The primary objective of this book is to help you achieve the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification so that you can enhance your career. I believe that the only way you can increase your knowledge is through theoretical and practical learning. In other words, this book provides the book learning as well as basic hands-on experience that you’ll need to pass the exam. However, once you pass the CCNA exam, your journey is just beginning: you’ll need to enhance your newly acquired skills with additional reading and a lot of hands-on experience.
It is important to point out that there are two ways of achieving your CCNA certification:
The CCNA 640-801 exam includes the same topics that the INTRO 640-821 and ICND 640-811 exams cover. Cisco developed the second approach more for individuals who are just beginning their journey into networking, especially for people taking the CCNA curriculum at a Cisco Network Academy. The two-test approach is better suited for this environment since it takes a year to two years to go through Cisco’s CCNA curriculum at the Network Academies. With this approach, you take the INTRO 640-821 exam half way through the curriculum and the ICND 640-811 exam at the end of the curriculum.
If you already have networking experience, especially if that experience includes configuring Cisco devices, you are better off taking the single CCNA 640-801 exam. The main advantage of this approach is that you only have to pay for one exam. Currently, most Cisco exams cost $125 US to take (at the time of the printing of this book), but Cisco has changed their pricing scheme in the past and will probably do so in the future.
This book was primarily written for those individuals wishing to pass the CCNA 640-801 exam. However, this book contains ALL of the information that you would need in order to pass both the INTRO 640-821 and ICND 640-811 exams. Therefore, it is really up to you which testing approach you wish to take in order to achieve your CCNA certification.