If you want to advance your career in network engineering and becoming Cisco certified as either a CCNA or CCNP could be beneficial. These credentials validate your knowledge and abilities when designing, installing, configuring, and troubleshooting local area networks and wide area networks. But how should one prepare for Cisco Certifications exams on LAN-WAN topics? Here are some tips that will help ensure your success.
Understanding Exam Objectives
First step to taking an exam with Cisco Certifications is familiarizing yourself with its objectives and topics, which you can find either on their official website or exam guides. Each objective outlines specific skills or concepts you must master for that exam (CCNA exams: implement and administer using various protocols devices and technologies while for CCNP: design secure optimize using advanced techniques tools).
Choose your study resources carefully
Next step in your study process should be selecting your study resources. There are various options available such as books, videos, online courses, practice tests, labs and forums; pick those that best meet your learning style, budget and schedule. For self-paced learners using books and videos might work while those needing additional guidance may enroll in an online course or join a study group; practice tests can help assess progress while practice labs help identify weak areas.
Create Your Lab Environment
Building your lab environment is the third step toward developing hands-on experience and confidence with configuring and troubleshooting LAN-WAN scenarios. Your lab can include physical or virtual devices, or both; realistic network topologies, configurations and challenges should match exam objectives and topics; such as routers, switches, firewalls, wireless access points or WAN emulators are good ways of simulating different LAN-WAN environments.
Reevaluate your knowledge and skillset
The fourth step is reviewing your knowledge and skills regularly and systematically before the exam day, especially the key concepts, terms, commands, protocols, technologies relevant to the exam as well as practicing troubleshooting and problem-solving with various tools or methods (ping, traceroute, show debug packet capture) so as to diagnose and resolve LAN-WAN issues more easily.
Manage Your Time and Stress
The fifth step to managing time and stress effectively is planning your study schedule and exam date well in advance and sticking to it. Allocate enough time for each section/question in an exam, without spending too much time on unfamiliar or difficult topics. You should also mentally/physically prepare yourself for test day by resting, sleeping well, eating healthily, remaining positive, reading the instructions carefully before writing answers down, checking them against previous submissions before turning them in, reading through ENCOR exam instructions in detail before turning in your answers, as well as reviewing any relevant exam instructions before handing over answers before turning them in.
Final Step – Understand Mistakes
Finally, it is essential that we learn from our errors. No matter the outcome of an exam regardless of passing or failing. The review performance and feedback and look closely at strengths, weaknesses, errors and gaps to see where improvement might be possible. Celebrate achievements while acknowledging efforts. Seek feedback from others who have taken it before you listen and learn from their experiences and tips. So update knowledge and skills continually in pursuit of continual learning and improvement.
