Today I started my study review for the ICND1 exam.  I am planning on booking the exam for 10 days time, so I have decided I need to do at least 2-3 hours of study/review each day before the exam.  I started out by doing an hour of subnetting review.  I am using www.subnettingquestions.com for the actual questions, I find that this is a good resource as the questions are quite varied and if you do not read the question correctly you can come unstuck.

Unfortunately this is exactly what I am finding I am doing.  I think I have a good grasp on subnetting generally, however I am still making rudimentary mistakes with some of the basic subnetting questions.  Questions that require you to work out the number of subnets in particular (I am planning a subnetting article so I wont go into the details in this post), for example I know that to calculate the number of subnets, you take the number of bits past the classfull subnet mask and raise 2 to the power of the number of (borrowed) bits, this gives the number of subnets.  However when I do the actual math I tend to look at the binary chart I have on the page and end up counting that 2 to the power of 2 is 2, when it is is clearly not.  I am planning on memorizing 2-3 tables of information which I am going to write down first thing when I get into my exam and the powers of 2 will be one of them.

After about an hour I was happy that the subnetting was substantially better than when I started so I decided to take a practice exam, I scored 90%.  I am not putting too much stock into this because it is the only practice exam I have and I think I am at the point where I have memorized most of the questions, I am using this as a way to get my speed up on the subnetting questions and the simulations.  I have found that I still make some rookie mistakes with some questions so I made a list of the points I am having issues with and will put some focus on them in the coming days.  I then read through my notes from the cisco press book and took another look at the chapter summaries.

I am going to make sure to memorize the TPC/IP and OSI layers, the powers of 2 chart as well as the  private IP address ranges, I figure the more that I write down first thing once I am in the exam the less time I have to spend later regurgitating  it while trying to answer questions and keep my speed up.

I am confident that if I keep this up I will be able to pass the exam first go.