I.T people assemble

[Advikaz]

morning guys and girls

Of you I.T people how many of you have done any of the CCNA stuff ?

I’m looking to move in to the network architect area and was wondering if anyone has any advice or pointers ?

Cheers

 

[Pep]

I'd say turn it off and then on again is a great bit of IT advice.
That or ctrl, alt, delete all at the same time.

You're welcome

 

[Cookie]

morning guys and girls

Of you I.T people how many of you have done any of the CCNA stuff ?

I’m looking to move in to the network architect area and was wondering if anyone has any advice or pointers ?

Cheers

Hi.

I've done it a few times (think it's lapsed now since I don't touch normal networks anymore)

Get the books, buy a lab kit on eBay and play around

 

[boultonn]

Is CCNA really cisco specific or is it fairly applicable to network architecture in general?

 

[msremmert]

Is CCNA really cisco specific or is it fairly applicable to network architecture in general?

In general and covers a lot of best practise stuff. If you can drive Cisco gear you can use HP/Aruba, Brocade fabric switches as the CLI is basically the same and wing everything else.
The CCNA has gotten much harder since I last did it and now even touches on things such as BGP so it's a pretty good cert to have.
If you're motivated you can buy a book, get the CBT Nuggets videos and GNS3 and do it in your own time for very little cash.

Smart money is on getting the CCNA and then cracking on with the security certs and learning how to use Cisco's ASA lineup. You can then use the knowledge to configure most other things and harden other network gear.

If you've got a bit of server and virtualisation knowledge or have the means to build a lab at home, there's a lot of crossover knowledge.
After that you're into ISP tech and fun things like MPLS.

Source: I've got a CCNP R+S and I'm the network engineer for a company with 2500+ people and 120+ sites. I love my job. Every day is different and I work with some truly brilliant people.
Can't imagine doing anything else.

 

[ChrisR]

Also slightly related Cisco have opened up their Cyber Security Scholarship thingy again

https://mkto.cisco.com/security-scholarship

Free training if you get on the course, might be useful if thinking about that area of things

 

[Donny_Dog]

Exams are expensive now doubled since I was a lad.
I tell my engineers to take CCNA via both ICND's just to relieve some pressure if they're newish to networking.
Ccnp r&s is the minimum for enterprise network engineers now, unless your experience can get you to the interview.

 

[Ash1751]

The CCNA stuff seems pretty good as a base to me (just completed it last year as my degree includes doing CCNA stuff) and the fact that there's a lot of learning via the cisco packet tracer program and doing troubleshooting exercises which just broadens you're knowledge as a whole

 

[Darren S]

In general and covers a lot of best practise stuff. If you can drive Cisco gear you can use HP/Aruba, Brocade fabric switches as the CLI is basically the same and wing everything else.
The CCNA has gotten much harder since I last did it and now even touches on things such as BGP so it's a pretty good cert to have.
If you're motivated you can buy a book, get the CBT Nuggets videos and GNS3 and do it in your own time for very little cash.

Smart money is on getting the CCNA and then cracking on with the security certs and learning how to use Cisco's ASA lineup. You can then use the knowledge to configure most other things and harden other network gear.

If you've got a bit of server and virtualisation knowledge or have the means to build a lab at home, there's a lot of crossover knowledge.
After that you're into ISP tech and fun things like MPLS.

Source: I've got a CCNP R+S and I'm the network engineer for a company with 2500+ people and 120+ sites. I love my job. Every day is different and I work with some truly brilliant people.
Can't imagine doing anything else.

The most important thing you said there was in the last section. When I started doing my CCNA, I did it to complement my role at the time. Did I like it? Not particularly - and as such I found it to be a bit of a chore. When you love the task at hand, you absorb the information so much more easily.

Worse, was Cisco’s approach to documentation. They would go on and on about seemingly irrelevant sections and simply skip over knowledge points that you were trying to get your head around. I was advised before I even started by three different people - to entirely skip Cisco’s writing on subnets. How right they were!

I do see the appeal to networking - it’s literally like a grand puzzle with hard and fast rules that can provide massive gains or create huge headaches. It’s not really for me unfortunately...

Definitely agree with the CBT Nuggets - a great source of info. The guy on there got my brain working fine on subnets in about 15 minutes. I’d tried and given up with the same subject, three times with the Cisco book.

 

[msremmert]

Worse, was Cisco’s approach to documentation. They would go on and on about seemingly irrelevant sections and simply skip over knowledge points that you were trying to get your head around. I was advised before I even started by three different people - to entirely skip Cisco’s writing on subnets. How right they were!

Really should pay more attention to this site. I'm so crap at forums these days.
I definitely agree with your opinion on Cisco's documentation. I've got a couple of the Cisco press books, don't get me wrong the knowledge is there but they are dry and such hard work.
If anyone fancies a good CCNA book, The Todd Lammle one helped me the most and I found its colloquial delivery easy to absorb.

I do see the appeal to networking - it’s literally like a grand puzzle with hard and fast rules that can provide massive gains or create huge headaches. It’s not really for me unfortunately.

I definitely see your point there. I learned very quickly to slow down and examine my work.
Many an engineer will remember the first time they got burned by missing something in the 'grand puzzle' (I'm stealing that) while making changes - no matter how small.
Usually involves a small command - then the core goes offline. Then you quickly repair the problem while sweating bullets and hoping everything re-converges.
You blame the outage on ghosts.