Studying for CCNA

[Egaladeist]

Originally Posted by Nokia: here

The best way of studying for CCNA is to buy two routers and a switch (old ones will do, £20 from Ebay type ones)

Sit down with them and set yourself a task - say have the routers running OSPF and have two ports on the switch in a VLAN.

Then you go off to the CISCO web site and read up on VLAN's and OSPF, how it works and how to configure it.

Then try doing it the best you can after you have read all about it but not with the documentation in fron if you.....when you get completely stuck then re-check the documentation.

After you have done that set yourself a more advanced task, two routers using NAT, RIP and a few ACL's and the switch using port security for example.....

Then follow the same procedures as above.

THEN sit down with the CCNA book and instead of learning it for the first time and trying to take it all in, you will just be brushing up on your knowledge and willl be encouraged to read more because you will be more and more pleased by the fact you already know it and want to read on rather then having to force yourself to read on. The fact you have had 'hands on' makes it more interesting and you dont get the 'I can't be arsed anymore' feeling as quick!


I can 100% guarentee you will remember more about it all than if you just sat down with a CCNA book and read a few chapters at a time......I have only ever had 3 students fail either CCNA or CCNP (but they were absolute mongs) and I have used this method of teaching for the past 5 years.......

The hardest thing about and Cisco course is remembering the IOS commands, this way you learn the IOS commands first and then read the book.