CCNA Topics: What has been useful for you?

Magic JohnsonMagic Johnson Member Posts: 414
For anyone not in networking or looking to get a role, here's how I personally feel about the CCNA topics and how useful they are to me in my role:

I've just grabbed topics from the CISCO Press books so here they are:
  • Networking fundamentals
  • Ethernet LANs and switches
  • IPv4 addressing and subnetting
  • Operating Cisco routers
  • Configuring OSPF
  • ACLs and NAT
  • IPv6 fundamentals
  • Virtual LANs and Spanning Tree Protocol
  • Static and connected routes
  • VLSM and route summarization
  • IP access control lists
  • OSPF and EIGRP configuration
  • Point-to-point WANs
  • Frame Relay
  • VPNs
  • Network address translation
  • IPv6
  • Troubleshooting
Networking Fund: Crucial, obviously. Lays the foundations.

Ethernet LANs and Switches: Oh hell yes.

IPv4 Addressing and subnetting: Again, beyond critical.

Operating Routers: Yes you need to be at least familiar with the CLI.

Config OSPF: Nope. This is obviously company dependant but in my firm we don't use it. It was still useful to get a grasp on routing protocols though definitely.

ACLs and NAT: My God yes. Absolutely crucial.

IPv6 Fund: Not at the moment, but will be obviously in the future. Handy to understand.

VLAN/STP: Yep. VLANs are paramount to most if not all LANs out there. STP is another one, don't deploy it at your own risk.

Static/Connected routes: Aye, obviously. Used a lot more than I thought.

VLSM/Summarisation: Yep yep yep.

Advanced ACLs: Yep, again critical.

OSPF/EIGRP: Again not really, we use IS-IS. But the foundations are there, and it's cool to know. As you jump from firm to firm it may come in handy.

Point-to-Point WANs: EDIT: This is useful, but not really the serial T1/E1 side of it. There's a tiny section on DSL config at the end of the last chapter on this subject which was more useful to me than the rest.

Frame Relay: Nope. Complete waste of time.

VPNs: Yes, sort of though most firms run far more complex setups than the one discussed in the book.

NAT: More NAT! Yes.

IPv6 Routing: Again, useful to know but it's much the same as v4.

Troubleshooting: Obviously.

What's everyone else's thoughts? I thought I'd put this together as when I wasn't in networking doing my CCENT I often wondered just how useful the stuff I was learning would be to me.

Comments

  • theodoxatheodoxa Member Posts: 1,340 ■■■■□□□□□□
    I deal with the ones below in my position --
    • ACLs
    • Firewalls
    • Ethernet Switching
    • IPv4 Addressing and Subnetting
    • NAT
    • Networking Fundamentals
    • Static Routing
    • Troubleshooting
    • VLANs
    • VPNs
    R&S: CCENT CCNA CCNP CCIE [ ]
    Security: CCNA [ ]
    Virtualization: VCA-DCV [ ]
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