About to take the CCENT Certification Test (Part II): Failed Certification

In July I wrote a short post about taking the CCENT to get my networking marketability back up. Well, I took it about one month ago and failed it. It is the first certification I failed. The bad the thing about this, is that it is the lowest level Cisco certification you can take! So, as you can imagine, I took the failure hard. But since I feel that failure is not an option, I have decided to take it again.

How is the CCENT? I would say it is easy. That may sound like a contradiction coming from a guy who just failed it, but allow me to explain. It covers all the basics of TCP/IP & Cisco switching and routing. If you have a year of experience doing routing and switching on Cisco equipment in small to medium environment, you will probably laugh at this test. If you are like me and have mostly an academic understanding of Cisco technology, you may struggle.

Where did I go wrong? I think I just didn’t put enough time into getting on the switches and routers I have at home. In fact, I am ashamed to admit, I put almost no time into it. I have been very busy for the last 7 months working on a very large project.. so I just don’t have a lot of spare time.

Anyway, I will be taking the test again soon.. Wish me luck.