CCNA v1.1 or v2.0: choose by your finish date, and leave room for a retake

The costliest CCNA mistake this winter is the right exam at the wrong time. Study v1.1 too slowly and you hit the cut-over mid-course. Buy v2.0 material too early and you may be studying for an exam you cannot yet book. The rule below needs one calendar and five minutes.

Which dates matter?

Cisco is replacing CCNA 200-301 v1.1 with v2.0. Both versions carry the same exam number, and both lead to the same credential. The dates are short and fixed.

There is no overlap. On 2 February you can sit v1.1; the next morning you cannot. Cisco's own advice in July 2026 was to finish v1.1 by its last day rather than pause your study to wait for v2.0.

Nothing else about the exam format changes the choice. Both last 120 minutes, and Cisco publishes neither the number of questions nor the pass mark for either. So the question is timing and material, in that order.

The decision rule

Find the row that describes you. If two rows fit, the last one wins, because an employer or course that has chosen a version usually has a reason.

As a planning rule of thumb, not a Cisco deadline, read "by January 2027" as a first v1.1 sitting no later than about the middle of the month. That leaves more than two weeks for a five-day retake wait, a booking and a second try.

Work out your finish date before you choose

Cisco publishes no study-hour figure. CredenTrek uses 120 to 200 hours, labs included, as a working assumption. Divide your total by your real weekly hours, not your best week, then add roughly one buffer week for every eight weeks of plan.

Three worked cases, all starting on Monday 12 October 2026:

• 120 hours at 10 hours a week. Twelve weeks plus two buffer weeks is fourteen weeks, which ends on 18 January 2027. That is inside the v1.1 window, but only about two weeks inside it. Book early in January, not on the last day.
• 150 hours at 10 hours a week. Fifteen weeks plus two buffer weeks is seventeen, which ends on 8 February 2027. That is after the cut-over, so this plan is a v2.0 plan.
• 150 hours at 6 hours a week. Twenty-five weeks plus three buffer weeks is twenty-eight, which ends on 26 April 2027. This is plainly v2.0, and any v1.1 course bought now would be a waste.

In the book, Nabil started v1.1 in July 2026 with ten hours a week. His plan showed a finish in early December, two months before the cut-over, so he kept his course and booked for December. His friend Rawan started in November and chose v2.0 from day one.

What happens to your v1.1 study if you switch?

Less is lost than people fear. Cisco describes v2.0 as a refresh, not an overhaul: the fundamentals stay, troubleshooting grows, and security and AI run through the whole exam. Most v2.0 topics have a close v1.1 match.

If you move from v1.1 to v2.0, do three things:

1. Rebuild your hours by the v2.0 weights, which raise infrastructure and switching to 25 per cent each and lower routing to 20.
2. Add the new material: OSPFv3, HSRP and VRRP status, DNS record diagnosis, and the two AI topics.
3. Practise troubleshooting as well as configuring, because v2.0 asks you to find faults as well as fix them.

Then replace your practice tests with ones that name v2.0. What changed in CCNA v2.0 compares every domain, and the study hours guide turns your total into dated stages.

Record your version and book the right exam

Write your choice down today with your goal, your target exam month and a review date. A written version stops you drifting between two sets of material.

When you book through Pearson VUE, choose 200-301 CCNA, the version and your language. Check the version on your confirmation before you close the page. If you are unsure, check the exam topics on Cisco's page, which show the version number, the domain weights and the first or last test date.

Chapter 3 of CredenTrek For Cisco CCNA holds the decision record, and Chapter 5 maps all 29 v2.0 topics to their closest v1.1 topics so you can see which of your notes still count.