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Hi Guys,

Currently, I am a managed services “junior engineer” in a company that has 10 data centers. I work on a lot of CISCO switches, Fortigates, and from time to time ASA Firewalls. I also implement a lot of site to site IPSEC VPN tunnels with customers of our customers. This helped me better understand /24, /26, /28’s and what subnet goes with them as I carve up space for 1 to 1 NAT rules and such. I also have a better understanding of ACLs/Policies and how to work my way around any firewall’s GUI as I provision/build customer’s environments from the ground up. It seems as though every day I am in a different customer’s firewall and/or switch doing something.

Aside from that I do all sorts of trouble shooting. Basically I am either struggling/mildly struggling in Networking or working with Vmware on a daily basis. Every day I touch 2-3 cisco switches and am either creating VLANS, seeing what ports are available, creating stacks, trunking and so on.

I have a wide range of skill sets that relates to networking and also cisco devices. All of which I have learned from hands on experience in live environments. I have a very hard time opening a book or going through power points/presentations when I get home from work. I only learn from hands on work or being physically in a class.

I might get the go ahead from corporate to put me through a class in order to brush up on / sharpen my networking skills and acquire my CCNA. I currently have 0 certifications and only 4 years of IT working experience. I live in the RTP area. Does anyone have any recommendations for a class? I guess I am looking to round myself out so I can provide more value to the company I work for and their customers. Thank you in advance.

@Cisco

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I was in a classroom for CCNA in 2002 with an instructor that really invested in preparing his classes and discussing the material. It was engaging and overall a great learning experience. I went after CCNA again in 2006 at a different college and let me tell you the environment was very different. Sure, I was physically in a classroom, but the guy just had us log into the Cisco academy and watch the powerpoints and do our exams. He wasn’t an instructor. He was a glorified hall monitor. It was really horrible.

As far as I can tell, this is the standard for Cisco classes now. They want you in their system following their materials. I don’t know if you can find a “good” Cisco class anymore.

2c

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I have taken Cisco Classes before as they were part of my associates degree. I’m currently studying and have been studying for awhile for my CCNA. I just took it last month and failed by a few points sadly. It will help that you work on this gear in your job, but the exam goes way past knowing how to thumb your way around. You will really have to learn what’s going on and how to troubleshoot problems you’ll probably never see in production. After watching the train signal, CBT Nugget, and Udemy video courses and reading three different CCNA books my favorite method of studying is self study using the Cisco Press books. These books are great as they give you chapters to read, quizzes, exercises, practice tests, even a method to study. I’ve done all this training over a 2 year period as I stopped studying and pick things back up, just keep that in mind.

Here is a how-to I wrote on how to use the Cisco Press books

http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/49109-how-to-study-for-icnd-2-ccna-200-101

I also have several CCNA related how-tos and even a blog where I’ve uploaded my notes.

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You really need a good hands on CISCO lab, build a network from scratch, L1 cabling, configuring router and switch interfaces, using different routing protocols IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP, etc., subnetting IPv4, the OSI Model, etc. My local Western Nevada College instructor was great… fully qualified Cisco Engineer and boy did he put the pressure on us. For the final, after we had built the network with 16 PC’s, routers, switches, etc. we had to re-configure OSPF to all work by our self, fully communicating and pinging all interfaces to the other networks, then they would break it with three issues and we had to figure it out without reloading the original configuration run file or reconfiguring it. Yeah baby, that was fun. Oh yeah, and it was accelerated CISCO 101, and 102 in one semester

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If you’re wanting a good class (and for the record I’m not Cisco certified or not have taken classes), I would check the Cisco site. I’m sure on their training locator they are going to offer suggestions with partners. For the best prices, you might want to check with your local community college for Cisco classes which may be offered. Some of them use the curriculum for the various exams. For something more immediate, you might want to take some kind of boot camp, but those are significantly more expensive.

The upside to some of those boot camps is they offer financing or are able to use GI Bill (if you are a vet) or if your employer is willing, then you might get a prepay or reimbursement. You might also want to check with your hardware or software vendor as some of them offer Cisco credits in which you can take training as part of the overall package which you purchased from them.

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I’m in CCNA class this week and next at New Horizons. The class is based off Cisco curriculum. The teacher goes through the book explaining things along the way. At various points you stop to do labs to illustrate what was taught in the book. New Horizon provides the Transcender practice tests. They generally want you to be able to pass 3 practice tests with 90% or better in a row before they give you the voucher to take the real test.

I just finished ICDN1 this week, next week will be ICDN2.