Learning the CCNA is pretty easy and provided you memorise the info on the sheets, passing the exam is also easy.

[e-LAN-go]

Packet tracer (www.packettracerdownload.com) is a good emulator for simulations as it's pretty easy to use so I'd recommend that over GNS3 for just CCNA.