Hardware and Location for CCNA

noel123ie

Hi there

Just wondering what kit and simulations ye used for CCNA - are these available on ebay?

I hope to set up a lab and just looking for reasonble priced kit so if anyone is selling please let me know

Also have any of ye used or the likes:

Cisco CCNA & Cisco CCNP courses |

http://www.commsupport.co.uk/

Based in UK

Seen some good reviews



Many Thanks
Noel

Barrypr

You could get through the CCNA without the use of Hardware, the likes of packet tracer you should have a look at or gns3.

Having the hardware itself would be nice though some hands on experience give you a feel for how proper router/switch works and cabling it up etc.

Ebay is your best bet, I picked up a router off them a good while back it was 20bucks or so, or try adverts.ie!

axer

Barrypr wrote: »

You could get through the CCNA without the use of Hardware, the likes of packet tracer you should have a look at or gns3.

Having the hardware itself would be nice though some hands on experience give you a feel for how proper router/switch works and cabling it up etc.

Ebay is your best bet, I picked up a router off them a good while back it was 20bucks or so, or try adverts.ie!

I agree with this. Get some older hardware for cheap on ebay and then use software like packet tracer for larger simulations (I found it great because you can follow the packet as it transverses the network and view its contents at each step).

I highly recommend the ExamCram CCENT and CCNA books - they are a great way of revising before the actual exam. They have a great table in them for helping with subnetting. By learning off the table you actually understand the relationship between number of bits being subnetted and number of hosts etc. not just memorising stuff that you will forget. You then draw up the table from memory on the day of the exam which allows you to concentrate on the more difficult aspects of the exam without having to do a calculation every few minutes.

Barrypr

Ya I also had a chart done out that I wrote down when I entered the exam its saves alot of time, time which you don't have to spare in the exams if you get a few sims.


Sample lab on ebay 204 euro

Gaz

Im selling mine if your interested, have a look here >> http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?product=129290&cat=all

NullZer0

If you can master dynamips go for it.
Its not a complicated program but some people have difficulty because they aren't willing to commit the time.

Alternatively you can use GNS3 which is a graphical front end for dynamips. You can find lots of info on it here:
http://7200emu.hacki.at/

Although you should try to get exposure to hardware even if just to see ports and connection standards, the above mentioned software is a great way to learn.

Functionality is not limited in dynamips because it is an emulator rather than a simulator. This software has brought 100's if not 1000's from 0 to CCIE in a relatively short time frames

If your starting from scratch, the first thing that I would do is read the ICND1 exam guide. PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION to OSI, TCP/IP networking models and cabling standards first (10 BaseT, 100BaseTX, 1000BaseT etc...) and have a good luck at the diagrams for RJ45 Pinouts and serial connection standards.

Read RFC 791 and 1918 - I find these help you understand things better.
You can skip the RFC's on STP and RSTP (and variants) and other stuff like frame-relay (for now) - use cisco press to cover these and compliment your reading with Wikipedia.


After this start playing about with GNS3/Dynamips



Additional Useful Stuff -
There are two workbooks worth getting (note: I'm not sure if these are in the public domain but I do know that they are available on many NON warez sites). To find them Google the following:

"IP Addressing and Subnetting workbook Version 1.5 career tech"
"ACL workbook career tech"

If you work through these constantly (after reading the relevant chapters in ICND1 and ICND2 Cisco Press) you will NOT have any problems on the exams.

Remember to keep you binary math simple. You will see lots of different methods that promise you shortcuts and "magic" numbers etc... There is no substitute for knowing simple binary math and if you approach it without any of the nonsense I mentioned you wont have a problem either.


After completing both books I recommend labbing OSPF, EIGRP and RIP paying particular attention to AS Config, Instance Config and Split horizon. Use the debug commands and understand the output.

If you use the above approach you wont have any problems with the exam. I found that when I started I used a completely stupid approach and I thought I could take on the world.... how wrong I was!



HTH,

iRock