Cisco Networking Academy preparing you for the actual CCNA?

curtisdaley

How do you feel the course materials within that program prepare you for the actualy qualification?

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Xenz

Which course curriculum you use determines how prepared you are. CCNA Discovery or Exploration. If you have a choice, exploration is the way to go. Discovery is probably more for CompTIA Network+ use.

CCNA Exploration goes very in-depth and I feel it's good. This also depends on the instructors of the course. While my instructors weren't horrible, I did pass up my class and was pretty much on my own. In Cisco 2 I ended up helping to instruct the class pretty much. I supervised labs, explained theory to students when the instructor was doing the same with another group. Even correcting the instructor when he went over the tests and marked wrong answers.

If you have a great instructor that can devote time into the course to come up with extra packet tracer exercises, you will be set. If you have an average instructor, the material is good, but I would sit down and do TROUBLESHOOTING with labs. Most of the curriculum follows a set of instructions on configuration. You will become a zombie typing in commands, the problem comes when something goes wrong. Can you figure out how to fix it? The link in my signature leads to my blog. I have posted some ICND 1 exercises that will be expanded upon soonish when I get time. The whole point is to provide other students with extra packet tracer activities that I will try to focus on troubleshooting with. Literally 4 or 5 troubleshooting commands that will be pushed into your head and debug commands. Feel free to contact me if you get into the academy and would like more labs devoted to a subject. I'm more than willing to work on them.

I took Cisco 1 Disc/Exp Cisco 2 Disc/Exp Cisco 3 Expl, and skipped Cisco 4 because I was so far ahead and decided not to waste money on tuition for average instruction. I already had access to Cisco 4 material anyways. I sat in class with headphones on listening to music and reading so why not save $300 bucks and 4 hours every week to just stay home and do the same thing here. Less distractions if I don't have to stop reading to help supervise labs. Plus the lab assistant they chose was a Cisco 2 student over me so that made me sad (resume padding please).

Make sure you do well, the Cisco Academy provides vouchers if you do well through the courses to take the ICND 1/2 course. It's in their agreement, so read it carefully. If you fall below a grade at the end of the semester you are disqualified for the voucher. This caused a lot of confusion among students in my class. They didn't meet the requirement and the instructor had to work with the testing office to find vouchers for the students that didn't get one through the academy.

curtisdaley

I'm in UK, in England we leave School at 16, I went off to College to study IT I took some sort of diploma and included in it was CCNA, the diploma is free as i'm under 19 and the CCNA is bunded into it which was also free, i completed semesters 1 and 2 - exploration under it, because of poor management and teaching at my school i've only managed to complete 2 semesters when I should of done 4, because of that the offered me semesters 3 and 4 free of charge even when i've left, so at the moment i'm up too chapter 3 - vlans of semester 3 - lan switching and wireless of exploration, planning on getting 3 and 4 before I go off to Uni in October I only have 6 weeks, but i'm not really doing much in the Holidays so i'll probably be able to rock on and complete both in the short period! I don't find these courses easy but yet again I do find them manageable in the sense you can study them at home, I go 83.3% in CCNA1 and 83.7% in CCNA2 so i think i'm doing ok in the program overall, yeah I saw that on the datasheets that you need 75% on Exploration - Access The Wan to get the vouchers! Cheers for your help!

Xenz

If you still have access you may have a shot at getting a voucher to do the ICND 1 test. If you feel comfortable getting back into it, you could probably get the CCNA done in that time, but you really have to put time into labbing. Frame-relay can be confusing. STP is another one that some people struggle with (including me at one point). Make sure you know subnetting and routing protocol theory (distance-vector theory and link-state theory).

If you feel comfortable with these topics then you're in good shape. I would suggest something like Transcender to get you into the testing mindset and to gauge where you're at. I didn't attempt the ICND 2 until I was scoring 85%+ on Transcender. I scored 972. My ICND 1 score was lower and not where I wanted it to be, but I was a little naive in my studies and didn't lab as much as I should have.

curtisdaley

I can't get a voucher for the ICND1 as i'm doing Exploration and not Discovery, when i've done all 4 and get 75% on the final - first attempt of Accessing the WAN i'll get a voucher!

curtisdaley

Thanks for your advice! Where can I get this thing you talk about?

Xenz

Maybe the academies are different. For my academy we had CCNA 1 Discovery, CCNA 2 Discovery/Exploration (optional) and you were eligible for a voucher to take your ICND 1. Cisco 3 Exploration and Cisco 4 Exploration made us eligible for the ICND 2 voucher. All of these depending on our test scores. If you were eligible you should see it on your student home page. You could possibly ask your instructor to see whether your academy works the same way or only provide 1 voucher when you've passed Cisco 1 - 4.

curtisdaley

Ok cheers mate, how long did it take for you to complete 1 - 4 in the acad overall and how long to prepare for the ICND's?

Xenz

16 week semesters / 2 - 4 hour classes once a week
- Cisco 1 Discovery took 16 weeks (bored out of my mind, didn't know we could work ahead)
- Cisco 2 Discovery/Exploration took 4 weeks + 3 weeks of putzing around before taking the ICND1 test.
- Cisco 3 Exploration was a breeze. I took the full 16 weeks, but this consisted of me sitting in the classroom with a zune and earbuds smashing keys away in packet tracer.
- Cisco 4 I skipped altogether

ICND1 - Cisco 1 discovery was a complete joke and waste of time. If you have your Network+ you could probably finish that class in a week or so. Cisco 2 Discovery was easy enough that I finished it in a week, Cisco 2 Exploration was challenging due to routing protocol theory and being first introduced to it. I took my time 3 weeks of reading through the material and another 3 weeks of various unfocused labbing. I scored a 905 or 902 and wasn't happy, but figured since I hadn't really labbed it well that I deserved it.

ICND2 - Cisco 3 Exploration was fairly easy. Once I found out that I had outgrew the instructors I decided to skip and save money by not taking Cisco 4. I spent about 2 months of focused labs to fully understand STP and Frame-Relay. Everything else was easy enough for me, but I struggled with the differences between STP/RSTP and Frame-relay DLCI addressing actually, so I really focused 2 or 3 weeks to labs on these. I scored a 972 which was close enough to my goal of perfect.

All I can say is lab, if you have access to the Cisco 1/2 stuff go back and do those labs. If you want you can check out the link in my comment. There is a tag for ICND1 activities or ICND1 related that has a couple of packet tracer activities I started to make for fellow students to have extra practice. I plan to add a couple more ICND1 and ICND2 related packet tracer files when I unlazy myself and break from studying for the MCSA. I wanted to make activities focused on troubleshooting as that's what makes the difference between passing easily and barely passing.

curtisdaley

Cheers mate, ill check your url, i'll go over the old stuff aswell ie SM 1 + 2 ,thanks for you help!