The 8 Steps I Took to Pass the CCNA in 2025
- Completed Neil Anderson’s course and did every single lab
- Took my first Boson ExSim exam
- Hit a wall — felt completely stuck and almost gave up
- Binge-watched Keith Barker’s CCNA playlist on YouTube
- Took detailed notes on all exam topics to reinforce my understanding
- Tried another Boson exam… and failed again 😩
- Found out on Reddit that many people feel Boson is harder than the real exam
- Took the real exam the next day — and passed! 🎉
Let’s go through each of them in more detail. I want to make this as valuable for you as possible, so you can learn from both my experience and my mistakes.
Neil Anderson’s Udemy Course
It’s always been my strategy to start with a video course, and it’s worked well for me in the past — both for the A+ and Network+ exams. So naturally, I went on Udemy and picked up Neil Anderson’s 42.5-hour CCNA exam prep course.
Some people might find his accent hard to understand, and don't like his monotone delivery. However, I enjoyed listening to him. He explains everything in plain, simple English, which makes complex topics feel much more approachable.
The course itself is also really well structured. It includes hands-on Packet Tracer labs, and I made sure to complete every single one of them.
One resource that really stood out to me was the PDF course notes that Neil provides. They were invaluable, because I used them to take notes while watching the videos, and they also served as a great reference.
In my opinion, the final section of the course — which dives into AI — felt like a bit of a stretch. It went a little too in-depth and, honestly, didn’t feel all that relevant to the core exam material.
Took my first Boson ExSim exam
After finishing Neil Anderson’s course, I felt pretty confident. I had watched all the videos, completed every lab, and genuinely believed I had a good grasp of most of the topics. I was feeling ready — or so I thought.
In order to test where I really stood, I went ahead and bought the Boson ExSim practice exams, which are widely known for being some of the best and most realistic CCNA practice tests out there.
But after taking my first exam, I hit a wall — I only scored 60%.
That was a huge setback. Up until that point, I thought I was close to being exam-ready, but the results told a different story.
Instead of getting discouraged or blaming the test, I took it as valuable feedback. At the time I didn't question Boson's difficulty and I knew I needed to reinforce some of my weaker areas. For that reason, I went looking for additional study resources that could help me improve further.
Binge-watched Keith Barker’s CCNA playlist on YouTube
To supplement my learning, I searched for CCNA content on YouTube and came across Keith Barker’s channel. Right away, his charisma and energy stood out. He’s one of those instructors who keeps things engaging, even when the topic gets technical. His Cisco CCNA 200-301 | 175+ vid Playlist playlist has over 160 videos, all packed with valuable insights.
I used his videos to dig deeper into the concepts I was still unsure about. In particular, I had been struggling with Spanning Tree Protocol and OSPF’s DR/BDR election process — both topics that had felt confusing, even after Neil Anderson’s course.
Keith’s way of breaking things down finally made them click for me. His explanations, combined with visual examples and his natural teaching style, helped me truly understand.
Took detailed notes on all exam topics to reinforce my understanding
At some point, I realized I hadn’t taken very detailed notes, and worse — I wasn’t even sure if I had covered all of the official exam objectives. I printed out the official CCNA Exam v1.1 (200-301) exam objectives and used it as a checklist to guide my final review.
From there, I went through every single point on that list and started writing down everything I knew — by hand — on pieces of paper. And let me tell you, I WROTE A LOT 😅
My room looked absolutely wild for a while. I had notes taped all over my walls, filled with definitions, diagrams, key points — you name it. I also made sure to print out reference sheets with all the essential CLI commands, because those are just as important as theory.
That said, if you’re doing enough hands-on labs (like the ones in Neil Anderson’s course or using Packet Tracer), you’ll start to pick up the commands naturally. Still, having a printed cheat sheet helped me review everything at a glance and made sure I didn’t overlook any details.
Tried another Boson exam… and failed again 😩
After having written pages and pages of notes, reviewing them constantly, and even coming up with creative mnemonics to remember things like the Syslog severity levels — for example, “Every Awesome Cisco Engineer Will Need Ice Cream Daily” 🍦 — I finally felt ready to take another shot at the second Boson practice exam.
But… I failed again. Although my score improved, I was still far from passing.
Found out on Reddit that many people feel Boson is harder than the real exam
At this point, I really started to question the validity of the Boson exams — and wondered if the real CCNA exam was actually that difficult.
I turned to Reddit and came across a comment that caught my attention.
Personally Boson feels way harder, especially the Lab (they were verry barebone in the CCNA exam). I did the exam C a day before my CCNA exam and hit 72% but on the real CCNA I achieved 90% overall. Boson Is great for learning and getting a feeling about how the exam will be but I feel there a multiple themes which aren't really asked in the real thing.
It seemed many others had faced the same struggles with Boson. I wasn’t alone. In fact, some people claimed passing the real exam despite scoring only around 70% on Boson practice tests.
Took the real exam the next day — and passed! 🎉
The messages on Reddit made me more confident and I signed up for the real exam that same day and took it the next day on Pearson VUE. I was so motivated I couldn’t wait any longer.
The exam definitely required a lot of focus and was mentally taxing — but it all paid off. I passed with a score well above 90%.
Pro tip: If English isn’t your native language (like in my case), you automatically get an extra 30 minutes to complete the exam. You don’t need to request it separately — just make sure to schedule your exam in English, and the extra time will be added by default.
Summary
To my surprise, the real exam was definitely easier than Boson. In my opinion, Boson tends to overcomplicate things, asking very specific questions that dive too deep into the details. The labs in Boson were also much more extensive, while the CCNA labs felt more balanced and manageable.
The CCNA focuses more on interpreting information and choosing the best solution based on what you see. You need to be quick at subnetting and comfortable reading and understanding routing tables.
Unfortunately, I can’t share any specifics about the actual exam due to Cisco’s policies, but I can say this: the CCNA exam is fair — as long as you know your objectives well.