Most difficult problem you've fasted as a ccna?

For those of you that have your ccna, what has been a difficult problem/technical issue you've come across when something wasn't working right?

How did you go about fixing it?

(side note below)
Sounds like an interview questing, but I am just wondering what im getting myself into. once im done with ccna i plan to read network warrior

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gbdavidx

93 views and no reply, thanks for your insight guys

RemcoST

As you stated, for those of us that have our CCNA, I assume a lot of us are just the curious types and look at most threads that pop-up. I myself don't have my CCNA yet, which goes for a lot of people on this sub-forum.

That aside it's not a question which (in a lot of cases at least) is dignified with a short one-liner answer. People may need some time to form their reply.

As to an actual answer, I honestly wouldnt know, not a CCNA yet, but so far been working on some RSPAN configurations, had some issue's with missing routes, Access Control lists that blocked connections where we didn't even know a L3 switch existed on that particular spot.

MAC_Addy

Kind of a weird question. And the reply to your own thread is a bit of a douche move, to be honest. Just because you don't get a reply straight away doesn't mean you have to cry about it.

Anyway, getting back on topic. The most difficult thing I've come across is when I'm hundreds of miles away from the site and literally something needs to be turned off and back on. Being so far away from my branch sites and not trusting people to turn the correct piece of equipment off/on can get rather frustrating.

The CCNA will teach you from the basics of network theory to how to configure a router/switch for a small to medium sized network, if you learn it correctly and really absorb the information, you won't run into too many difficult problems if you're really good at troubleshooting. Troubleshooting is definitely the key with many Cisco related problems.

RemcoST

MAC_Addy wrote: »

Anyway, getting back on topic. The most difficult thing I've come across is when I'm hundreds of miles away from the site and literally something needs to be turned off and back on. Being so far away from my branch sites and not trusting people to turn the correct piece of equipment off/on can get rather frustrating.

That's one I completely forgot to add. Although it's gotten a bit better since I've started requesting photo's from a mobile phone first, now that 3G/4G and phone camera's are more common.

pamccabe

gbdavidx wrote: »

93 views and no reply, thanks for your insight guys

This is kind of an odd reply to your own thread. This is a certification forum for those interested in the CCENT cert or CCNA. I would think those that have their CCNA have moved onto the next cert forum. Some may lurk here, but it probably isn't monitored closely by them. This probably wasn't the best place to ask this question. There are places like 'IT Jobs' forums that might yield better results.

pogue

Most diffult problem I was faced with as a CCNA?

Hmm...

Some background:

Military network - I am working for one (small startup) contract company doing NMS support, and a competing company is doing overall Routing/Switching and Security for the military command. Our team had heard from employees in the other company that the competing managers were told "Don't hinder, but do not help those guys." The goal was to make us jump through every hoop possible, hoping we would end up looking bad during recompete time, and they could get the support contract from us. (This ended up working, BTW.)

This competing company disabled all ICMP sourced from/to our NMS equipment on the internal network. They disabled Remote Desktop to our NMS servers if it was sourced from the local network, and we were forced to walk across the street about 1/2 a mile every time we had to go to the datacenter.

We start having inconsistencies with the performance of our NMS equipment, that looked for all the world like dropped packets, but it was hard to prove because we couldn't use ICMP-based messages to see where our traffic was flowing..

Long story short.. I used the Cisco Network Configuration Manager software to get ping tests directly from the infrastructure routers to establish the paths that packets were taking when sourced internal to the site network. I RDP'ed into forward collector servers in Afghanistan/Iraq to do pings back towards the NMS servers, to establish that internal routers did not seem to have the same routing paths as the edge router.

I had to document everything exhaustively, as it was well known in our team that you had to ask the R/S and Security guys for EXACTLY what you wanted them to do/open up, otherwise the default answer that came back was "looks good to us"...

Yeah, so in other words, with some of the tools turned off specifically to hinder my team, and not having even user exec level access to the routers, it was actually a problem that would have challenged a CCNP level professional.

Russ

pogue

pamccabe wrote: »

This is kind of an odd reply to your own thread. This is a certification forum for those interested in the CCENT cert or CCNA. I would think those that have their CCNA have moved onto the next cert forum. Some may lurk here, but it probably isn't monitored closely by them. This probably wasn't the best place to ask this question. There are places like 'IT Jobs' forums that might yield better results.

Though it might have been a bit premature, as his post wasn't up long before he commented, I can understand his frustration. It seem like thread participation at TechExams is much lower than it has been in years past.

Russ

MAC_Addy

RemcoST wrote: »

Although it's gotten a bit better since I've started requesting photo's from a mobile phone first, now that 3G/4G and phone camera's are more common.

This is a good one. With the use of mobile cameras I take pictures of every branch I setup, network wise. This way, If I'm out of town I can send a picture to the field tech or local user at that site. That way when I tell them something they can actually see what I'm talking about.

networker050184

pogue wrote: »

Though it might have been a bit premature, as his post wasn't up long before he commented, I can understand his frustration. It seem like thread participation at TechExams is much lower than it has been in years past.

Russ

Definitely not the case. The numbers of users and posts continues to grow.

NetworkVeteran

The hardest challenges I've faced--and where I've seen the most blunders--tend to involve non-technical issues.

The goal was to make us jump through every hoop possible, hoping we would end up looking bad during recompete time, and they could get the support contract from us. (This ended up working, BTW.)

This is a perfect example.

pogue

networker050184 wrote: »

Definitely not the case. The numbers of users and posts continues to grow.

The CCNA:Voice and CCNA:Security forums can go days with an answer to a post, or without a new post at all. So, I have to respectfully disagree..

Russ

networker050184

Smaller subest of people take those exams is why. Those forums weren't even around in past years so the comparison is apples to oranges. The numbers do not lie regardless of individual perception!

Anyway, besides the point. Let's keep it on topic.