Cisco Networking Academy - Effective?
I will try not to go into too many details, because I don't know if Cisco has any rules about disclosure. Anyway, I am in a CNA program, and It is wierd.
The way my course is set up, we receive instruction from slides from the CCNA Exploration book. We also have assessments from the cisco website. Now we know the slides are not perfect, and after hearing from graduates, not sufficient for the exam. So on to the book.
I'm sure some of you have read this book, personally I don't like the way the information is presented. After starting the Odom book, it is very annoying.
So as far as the assessments go, I passed most of the ones so far with 80-90% minus subnetting and one I didn't study for. But they are worded so... deceptively. Without going into details, few to none pass the assessments on a first attempt.
Then the test, I haven't taken the exam, but from what I hear, it is ridiculous, why? Because people say the info doesn't come from the book, slides or the assessments. And what does come from the book is written so crazy that it is useless.
I won't give the exact question from the assessment but one was similar to this.
Blah-blah situation. What command will enable the admin to telnet into the router?
1. enable secret "password"
line vty 0 4
login
2 enable secret "password"
line vty 0 2
password "password"
login
3. enable secret "password"
line vty 0
password "password"
login
4 enable secret "password"
line con 0
password "password"
login
5 enable secret "password"
line con 0
login
At first I could not figure out why the en secret pw was on each question. I eliminated 4 and 5 for obvious reasons. 3 was a possibility, but unlikely because generally want to configure all lines at once.
2 I liked, because I had been taught that a password is required for telnet sessions, I didn't like that all the lines weren't being put in, but considered that there may have been a reason for this. 1. I disregarded because of the above, no password. Well, I didn't feel comfortable with the question so I asked about it. After my instructor and I looking at the book, and asking another instructor, we found a small section (indeed a note) stating that the en secret would allow a user to login without setting a vty password.
Tell me that isn't crazy.
Also, we couldn't figure this out in class, there is no such thing in Cisco as UTP (untwisted pair) is there? The instructor figured it was a serial connection, but I think it is a typo, as UTP refers to unshielded twisted pair cabling, and serial cables arent used for LAN connections.
