CCNA Boot Camp - Global Knowledge

Kenneth196

Hello all! Tomorrow I will be starting a week long boot camp through Global Knowledge? I've worked as a Network Tech (kind of doing a little bit of everything, minus security, but only the basics. Configuring routers, switches, but nothing on the WAN side such as eigrp, frame relay, etc. I leave that to the big boys) for 8 months and my employers is dropping almost 3 grand for me to go. I'm really excited.

I'm opening this thread to provide my progress each day, so maybe if anyone is thinking about attending a boot camp for a certification, they can get a general idea of how it is!

I will be including start and finish times, break times, what all we went over on each day, etc.

Edit:

Hi everyone. Here's a full overview of the boot camp. Hope it helps anyone out there thinking of attending one.

I went to the Global Knowledge boot camp in Houston, TX, from June 9, 2014 - June 13, 2014. The location was in a building off of Westheimer road, on the 6th floor. There was approx 15 students in there. The professor's name was Bill (William) Treneer. He has a CCNP/CCDP, and a lot of side specialties.

The first day was pretty easy (I will explain what we discussed each day in a bit). The hard part was getting there and anticipating traffic, so I was a bit late, but it was no problem. The classroom setting was a projector up in the front, and seating was similar to a Chemistry lab setting. There were only 2 rows of seating, so even if someone sat in the back, it still felt like you were in the front anyway. We were given a 10 minute break every hour or so (sometimes an hour and a half), and a 1 hour lunch break around noon or 1 (the class was typically 8am - 8pm everyday). There were always sodas in a mini fridge right outside the classroom, as well as sweets, such as candy bars, chips, cookies, etc. I think I drank a minimum of 2 sodas each day just to stay alert.

Day 1 Morning:


- Introduction of the professor and everyone in there. Going around the room, our goals, etc. Discussion of the various Cisco certifications.
- Building a simple network. Characteristics of a network (topology, speed, security, availability, etc).
- Types of devices (switch, router, etc).
- OSI Model
- Cables & their types (Copper, fiber, coaxial, etc), as well as their speed and length/distance.
- LANS (Lan components, switches, etc).
- Intro to the IOS (basic commands like user exec, privileded exec, Help functions, etc)
- Switch (Switch install, LED indicators, connecting to a console port, configuration, etc)


Day 1 Evening:


- More on ethernet LANs (Frame structures, MAC addresses, how frames flow, switching operation, duplex communication, configuring duplex and speed)
- Troubleshooting switches (port issues, etc)
- Layer 3 (Network layer of the OSI, or Internet layer of the TCP/IP model). IPV4 addresses, headers, decimal and binary (conversion), IPV4 classes, reserved IPv4 addresses, Domain Name System.


Day 2 Morning:


- Subnetting! Entire morning dedicated to subnetting and VLSM. Subnet masks, default gateways, etc.


Day 2 Evening:


- Layer 4 (Transport layer. TCP vs UDP, characteristics of both. Headers, etc).
- Role of a router, functions, path determination (in general), routing table, types of routes (static routes, dynamic routes, etc)
- Initial router setup, configuring router interfaces, IP address to an interface, CDP, etc
- Packet delivery. Layer 2 and 3 addressing, ARP, role of a switch in packet delivery
- ACLs (Standard)
- NAT (Dynamic, Static), PAT. Configuring and troubleshooting.


Day 3 Morning:


- More on ACLs (Extended, how to best implement ACLs, troubleshooting issues caused by ACLs)
- Device hardening (Port security, disabling unused services, NTP)
- Intro to IPV6 (Features, addresses, unicast addresses, address allocation, headers, stateless autoconfiguration, routing)


Day 3 Evening:


- VLANs, trunking. Creating a VLAN, trunking with 802.1Q, assigning a port to vlan, configuring a trunk
- Inter-Vlan routing, configuring a router with a trunk link.
- DHCP Server. Configuring (on a router), DHCP relay agent (helper address).
- VLAN troubleshooting, trunk troubleshooting
- Spanning tree protocol. Operation, configuring. Spanning tree protocols (STP, PVST+, RSTP, Rapid PVST+). Portfast, BPDU Guard.
- Etherchannels (configuring, advantages of them, etc)
- Layer 3 redundancy (HRSP, GLBP)
- Troubleshooting IPV4 and V6 issues (verifying end-to-end connectivity), verification pf physical connectivity, identifying current and desired path, default gateway issues, name resolution issues, ACL issues)


Day 4 Morning:


- WAN Technologies. WANs vs. LANs. Role of routers in WANs. Serial WAN cabling. HDLC. PPP Configuration, PAP, CHAP. Troubleshooting serial connections.
- Frame Relay (topology, signaling, address mappings, general configuring)
- Frame Relay: Point to point vs Multipoint. Configuring multipoint frame relay.
- VPN Solutions. Benefits of VPN. IPSec, GRE tunnel (configuration, verification)


Day 4 Evening:


- Interior and exterior routing protocols.
- Distance vector and link state routing protocols. Administrative distance.
- EIGP (Features, path selection, metric, configuration, load balancing). Troubleshooting. EIGP for IPV6


Day 5 Morning:


- OSPF (SPF algorithm, establishing ospf neighbor adjencies, router ID, OSPF area structure, configuring single area OSPF)
- Multi area OSPF. Single area vs Multiarea. Troubleshooting OSPF
- OSPFv3 (for IPV6). Configuration, verification.
- SNMP. SNMP configuration, versions.
- Syslog overview. Message formatm configuration.
- Netflow overview, architecture, configuration.
- Managing Cisco devices. Stages of router power-on. Loading IOS image files. Managing (from a TFTP server). Configuration register.
- Licensing overview. Verification, permanent and eval license install. Backing up license and uninstall.


Day 5 Evening:


- Free!

Each day consisted of doing labs based on what we discussed that day. Normally started labs around 5pm. Most people finished the labs around 8pm. There was no exact time they had to be done (And some people just left when the lecture was over and did labs at home). The professor stayed until the last person left.

My Overall Opinion:

Great experience! Learned a lot. Difficult to retain the information, due to the limited amount of time, so it's recommended to study each night as a follow up. I was definitely exhausted (physically and mentally) each night, but was refreshed when I woke up. I slept in on Saturday, which was much needed. We all get a voucher as part of the package. If you fail the first time, you can retake it for free. If you fail again, you can retake the boot camp for free, but instead of a CCNAX course, it will be a 2 week ICND1 and ICND2 boot camp.

If your company pays for it, its definitely worth it. Not worth it to come out of $3000 of your own money though. A worthwhile experience nonetheless. I would definitely go again for any future Cisco courses.

cygnus21

Good luck to you. Those bootcamps can be information overload sometimes. Let us know how it goes.

Kenneth196

Thanks! I will be modifying my original post tomorrow morning which will have a full update on how everything went.

Kenneth196

Sorry for the double post. I wanted to let everyone know that I finally updated this thread. Feel free to check it out!

DB Cooper

I attended that course in LA a couple months ago. I wouldn't recommend it for someone new to cisco. Its too much, too fast, for someone to grasp everything in 5 days. Its for someone needing to fill in some knowledge gaps. I did enjoy doing the labs, and we kept all the study material and lab books. I have my own lab at home, and I use them every time I lab.

I work with 5 other techs in my shop, but I'm the only that tries to learn cisco. So it was nice to be around people like myself, and talk shop.