What sort of preparation do I need for a CCNA certification? How much time should it normally take?

Question

I am from a computer engineeing background and have done a couple of courses on networking. I need the certificate to enhance my employability.

Answer 1

How can you prepare effectively?

Through Simulator - A scientific method to prepare You have identified your goal and are ready to prepare yourself for these highly recognized certification exams. You want to score high, the course is large and the time is less. The question is:
* How to prepare fast and accurate?
* How to focus on important topics first, master them fast and retain what you’ve learnt?

The “Solution” is in the approach of your study. Whizlabs has designed and developed Exam Simulators, which guide you to make use of the scientific approach of study. The CCNA Study
Guide recommends using the Whizlabs CCNA Exam Simulator.
“Whizlabs Exam Simulators”, the most advanced test engine not only give you un-matched and proven quality content but also help you prepare and retain whatever you have learnt all the way to your exam. The CCNA Study Guide explains here, step by step, how Exam Simulator works for you!!

Step 1 Diagnostic Exam - Assess yourself
This exam with its specially designed set of questions will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses that need to be worked upon.

Step 2 Practice Exams - Practice your skills
The set of Practice Exams available here, will help you practice more on the actual Certification exam pattern.

Step 3 Customized Exams - Focused practice You can practice again with the customized exams, but with an option to choose yourself, the number of questions, topic, and difficulty level of the questions and that too in the areas you find yourself weak. This
will guide you mould your preparation in the way you want.

Step 4 Quick Revision Notes - Instant revisions Here is a handy list of small pointers straight from the heart of the exam course, which will help you revise the entire CCNA course instantly. Whizlabs simulator includes these notes as ‘part’ of its features.

Step 5 Quiz - Squeeze that extra second Make your study complete by mastering how to manage your time while answering questions under strict time constraints. The feature of Quiz in Whizlabs Simulator has been designed just for this. In this feature, you’ll have option to cho ose the number of
questions from various exam objectives and the time for which the question will be displayed. Study could never be so interesting without this feature!!

Step 6 Final Exam - Grand finale Last comes the final exam, which if taken a day or few days before your actual exam adds to your confidence.

Answer 2

I've been a network tech and a network manager for the last 22 years (like when PC LAN's were invented, yes). A friend of mine that I consider pretty smart has been studying daily for 5 months, including practice exams and a "boot camp" class, and he's failed the test 3 times. He tells me that the test is exceptionally hard unless you have daily, hands-on experience with Cisco equipment, especially routers. He has been working mostly on servers instead of the network gear, and it's made it darn hard to get his CCNA.