(Wendell here - Kevin's wrapping up today on CCNA Security - thanks, Kevin!) Kevin Wallace, CCIE #7945, CCSI, CCSP, CCNP, CCDP, CCVP, is a full-time instructor of Cisco courses for SkillSoft Corp. and is an author of several Cisco Press titles. Kevin’s Cisco experience spans 19 years and includes positions as a Network Design Specialist for Walt Disney World and as a Network Manager for Eastern Kentucky University.
Read more
Wendell here. I've asked Kevin Wallace to take a few posts to discuss CCNA Security. Please fire away all the questions you have on this new cert! Thanks...
Kevin Wallace, CCIE #7945, CCSI, CCSP, CCNP, CCDP, CCVP, is a full-time instructor of Cisco courses for SkillSoft Corp. and is an author of several Cisco Press titles. Kevin’s Cisco experience spans 19 years and includes positions as a Network Design Specialist for Walt Disney World and as a Network Manager for Eastern Kentucky University.
Read more
When writing books, I have to stick to the topic. Blogging (supposedly) can be whatever's on your mind - quite a different beast. Today, I'm hitting a lot of small topics on a brief ramble.
First, I'll be doing a chat session for Network World on Tuesday the 8th at 2PM Eastern US time. Join in the fun, ask whatever's on your mind. Or, go to http://www.networkworld.com/chat/ and queue up your question now. The official topic is " Cisco certs and Building a Home Lab", but I'll listen to anything that makes it through the content filters.
Read more
I mentioned Wednesday in this blog that Cisco announced three new CCNA exams this week at Networkers: CCNA Voice, CCNA Security, and CCNA Wireless. On the flight down to Orlando, I was pondering the question "why". Turns out that my #1 guess as to why was the main reason I heard from Cisco when I asked at the booth this week. But, just as importantly, I thought is was important to consider what the new certs are not supposed to be.
First on what it's not: It's not a new requirement on Channel Partners. Normally, cert changes have some requirements on Channel Partners, which then results in more time/expense, but no such requirement exists in this case. (Well, at least for today. Never know down the road. That's just me thinking out loud, by the way.)
Read more
It was a Networkers 1998 - Philadelphia, I believe - where Cisco first announced CCNA to the general public. Now, 10 years later at Networkers 2008 (aka Cisco Live), Cisco is announcing some major additions to CCNA.
I'm going to repeat this a few times so there's no question: the existing CCNA is NOT changing per Cisco's announcement this week. What is changing is that Cisco is expanding the CCNA program, adding three new certifications that have the CCNA name:
Good old 10 year old CCNA keeps the same name.
Read more
Friday I posed an open-ended IPv6 addressing question. Today I'll start working towards the solution - but more importantly, I want to find out whether you personally, if you were preparing for the CCNA exam, would want to read/study IPv6 address (only), or whether you would also feel the need to practice IPv6 commands on gear/sim/Dynamips.
Before you answer, let me tell you an assumption I'd like to make when working through this: let's take Cisco's exam topics at face value. If you look at the CCNA and ICND2 exam topics, you'll see the following (quoting http://www.cisco.com/):
Read more
I promise I'll get to the next post on IPv6 Wednesday sometime. It's been unusually hectic of late, as opposed to normally hectic. But before I whine any more, on to the non-technical purpose of today's blog entry: if you're at Networkers next week, you'll see lots of giveaways from Cisco Press at the bookstore - and this blog is the only place we're announcing one of the giveaways.
Here's the deal. You get a bunch of books if you win (somewhere more than 1, but less than 10, TBD). To enter, you have to stop by the bookstore between 3-4PM local on Tuesday, June 24th, to enter the drawing.
Read more
Way back a few weeks ago, when I had wrapped up the CCNP lab series, I asked via survey what CCNA topics you'd most want me to talk about in the blog. The top vote getter was IPv6. I had planned on getting back to basics a bit, picking a topic, offering some sample questions, and doing some CCNA exam prep topics here in the blog.
At the same time, there were more than a few requests for me to write more about labs and gear, and particularly about the whole "now that I bought the gear, what do I do with it" thing. So, I'm going to try and weave the two together, and we'll see how things go.
Read more
Wow, I wrote my last post on a bit of a whim, and we got a great discussion going. Less than 10% of us think it'd make the Cisco Associate and Professional exams worse by moving to completely CLI tests. More surprising to me was that close to 70% thought that an all CLI test improved their chance of passing, with only 16% thinking it would decrease their chance of passing. Also, around 30% of you through that a 75 minute exam could hold 15 or more Sim/Simlet questions!
Read more
Don't panic. Don't rejoice. Don't send John Chambers a letter. But at the end of the post, I wanna know - did the title make you think "hoorah" or "oh @%$&"?
Read more
We've got several hurdles to overcome in getting better at passing exams. Our survey from a few weeks ago confirmed that the #1 hurdle is the time crunch. At the same time, another survey told us that about half of us think that you've been most successful on your exams when you've done more detailed planning of what you will do during your study time.
I'm convinced that the two are linked: a detailed plan makes you more productive when you do get to study, and that's especially true when you might need to set aside your studies for several days at a time.
Read more
The last few posts, I've been focusing on our collective progress with passing Cisco exams this year, and what's holding us back. It appears that the planning more deeply - beyond just picking the exam and buying the right study resources - can certainly speed up the study process as well as make us all more successful in passing the exam. So, it seems appropriate that I spend a little time talking about the specifics of a plan.
Read more
Last Tuesday's post and survey has had enough time to cook, so today I'm going to continue that thread, summarize some of the feedback, and talk about why some of us (me included) aren't quite making the progress we'd hoped to make this year.
First, to the data. As a quick reminder, last Tuesday I asked how you had done this year in your actual progress towards your planned Cisco certs, versus the progress you had hoped to make so far. So, let's start with a general characterization of the data to date:
Read more
Exam day is approaching, and you're getting your last few study periods in before taking the test. The pressure builds - ok, it's not like passing the bar, or your last shot at passing your PhD orals, or taking the CPA exam for the 5th time - but it's still pressure. So, what's keeping you up at night? What one topic is giving you the most trouble? What's just not making sense in spite of what you read or study? Or what topic did you finally have to give up on for now, hoping you don't see too much on that topic on your exam?
Read more
Bad, bad Wendell. Zero progress on my cert goals this year. How about you?
Back in January, I posted about our collective new year's resolutions regarding certification. We had a pretty healthy response on the survey as to what certifications you each planned for 2008. I promised then to help in an ever so slight way by asking you each quarter about your progress. Hopefully, stopping for a few minutes to consider your current progress will be worth the time. So... how's your progress?
Read more
It took me almost 3 months, but together we made it through a good discussion of how to build a CCNP lab. After I finished the CCNA lab series before that, I posted a summary page with links to all the blog posts in the series. Likewise, here's a set of links to all the CCNP lab series posts. Enjoy!
Wendell
CCNP Lab Part 1 - Overview and Budget Survey
CCNP Lab Part 2 How Badly Do You Need an L3 Switch?
CCNP Lab Part 3 - Which L2 Switch?
A few weeks ago, I announced a small contest for anyone willing to give a suggested alternative to some of my CCNP lab suggestions. After countless analysis, considering, and a few coin flips, I've chosen a winner. More interesting to most of you though will be why I chose the winner, so let me ramble about that for today's blog.
In my posting for a $1200 CCNP lab, I had posted the following build list:
$1200 Lab 1: Switch-centric
3 X 2950 w/ standard Image $450
2 X 1710 $160
3 X 2610 $375
Read more
Finally... last budget of the 3 options. If you haven't been reading the blog, there's a lot of background to catch up - should be relatively easy to find in the past weeks. Last week, I posted about a suggested CCNP lab with an $800 budget. Earlier this week, I posted about the $1200 budget. Today, I'll hit the $1600 budget.
Same rules as last post, with almost the same assumptions. I'll repeat them here for completeness:
Read more
If you're new here, well, you picked a bad time to start, unless you want to read the last 10 weeks of posts. We're almost to the end of the CCNP lab madness. Last week, I posted about a suggested CCNP lab with an $800 budget. Today, let's expand that to a $1200 budget.
Same rules as last post, with almost the same assumptions. I'll repeat them here for completeness:
Read more
Well, I'm finally ready to spell it out - what would I buy with $800 for a CCNP lab? Your job is to tell us all how you'd tweak my suggestion, or what you'd do that was totally different. Also, if you want to join in the free book contest I announced yesterday, then make sure you post your alternative design using those same requirements.
Again, my assumptions:
Read more
As promised, and just for fun, I want to do a contest. There's no one right way to build this CCNP lab we've been discussing for a while, even making lots of assumptions. So, I'm going to offer a few suggestions for each budget range. As usual, you can comment about my choices, tell me what you'd do different, tell me what models/IOS versions/cards might make it better, what models you can get for cheaper, and so on - just like we've been doing. However, for the contest, if you'll take just a little extra effort, you'll have a shot at a free Cisco Press book.
So, here are the rules.
Read more
What a mess! There's just too many variables for my little processor. There's no right answer, and there's no best solution.
Yep, it's time to pick which routers I'd suggest for a CCNP lab. We've discussed many in the last few months in this blog. But "best" depends on a lot of factors, including cost that varies from week to week on Ebay, features supported by each platform/IOS/feature set, the availability of that IOS version/feature set based on your relationship with Cisco, whether Feature Navigator lists all features or not, and whether you really need to practice several features that have only a little coverage for the CCNP exams.
Read more
Just a quick invite here - nothing about certs in today's posts. Skyline ATS, where I teach classes, is having an open house at their Chicago offices this coming Thursday. If you're in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by for a visit. I'll be there talking about CCNA exam tips, but there will be other short techie topics, free food and giveaways, and the like. It's near O'hare. To register, go to: http://www.skyline-ats.com/Corporate/Training/T_Promotion.php#OpenHouse.
I'll get the next CCNP lab post up in the next day or so....
Wendell
Yes, for those of you who've been sticking with me on this seemingly un-ending ramble about CCNP labbing: it' finally reaching it's conclusion. I've covered all I'm going to about content on th eexams. Next, I'll spend a few posts making suggestions on gear, topologies, and build lists for building your own CCNP lab. I'll start by listing some thoughts about which switches to buy today, routers next post, and the pull together some build lists.
For budget, I'm going to fall back on the budget survey I asked about a few months back. Feel free to weigh in if you haven't already - I'll look at the results again before I put the final build list together. Or just post on today's page and I'll see it there.
Read more
I just forgot. Of all the CCNP exams, ISCW covers the broadest range of topics. When I covered ISCW a few weeks ago, I covered all the main ISCW topics, focusing on the security topics. But I just forgot MPLS. Any interestingly enough, as our survey has shown over the last few weeks, MPLS is one of the topics that more people want to hear about when this series is finished. So, before turning my attention to the bigger picture of what to put in a CCNP lab, I need to post a few comments about MPLS and the ISCW exam.
First, for those of you unfamiliar with MPLS, today "MPLS" is almost as big as saying "IP routing".
Read more
Of all the CCNP exams, BSCI is probably the most familiar to most people. It has the most overlap with the topics in CCNA, it's got a lot of topics that people use in their real jobs, and the topics covered haven't changed a lot over the years. So, I left it as the last of the 4 exams to look at in this CCNP lab series. Today, I'll look at the topics, and talk about some really inexpensive options for BSCI labbing.
First, for perspective, the main hands-on topics for BSCI are:
Read more
ISCW focuses on router features, so after the discussion of features and feature sets in the previous post, we next need to look at the routers that can support these feature sets. Of course, doing an exhaustive search takes a lot of time, so I've decided to list the platforms supported, according to the feature navigator, for the three feature sets I mentioned in the last post - both for 12.4 mainline and 12.4T. They you can search for your favorites.
While searching, I was paying particular attention to some of the popular cheaper routers that we've discussed here in the past. In particular, I was looking at 2500, 2600, 2600XM, 3640, 800's (837/877 just because of some earlier posts), and 1801/1841 to look at some more current routers for perspective.
Read more
So, back to the CCNP lab stuff. I've already discussed some of the considerations for the BCMSN and ONT exams in this blog during the past 3-4 weeks. Today, I'll begin to examine the ISCW exam, which means we'll look at the configuration topics for the exam, and in this case, focus on IOS versions and feature sets.
First, a quick review of the ISCW exam topics shows quite a variety of features. After reviewing the exam topics and doing a little research, two important items seemed to leap to the forefront:
Read more
I'm back! The beach was great - high 80's every day, beautiful weather, plenty of sun - just what the doctor ordered. But I returned to a surprise about one of the surveys I left in the previous posting - that around 50% of the folks that responded as "pursuing CCNP" said that less than 25% of their current job required them to work on routers and switches.
Frankly, the stats surprised me. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me, and maybe everyone's ahead of me on this observation. So, today I'm going to make a few guesses about CCNP and job progressions, and ask all of you to give me your ideas regarding your current and hopefully future job roles.
Read more
7 hours it took to clear the driveway after last weekend's snow. (Last time I buy a house with a looooong driveway!) But in a mere 48 hours and I'll be on my way to the beach. I've got a bad case of Spring Fever, and it's going to translate into a brief break from the CCNP lab series - to get your opinions, get some ideas for later in the Spring, and to avoid getting knee-deep in ISCW right before going to the beach.
So, let's say your boss gives you $1500 in capital to buy gear to study for CCNP - gear the company will own, but you can keep it at home or at work while you study. He also gives you enough budget to go to one CCNP-related course. There's not enough $$ to go to a bootcamp that covers multiple courses - the courses each cover 1 of the 4 exams.
Read more
Odom, CCIE No, 1624, splits time between writing books for Cisco Press and teaching classes for Skyline ATS. In his 25-ish years in the networking industry, he has worked as as a pre-sale and post-sale SE for a few networking vendors, as well as a network engineer implementing network technology. Wendell has spent the majority of the last 15 years teaching, consulting, and writing about networking technologies, most of which in some way relate to Cisco products. His books include titles on QoS, CCIE R/S, as well as several titles related to CCNA certification, including the September 2007 book CCNA Official Exam Certification Library (CCNA Exam 640-802) (Read a sneak peek of chapter 7). Click for the list of current titles by Wendell.
|
|
