Academy?

benbuiltpc

Looks like I'm going to be enrolling in a certificate program at a local community college.

It's a 4 class deal and it will give me college credit (altho that's not my primary reason, I've already got my B.S.). However they do offer the same classes as non-credit for those who just want to pay a flat fee and not become part of the "system".

From what I gather, it is sponsored by (or is part of) the Cisco Networking Academy. I figure it's my best bet in terms of getting hands-on experience (never configured a real Cisco router before). Has anyone else taken a similar route? These are hands-on and lecture courses, none of it is 'online' to my knowledge. Do you think this constitutes as good experience? Now, completing the certificate doesn't get you the CCNA, but... what have I got to lose?

Danman32

four classes for CCNA? I could see maybe two classes, but 4 seems to be stretching it, unless it is a step towards CCNP, or some other cert besides CCNA. Unless they consider the other 2 classes as labs.

I took a course through a technical training center which was a full 4 days for about 8-10 hours each day. The fifth day was for review and to optionally take the exam which we all did.

I do recommend taking a class, or at least getting one's hands on the official courseware books. Everything you need to factually know is in the Intro and ICND course books. However, more lab time will certainly help in learning troubleshooting techniques, and getting down the mundane stuff as second nature.

benbuiltpc

Now that you mention it, in the first course description, it says "prepares students for the first Cisco exam". And the second says "second Cisco exam", etc... I don't see how 8 months of classes can prepare a person for CCIE...

But 5 days was all it took for you, that's interesting.

mikej412

I did the academy courses for the CCNA. One of my classmates is doing the CCNP "semesters" at another academy, while I went self-study.

The Academy courseware is available online, but you could buy the textbooks and lab books. Module and Final exams are usually taken online.

How the academy teaches the courses varies. My academy was through the local community college and offered the classes with an instructor and a self-paced online version that used blackboard.com and email. Both methods give you access to the lab. Another community college nearby only offers instructor led courses. And the Community College with the CCNP courses just started an online option since they filled one of the classes and had more students that wanted it.

My Community College also has a "Tech" school -- bootcamps for the companies with large training budget$.

If you have the experience and just need to learn the trivia for the exam, then bootcamps are fine (espcially if work is paying for them).

The Academy courses are good for learning the material, and usually are offered in 8 week sessions (2 courses per regular semester).

The first 2 CCNA semesters cover the networking basics (and overlaps a lot with the CompTIA Network+ material). The last part of semester 2 finally has you touching a router -- and then it becomes fun. Semesters 3 & 4 are basically the rest of the ICND material (and the guts of the single CCNA exam).

---- boring Chicago area local information follows

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I'm not sure what Chicago City Colleges offer in the way of Cisco stuff, I looked once -- but don't remember what I found.

College of DuPage seems to have the largest (best) Academy with the largest selection of courses -- CCNA, CCNP, Security, and the others.

Lake County Community College lists the CCNA and the Security courses in their catalog. Last time I checked they still offered classroom only option (no self-paced online).

Harper has the CCNA academy and lab on their main campus (and has an online only option, with lab access and testing center for the finals). Harper Tech in Schaumburg for the bootcamp type course$.

Danman32

Well, that and a couple more weeks of studying. It was a bootcamp. I took the test on Friday, got an 800, which although I believe was the highest in the class, is not passing. We were encouraged to take the exam to get a feel for it, since the training center was providing 3 shots included with the tuition.
Also we were assumed to either know what was in Intro, or study it ourselves. We were provided the course book though.

It can be 2 classes for CCNA, one for Intro, one for ICND. You can take 2 exams, one for each of the 2 classes, or take the combo test.
So if there is a separate intro class from the ICND, there could be separate lab classes for the two. Many colleges do that.

CCNP is similar. You can take 4 tests, or take a combo test for 2 of the 4. You have to have a CCNA also to become CCNP.

sprkymrk

The quality of the class depends a lot on the instrcutor, but the curriculum is well thought out and as Mike said the 3rd and 4th semesters get you a lot of fun hands-on. My final exam for semesters 1 and 2 was an online test much like a certification exam (multiple choice) and also a lab scenario. You had to set up 5 routers (no ACL's) with configurations according to a scenario and make sure everything worked. You then left the room while the instructor checked that your lab was working. The instructor then "broke" your lab in a random way, usually 2 in software and 1 in hardware, and you had to come back in the room to fix in within an allocated time. It was simple stuff looking back on it, but exciting at the time. I think my instructor loosened a serial cable, shut down an interface on one router and entered a bad static route somewhere.

Also, as Mike mentioned, this is not a boot camp as Danman was referring to, but a well thought out and well paced college course with homework, weekly tests and finals. The final for my 3-4 semesters was a team effort. We started from scratch and had to do a complete new set up for a fictional school district. It began with researching Cisco hardware, putting together a parts list, and setting up a WAN to LAN topology for about 20 schools and a couple of admin buildings, seperating the students LANs from the faculty LANs, and setting up ACLs to create a DMZ for web, email and DNS that both faculty and students could access, etc. It included a primary T-1 from the admin building to each primary school, with a backup ISDN at each location. It was a project that took teams of 3-4 students each and spanned most of 3rd semester and all of 4th by the time it was done, but man did you learn a lot!

unwritt3n

i just finished the CCNA networking academy. Completing ccna 1, 2, 3 and 4. Its really great, and gives u loads of hands on expierence which im sure would look good for a job. I wanna get my actual ccna, and i have read the sybex ccna study guide much is better then the net acad content. Things seem better explained.

l-plate

I finished the Cisco network academy course, it is really good and will provide you with hands on expierence using cisco switches and routers under the guidance of expierenced and qualified instructors, I am preparing for the CCNA exam and was wondering if anyone could tell me if the voucher exam is similar to the CCNA exam, thanks...

DW [banned]

Kewl

DirtySouth

Just finished the NetAcademy at my community college. I highly recommend it. You'll get tons of hands-on experience. In our class we probably had around 8 2600's, 10 2500's, 4 1700's, 7 2950's & a boat-load of 1900's. Try buying all that equipment on your own & you'll end up paying a fortune! The labs are really good and challenging and you'll get tons of practice tests along the way.

My instructor was a CCNP several times over and was really great to work with.