October 8, 2026
After four years of on-and-off studying, multiple exam attempts, labs, practice tests, rescheduling, and more subnetting than I care to admit, I can finally say it:
I passed the Cisco CCNA 200-301 exam.
This certification has been sitting on my list for a long time.
My CCNA journey actually started back in 2022, when I made my first attempt at the exam.
I didn’t pass.
I tried again in 2023.
I didn’t pass that attempt either.
After that, CCNA became one of those goals that never really went away. I might step away from it for a while, focus on work, another certification, or a different project, but eventually I always came back to networking.
Then in 2026, I decided I was going to make another serious run at it.
That led to another attempt on June 30, 2026.
Again, I didn’t pass.
But this time was different.
Instead of putting CCNA back on the shelf, I kept going.
And on October 8, 2026, four years after my first attempt, I finally got the result I had been working toward.
PASS.
Why CCNA Was Different
I’ve worked on several certifications over the years, but CCNA was different.
It wasn’t necessarily because every individual topic was extremely difficult. The challenge was the sheer amount of material Cisco expects you to understand and, more importantly, apply.
Networking fundamentals.
Switching.
Routing.
OSPF.
VLANs.
Spanning Tree.
EtherChannel.
NAT.
ACLs.
DHCP.
IPv4.
IPv6.
Wireless.
Security.
Automation.
And plenty of smaller topics in between.
There is a lot to know, but simply memorizing all of it wasn’t enough.
That became one of the biggest lessons of this entire process.
The Earlier Attempts
Looking back, my first two attempts in 2022 and 2023 were part of the learning process.
At the time, of course, they didn’t feel that way.
Nobody enjoys walking out of a certification exam knowing they’re going to have to do it all over again.
But each attempt gave me a better understanding of the exam and, more importantly, showed me that I needed to become more comfortable actually working with networking concepts instead of simply recognizing them in study material.
When I returned to CCNA seriously in 2026, I had also gained several more years of real-world IT experience.
Networking concepts that once felt mostly theoretical were becoming things I could relate to environments and problems I had actually worked with.
Still, my June 2026 attempt showed me that there was more work to do.
Instead of stepping away again, I decided to change the way I was preparing.
Changing How I Studied
One of the biggest changes I made was moving away from simply watching videos and trying to memorize information.
I started spending significantly more time actually doing networking.
Some of the resources I used throughout the process included:
- CBT Nuggets
- Boson ExSim
- Boson NetSim
- Jeremy’s IT Lab
- Packet Tracer labs
- Practice questions and flashcards
- My own Cisco equipment and real configurations
Boson became especially valuable because it had a habit of exposing areas where I thought I understood something better than I actually did.
There is a big difference between recognizing the correct answer and being able to explain why every other answer is wrong.
That became a major part of how I studied.
Whenever I missed a question, I stopped simply writing down the correct answer.
Instead, I started asking why I missed it.
Was it a knowledge gap?
Did I misread the question?
Did I misunderstand the command syntax?
Did I overlook a subnet mask?
Did I change an answer that was originally correct?
Was I rushing?
That approach helped me identify patterns instead of treating every missed question as an isolated mistake.
Learning to Read the Network
Over time, something started changing.
Instead of looking at a configuration and seeing a wall of Cisco commands, I started being able to read the story behind it.
I could look at an interface and recognize that it was probably a WAN connection based on the subnet and configuration.
I could look at a routing table and understand why a particular route would be selected.
I could look at an OSPF configuration and identify areas, neighbors, passive interfaces, and redistribution.
I became much more comfortable troubleshooting VLANs, trunks, EtherChannel, STP, NAT, ACLs, and DHCP.
Subnetting also became something I could work through without having to stop everything else I was doing.
Eventually I found myself looking at configurations from actual Cisco equipment and trying to determine what the router or switch was doing before looking anything up.
That was probably the point when I realized something important:
I wasn’t just studying for CCNA anymore.
I was actually learning networking.
The Topics That Kept Fighting Back
That doesn’t mean everything suddenly became easy.
There were several topics that repeatedly showed up in my missed questions.
IPv6 was definitely one of them.
NAT terminology—particularly inside local, inside global, outside local, and outside global—also managed to cause problems more than once.
Extended ACL syntax required careful attention because Cisco loves testing whether you understand the placement of source addresses, destination addresses, protocols, and port numbers.
There were also smaller details involving:
- HSRP priorities and timers
- OSPF neighbor requirements
- DR and BDR behavior
- IPv6 EUI-64
- Route selection
- Administrative distance
- DNS behavior
- Wireless concepts
- Automation and controllers
Eventually, instead of reviewing the entire CCNA curriculum every time something went wrong, I started concentrating on the specific areas that were actually costing me points.
That made studying much more efficient.
Labs Made the Difference
If I could give one piece of advice to someone preparing for CCNA, it would be this:
Do the labs.
Watching somebody configure OSPF is not the same as configuring OSPF yourself.
Reading about EtherChannel is not the same as troubleshooting one that refuses to form because both sides are configured as LACP passive.
Knowing the definition of a static route is not the same as looking at several routes and determining which one will actually be used.
The more labs I completed, the more comfortable I became with Cisco IOS.
Commands stopped feeling like individual lines I needed to memorize and started becoming tools I knew how to use.
The labs also helped reinforce something that became increasingly important throughout my studying: troubleshooting.
It’s one thing to configure something correctly from scratch.
It’s another thing entirely to be given a configuration that doesn’t work and figure out why.
That skill became far more valuable than memorizing another list of commands.
Rescheduling the Exam
There were several points throughout 2026 when I considered taking the exam again and ultimately decided I wasn’t ready yet.
The retake moved more than once.
That was frustrating.
After studying for something for this long, there comes a point where you don’t just want to pass it—you want to be done with it.
But there is a difference between being tired of studying for an exam and actually being ready to take it.
Eventually, the date became:
October 8, 2026.
This time I intended to keep it.
The Final Stretch
During the final weeks, I stopped trying to learn huge amounts of new information.
Most of the work became targeted review.
Practice questions.
Missed-question analysis.
Short labs.
Routing tables.
ACLs.
NAT.
IPv6.
OSPF.
STP.
And there was one lesson that kept coming up during practice exams:
Use the clock.
One of the easiest ways to hurt yourself on a certification exam is spending too much time fighting one difficult question.
I had to get comfortable recognizing when I knew something, reasoning through questions when I wasn’t immediately sure, and then moving forward.
Another major focus was reading questions carefully.
Words like BEST, NOT, EXCEPT, or instructions asking for multiple answers can completely change what a question is asking.
Some of my practice-test misses weren’t because I didn’t know the material.
I simply didn’t read carefully enough.
Those mistakes were frustrating, but they were also fixable.
The Night Before
The night before the exam, I originally planned to take another practice test.
It was getting late.
I had already studied.
I had already done labs.
I had already reviewed the areas that had been causing problems.
Instead of forcing myself through another exam just for the sake of saying I studied one more time, I went to bed.
Looking back, that may have been one of the better decisions I made during the entire process.
At some point, more studying stops helping.
You have to trust the work you’ve already done.
Exam Day
On the morning of October 8, I was awake extremely early—and unfortunately still dealing with a cough.
Not exactly how I imagined starting exam day.
Instead of doing a massive last-minute study session, I kept things simple.
I did one short review consisting of ten questions.
I got 9 out of 10 correct.
The only miss was an HSRP question involving priority.
At that point, there wasn’t much else to accomplish.
No giant review.
No last-minute practice exam.
No trying to cram another chapter into my head in the parking lot.
It was time to take the test.
And eventually came the screen I had been trying to reach since 2022:
PASS
I was finally CCNA certified.
My Final Domain Results
Cisco doesn’t provide candidates with a traditional numerical score, but my exam report showed the following domain performance:
| Domain | Score |
|---|---|
| Network Fundamentals | 60% |
| Network Access | 90% |
| IP Connectivity | 84% |
| IP Services | 40% |
| Security Fundamentals | 67% |
| Automation & Programmability | 90% |
Apparently IP Services decided it wanted one final fight before letting me leave.
Fortunately, Network Access, IP Connectivity, and Automation had my back.
Seeing 84% in IP Connectivity and 90% in Network Access was particularly satisfying.
Routing and switching represented a huge portion of the work I had put into preparing for the exam, and those scores made it clear that the labs and troubleshooting had paid off.
The 90% in Automation and Programmability was also a nice surprise.
What I Learned From the Process
The biggest thing CCNA taught me wasn’t a Cisco command.
It was the difference between studying something and understanding it.
You can memorize:
show ip route
You can memorize that OSPF has an administrative distance of 110.
You can memorize wildcard masks.
You can memorize which LACP combinations will form an EtherChannel.
But eventually you need to be able to look at a network you haven’t seen before and figure out what is happening.
That’s where the labs, troubleshooting, failed practice questions, and previous exam attempts became useful.
They forced me to build an actual understanding of the material.
And that knowledge doesn’t disappear when the certification exam is over.
Four Years Later
I first attempted CCNA in 2022.
I tried again in 2023.
I came back for another serious run in 2026 and missed it again in June.
Then, on October 8, 2026, I finally passed.
Four years is a long time to have one certification sitting on the unfinished list.
There were plenty of opportunities to decide it wasn’t worth continuing.
But none of the failed attempts ended the journey.
They became part of it.
And honestly, finally passing after everything that came before it probably made seeing that PASS result mean considerably more than it would have if I had knocked the exam out on the first attempt.
What’s Next?
For the moment, I’m enjoying finally having CCNA checked off the list.
Not for very long, though.
My Microsoft AI-901 exam is next week, so apparently my idea of taking a break from certification exams needs some work.
After that, there are already other projects and certifications on the horizon.
But this particular goal is finally complete.
The certificate has been downloaded.
The Credly badge has been verified.
And after four years, multiple attempts, countless practice questions, a lot of labs, and more than a few frustrating moments, I can finally put four more words on the résumé:
Cisco Certified Network Associate.