Following on from my certification that has expired after 3 years and it was renewal time!
The CCNA exam has changed a lot over the last 4 years, the current one is now dubbed 640-801, and this page is a list of tips and helpful notes on what you need to know and how to learn it all.
Firstly, the goals of what you need to know. The following list is the things you need to know really well - in other words, you should be able to recall these things instantly.
Subnetting. You need to be able to calculate subnet numbers ( subnet address, broadcast address, first and last useable IP addresses ) in your head, and fairly quickly for any IP class and number of subnet bits.
Routing protocols. These include RIP, RIP2, IGRP, EIGRP and OSPF. You'll need to know the types for each ( distance vector, link state, hybrid ), the metrics ( bandwidth, speed ) and administrative distances for each one. A fair idea of the types of tables that each uses will be useful.
WAN protocols. Know all the encapsulation types ( PPP, DLCI, Frame Relay, etc ) and the quirks of each one. In particular, remember the default encapsulation for router interfaces.
Note this : the exam was a little harder than the questions in the book and trial exams you find in CD or online.
You need to practice setting up and fault-finding on routers and switches. You should practice until you can fully configure a pair of routers from scratch to talk to each other over serial interfaces within a minute or two.
Switches are much simpler than routers, and you may be able to get away with not having one to practice on depending on how confident and experienced you are.
Use Packet Tracer. At a bare minimum, you'll be wanting a couple of 1600 series routers with a serial WIC in each and a serial crossover cable. Make sure they're running a fairly recent version of IOS such as 12.3 or higher. The good thing about this is that you can actually touch and see the cables, power-off the routers, and do stuff like messing with the configuration register and recovering the enable password. Great fun.
Get comfortable before you start. You've usually got a bit of time to do a "test introduction" - its a good idea to do this just to calm your nerves and get used to the types of questions that you'll be facing.
Watch your time. You could be very busy : I found the exam took more work than the trial exams in Todd Lammle's Sybex book.
Use pencil and paper only when you need to. Because there isn't much time to work things out by hand.
You can usually eliminate one or two of the multi-choice answers straight away. Get used to this process by doing lots of trial exams and eliminate answers quickly and consistently in your head ( not on paper, remember? ).
If you see questions that you haven't studied for, then eliminate the bogus answers, take your best guess and move on. Don't sweat it out. Some questions are "trial" questions which may be outside the current CCNA syllabus and you won't be marked on these.
Be prepared for "complex" questions. For example, single questions that demand knowledge of subnetting and routing protocols or questions that may show a moderately complex network and ask you to find the fault in it.
Quick LinksA few quick links to get you started.
Cisco CCNA page
Cisco CCNA Prep Centre
Prometric - for booking exams
Well, that's about it. The good thing about the CCNA exam is not that it teaches you a lot about Cisco specific products, but that you will learn a lot about TCP/IP networking. And these days, such knowledge is really essential to get a good job in IT. I've met many people in IT that don't understand basic things like subnetting, VLANs and WAN protocols and they often get into trouble when tackling simple problems and designing what should be simple solutions.
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