I'm scheduled for the switching exam in less that 2 hours. I figured I'd drop my thoughts in before the exam so they are untainted by the exam experience. I'll post a follow-up tomorrow.
I have hands-on experience with the Catalyst 5000, 4000 and 29XX series. We are in a small network environment however so very little of what I studied had I ever used. I used 3 things. I started by reading the CiscoPress book in August, and I got to the chapter about Inter-Vlan routing, when I got too busy. Well the middle of October I went back to the books, and started the book over, the concepts were much clearer this time, so about half-way through I used the COLT exams on the CCO site. I scored a 29 of 63.
I then finished the book early November but still didn't feel confident. I took a COLT exam about this time and got 43/63 (49 is passing), I felt better considering the things I had heard about the COLT but went ahead and bought the BOSON test 2 weeks ago, and I've scored between a 50% to 80% ( + or - ). Since then when I have been able to I've squeezed more studying in and went over the areas I felt weak in. I would have liked to do this for another week or two, but due to the "prevailing winds of uncertainty" at my place of work, I've advanced my time frame. I feel I have an 70/30 (in my favor) chance of passing. I've found Cisco Exams to be harder than any Scumsoft errr... Microsoft exam I took getting my MCSE. However I much more NT experience than Cisco experience.
Just my thoughts. I'll include a follow-up tomorrow and perhaps combined it will give you a feel of how hard the test is. Listed below is my confidence level with each area:
1=Low 10=High
Trunking - 9
Broadcasts - 9
Multicasts - 6
VTP - 9
Routing -7
PIM - 6
Multi-layer Switching -7
Fast Ethernet - 10
IP Multicast -6
QOS - 7
Security - 7
Tag Switching - 7
Static VLans - 10
Troubleshooting -5
IOS -6
Port config - 8
I'm sure I'm leaving other areas out, but I'll see. I think the IOS could hurt me. I understand the concepts and remember most of the commands, but have a hard time remembering which order the parameters go. Another week of studying could fix that. I'll wish myself success and hope this helps others.
Thanks,
Joey Fowler
