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Thread: Thinking of doing my CCNA

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    Thinking of doing my CCNA

    Hullo all,
    I'm thinking of doing my CCNA! Can anyone recommend a course provider? I would be doing it off my own back as i'm not employed in IT atm. Is a distance learning course best as i'm not sure one of these 8 day lab based courses will be enough, no? Anyone done it? Whats your thoughts? Will it get me a job, or will it just help, or not at all? Any other thoughts, advice or experience you think is worth sharing?

    Thanks all

    James

    HEXUS believes no one person has a monopoly on ideas, and that your opinion matters.

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    Senior Member Stringent's Avatar
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    Re: Thinking of doing my CCNA

    A CCNA qualification will help your job applications and boost your CV a lot. The thing is, you have to use it on a day to day basis otherwise you will forget how to do it! Also its worth noting the qualification gets changed, and has to be renewed every 3 years or something, if you want to keep it up to date with stuff.

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    Theoretical Element Spud1's Avatar
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    Re: Thinking of doing my CCNA

    I (sort of) did one as part of my university degree. I say sort of as I did the whole course, but never took the final exam. Why? Because unless your heading into a networking job which requires a CCNA then its pretty much pointless.

    The course is worth doing for an understanding of networking and things like Cisco IOS, but actually getting the qualification isn't worth *that* much, mainly due to the fact you have to renew it every couple of years as it expires.

    If you do it though, make sure you go onwards to do a CCNP qualification afterwards - that is worth much more than a CCNA (its much less common to find CCNP certified engineers).

    You will be able to do all of the knowledge based course and exam with distance learning easily enough - the cisco online training center is really good and teaches you everything you need to know. The exams are all positivly marked multiple choice papers too, so are fairly simple if you know your stuff (no annoying essay questions!). There is a practical side however, and while you can do that using an IOS simulator, its not a substitute for the real thing as you don't haveto plug in real wires, and never experience the joys of configuring an entire network, finding out its not working, and after spending lots of time checking router configs you find out its just a badly wired cable =)
    If you can afford it try and find a local center that offers a mixture of in the lab time and distance learning - or even one that just provides access to a lab.

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    HEXUS.social member Disturbedguy's Avatar
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    Re: Thinking of doing my CCNA

    I have done CCNA semester 1 through 4 and havent taken the final exam and dont think I will.

    The main reason for this, in my opinion its all good and well reading a chapter and memorizing stuff from the chapters when your about to take an exam, but at the end of the day, once you get into industry, books aren't there to help and i prefer learning by physically doing things myself.

    Spud is correct about going on to CCNP this is something I want to do, once I can afford to pay for the course, I have just finished uni so still looking for a job.

    There are lot of providers out there for CCNA mate, at the end of the day, they all run from the same curriculum so i don't think you can go wrong.

    The guys above are also correct about renewing every few years, in fact it is three years as mentioned above, but to be honest, if I can get and hold a job, I don't think I will be re-training in CCNA as such, for example, there still teaching Frame Relay...it isn't used in this country at all, its outdated, but because the Americans use it, we have to learn it.

    I course if very well laid out, yes the online stuff is very good and there is a lot information on the site to help you, Packet Tracer can be used to produce and test networks. It doesn't have all the commands but does have a lot of them.

    There is a practical side however, and while you can do that using an IOS simulator, its not a substitute for the real thing as you don't haveto plug in real wires, and never experience the joys of configuring an entire network, finding out its not working, and after spending lots of time checking router configs you find out its just a badly wired cable =)
    If you can afford it try and find a local center that offers a mixture of in the lab time and distance learning - or even one that just provides access to a lab.
    Very true indeed Spud, especially the practical stuff. I remember doing one, we had two routers each and all the rest of the mumbo jumbo as well, I wired it all up, configured all the routers, configured the secret passwords, the host name and all that then started going through the stuff I had to check, connectivity stuff, I could ping everything but one port on one router, couldn't figure it out.

    Eventually as others had completed there's, I was left scratching my head, I had checked all my configurations, my tutor even checked them while I was on dinner, couldn't for the life of us figure it out, on a hunch and last resort we checked the cables, the blue and white wire on one side, was literally about 1mm of connecting, changed it, it worked lol.

    So yeah anyway, I would personally take the CCNA and if you feel confident take the very end exam to be "properly" CCNA qualified.

    I hope I made sense and didn't waffle touch much.

    Thanks

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