Finally "CCNA Certified"

Hi everyone..

Finally I got my CCNA certification yesterday !! I took the ICND2 exam for the 1st attempt with score 890 (not that bad!), after two months from getting the ICND1 exam, I've used CBT videos (jermey)/ Todd lammle - CCNA 7th Ed./ google.. I used GNS3 with 2 routers and one swtich as a home lab..

The exam was really fair if you study hard for it, alot of network troubleshooting you dealing with but if you put hands on labs you will be able to pass it for sure..
I didn't decide yet from where to start now, but really I feel my self in to CCNA Service provider, but not sure if this is a right career path for me since I don't have any experiance working in NOC or SP related jobs...

Any one have an idea which path should be taken in my case?

and agian thank you all

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Comments

effekted

Congrats, whats next? Because of life I am probably looking at taking the INCD1 in February instead of this month. Goal I told my employer was CCNA by Q1 so I am planning to keep that timeline.

Roguetadhg

Congratulations!

Most people go after their CCNP first. Rightly so, from the way i've heard the other tracks (ie: CCDA) expects you will have some CCNP knowledge, even though it's available after the CCNA. I -usually- end up doing the best in the Security areas of any cert exam. So I might hop from network to security. But Honestly there's too much I want to do and not enough time to do it all in! :P

Whatever you choose. Good luck and we'll be here to help you as much as possible - although i think I won't be able to help you in the CCDA

SharkDiver

Congratulations!

I did CCNA Voice and Security first, then CCNP, but I am in a voice field, so it only made sense for me to do the Voice cert. I did the Security cert just because encryption and hashing seemed interesting to me.

I find the CCNP to be more in demand than any of the special CCNA certs, but that's just my experience.

Good Luck with whatever you choose.

Ola_CISCO

Congratulations on your CCNA certification:)

mgmguy1

Congrats, best of luck to you.

angel.oa

Congrats

Amjo

Thank you guys all for your support..

SharkDiver wrote: »

Congratulations!

I did CCNA Voice and Security first, then CCNP, but I am in a voice field, so it only made sense for me to do the Voice cert. I did the Security cert just because encryption and hashing seemed interesting to me.

I find the CCNP to be more in demand than any of the special CCNA certs, but that's just my experience.

Good Luck with whatever you choose.

Well, you are right but taking 3 exams for CCNP kinda hard for me and I guess it will take me at least 6-8 months to get it, and because I'm in a Job hunting right now I want to have more knowlege in deferent fields like taking the CCNA Voice, SP or CCDA.. I really need to decide soon to get my self start on.. but I'm still doing research on some spec. certs..

Roguetadhg

From what i've read the CCNP is where the money is, as well as jobs. But this is what i've read from different sources (TomsItPro, and a few others). I've heard someone say around here that even though they have a CCNA they still need the CCNP to move up. I don't know who, my minds been filled with ACLs and the like lately :P

vinbuck

Amjo wrote: »

Hi everyone..

Finally I got my CCNA certification yesterday !! I took the ICND2 exam for the 1st attempt with score 890 (not that bad!), after two months from getting the ICND1 exam, I've used CBT videos (jermey)/ Todd lammle - CCNA 7th Ed./ google.. I used GNS3 with 2 routers and one swtich as a home lab..

The exam was really fair if you study hard for it, alot of network troubleshooting you dealing with but if you put hands on labs you will be able to pass it for sure..
I didn't decide yet from where to start now, but really I feel my self in to CCNA Service provider, but not sure if this is a right career path for me since I don't have any experiance working in NOC or SP related jobs...

Any one have an idea which path should be taken in my case?

and agian thank you all

CCNP is where it's at and for good reason....it ain't easy

I would encourage you to pursue working for a Service Provider. You will learn so much about networking it's like drinking water from a fire hose. I enjoy service provider networking because it's about as pure a form of networking as you can get. When you work in the enterprise, you've got to deal with server groups and desktop groups and in some cases you may cross over into these groups and thus dilute your experience level because it draws you away from networking. Service Providers enjoy a more focused approach: ensure the network performs as expected, maintain redundancy, troubleshoot and plan for new technologies/capacity. That's a really simplified model and it doesn't cover all of what we do, but it hits the high points.

The one thing you will learn in an SP world better than just about anywhere else is troubleshooting. For one simple reason - your network is exposed to mother nature and not tucked away nice and warm inside of buildings. Flooding, Wind and Lightning are just a few of the things that can attack your network. Systematic troubleshooting is critical when you're troubleshooting a physical segment that may run for miles and miles and involve multiple pieces of equipment and mediums of transport.

The upside is that you will become a master at understanding your network and why it performs the way it does....

Roguetadhg

That sounds fun, Vinbuck.

And yes, you're right about Diluting your experience with networks in a production environment. There's times where it's network issue, but for the most part - not so much. Most of the infastructure has been built, tucked away above drop ceilings, behind drop. Most of the network issues we've had in SC are from the provider (AT&T).

vinbuck

Roguetadhg wrote: »

That sounds fun, Vinbuck.

And yes, you're right about Diluting your experience with networks in a production environment. There's times where it's network issue, but for the most part - not so much. Most of the infastructure has been built, tucked away above drop ceilings, behind drop. Most of the network issues we've had in SC are from the provider (AT&T).

If you read Network Warrior by Gary Donahue and subscribe to his brand of troubleshooting, physical layer first, then you will start to see just how often the physical layer is at fault during an outage. Most numbers i've seen put it at 90% or higher and it's amazing how often the physical layer is the issue. Never trust a cable and never trust an interface until you prove they are working properly - once you've done that, you can move on to the more complex layer 2/3/4 stuff.

I actually forgot this when doing troubleshooting on TCP throughput issues over a 4G link as a last mile access deployment - and low and behold the physical layer was at fault. The radio I was working on must have shifted slightly, because it had excellent signal strength when I looked at it the day prior to the trouble, so I didn't think anything else about it and proceeded to perform packet capture analysis and a whole host of other troubleshooting steps. Only after taking a step back and using the tried and true physical layer first approach did I discover that the signal quality was horrible and mostly respossible for the TCP restransmits and out of order issues we were seeing.

Roguetadhg

The only physical issues I get to deal with is someone unplugging the cat5 from the back of the computer. Otherwise, probably because Im in a branch office, i don't see any issues. Which, I guess is a good thing. It allows me to work on my studies

vinbuck

Enjoy the study time...as you move into larger and more complex enviroments, you usually find yourself fighting to get study time - especially as your responsibilites increase. Having said that, the upside is that half the time you may be working on a technology in production that is on a test you're studying for.

Roguetadhg

I'd rather have a position with some type of fulfillment, and better pay.

More responsibility, sure. As long as it's my career and something I love to do. I won't need to work a day in my life - of course, I expect days that suck, every career has those days :P

I like the puzzle of troubleshooting and I like technology. While im not able to solve the issue of "Theory of everything", I can atleast, understand how the internet work - which spans the entire world and reaches millions of people every second. It's a network of information and hot damn that makes me happy to know I know 'something' about that network

It's just awesome to know how all of that works. It blows my mind to think that flash video, pr0n, music, pictures, information that shapes people's lives all within an instant. It's something, that even after sort-of-knowing how WANs work, I still haven't been able to peek inside that "Cloud". It makes me want to read the PPP chapter again!

Actually, that's a wonderful idea.

alxx

For you guys it might be colder weather being a problem.

Hot weather can be just as bad. Here you have to air condition roadside boxes, without air con,
in summer the air temp in roadside boxes can easily hit 65*C+
and in hot and wet weather mold(and ants looking for dry areas) can be a problem.

Voltage drops/brownouts in hot weather especially on the end of long power line runs.
Need to lightening protect and surge protect everything and make sure installations are properly grounded

Insects especially ants are a ******** pain, and are great at killing boxes by nesting in power supplies

vinbuck

I'm in the southern part of the US and heat is more of an issue for us than cold. We usually get temperatures upwards of 100 degrees farenheit in the summer and the enclosures can get nice and toasty although some of the equipment is made to survive temerature extemes like that.

We usually see issues when transitioning between warm and cold weather that result in a change of copper characteristics for ADSL customers.

Amjo

vinbuck wrote: »

CCNP is where it's at and for good reason....it ain't easy

I would encourage you to pursue working for a Service Provider. You will learn so much about networking it's like drinking water from a fire hose. I enjoy service provider networking because it's about as pure a form of networking as you can get. When you work in the enterprise, you've got to deal with server groups and desktop groups and in some cases you may cross over into these groups and thus dilute your experience level because it draws you away from networking. Service Providers enjoy a more focused approach: ensure the network performs as expected, maintain redundancy, troubleshoot and plan for new technologies/capacity. That's a really simplified model and it doesn't cover all of what we do, but it hits the high points.

The one thing you will learn in an SP world better than just about anywhere else is troubleshooting. For one simple reason - your network is exposed to mother nature and not tucked away nice and warm inside of buildings. Flooding, Wind and Lightning are just a few of the things that can attack your network. Systematic troubleshooting is critical when you're troubleshooting a physical segment that may run for miles and miles and involve multiple pieces of equipment and mediums of transport.

The upside is that you will become a master at understanding your network and why it performs the way it does....

WOW!! that was really impressive dude, sounds more fun dealing with these kinda problems everyday

, but you don't agree with me that it will hard to implement a home lab to meet the exam needs, since you are not working in this field?

I found out that its good to go for CCNA Sec at least I will be more familiar with the network security concepts, how to implement and config. a Cisco Firewall, IDS, IPS and VPN, dealing with the cryptology, I think its more fun than stick with more and more routing protocols.. isn't it?

SO CCNA Security will be the Next.. wish me some luck

Roguetadhg

You don't need luck. You just need to study :P

We've got your back. Im sure most of us would be more than happy to help you in any way we can.

I don't know about vinbuck though, he seems shady.

vinbuck

Amjo wrote: »

WOW!! that was really impressive dude, sounds more fun dealing with these kinda problems everyday , but you don't agree with me that it will hard to implement a home lab to meet the exam needs, since you are not working in this field?

I found out that its good to go for CCNA Sec at least I will be more familiar with the network security concepts, how to implement and config. a Cisco Firewall, IDS, IPS and VPN, dealing with the cryptology, I think its more fun than stick with more and more routing protocols.. isn't it?

SO CCNA Security will be the Next.. wish me some luck

Security is definitely important, and I considered going for the CCNA Security after I passed my CCNA, but I didn't because I wanted to understand advanced routing and switching before I tackled Security. The more you understand about core networking, the easier it is to branch out into the specialties because you have a very solid foundation.

What part of a home lab are you worried about implementing...you can build an MPLS/OSPF/BGP Service Provider backbone entirely within GNS3 if you've got a decent computer. I actually built a model of our core network in GNS3 and use it to test changes. That is the other awesome benefit of GNS3, you can use it to break virtual stuff so you don't break the real stuff

vinbuck

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I don't know about vinbuck though, he seems shady.

I am definitely shady...how'd you know?

JDMurray

vinbuck wrote: »

Most numbers i've seen put it at 90% or higher and it's amazing how often the physical layer is the issue.

If you include firmware bugs in the physical layer then it's amazing it's only 90%.

seansabian

Congrats Amjo!

Turgon

vinbuck wrote: »

CCNP is where it's at and for good reason....it ain't easy

I would encourage you to pursue working for a Service Provider. You will learn so much about networking it's like drinking water from a fire hose. I enjoy service provider networking because it's about as pure a form of networking as you can get. When you work in the enterprise, you've got to deal with server groups and desktop groups and in some cases you may cross over into these groups and thus dilute your experience level because it draws you away from networking. Service Providers enjoy a more focused approach: ensure the network performs as expected, maintain redundancy, troubleshoot and plan for new technologies/capacity. That's a really simplified model and it doesn't cover all of what we do, but it hits the high points.

The one thing you will learn in an SP world better than just about anywhere else is troubleshooting. For one simple reason - your network is exposed to mother nature and not tucked away nice and warm inside of buildings. Flooding, Wind and Lightning are just a few of the things that can attack your network. Systematic troubleshooting is critical when you're troubleshooting a physical segment that may run for miles and miles and involve multiple pieces of equipment and mediums of transport.

The upside is that you will become a master at understanding your network and why it performs the way it does....

Exactly. With outsourcing, offshoring and cloud taking over the last 9 years, SP or MSP is where you want to be. Enterprises are looking at providers in a big way. It's not *always* the choice but every executive is considering it particularly in a tough global economy where an exec needs a great piechart to display at head office showing the savings. They may not exist, but if he doesn't do it, the young Harvard grad who wouldn't know a 7206VXR if it landed on his head will do so...I sensed this in 2003 and moved accordingly. Was I right? Well I have yet to be proved wrong..

lon21

Well done Amjo.

Excellent thread.