ccna study advice

nellocono

hi guys,
at the moment, I'm trying to study for my ccna exams. I've got a job which now gives me access to a full lab of routers and switches. my problem is, I have no idea where to start.
I have watched most of the CbT nuggets videos and have some of the icnd1 book by wendell odom. I think I have a lot of the theory behind me, except I have no idea what to do with the actual hardware. is there any book or something like a lab manual which would explain the labs and how to do them..

I know how to logon to routers and switches etc but I'm not sure what kind of scenarios I should be setting up...

advice hugely appreciated...

theone

I'm re-certifying the ccna atm so I have most of the theory I just need to brush up on a few areas,so I just got a book CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide and I rented a bit of rack-time off the bryant advantage.Try that website you get lab-book when you buy his ccna package or when you rent a bit of rack time.The lab-book is based on his setup for his own rack but it'd would be fairly easy to copy the scenarios.

FruitLover

Just go through the various exam requirements and make sure you're familiar with how to deal with them on the hardware.

Off the top of my head:

Set up some VLANs and trunk between a few switches. Try different trunking protocols and sniff the traffic between two trunk ports to see how the different trunking protocols look at the frame level. Run VTP across your switches and examine how that works.

Set up various networks with routing protocols. E.g. a few routers using RIP, a few on (E)IGRP, a few on OSPF. Muck around with various options and see how this affects everything. I don't remember whether you need to work with route redistribution and summarization for the CCNA, but this would be a handy setup to experiment with that.

When connecting your routers for the above, try different types of physical connectivity - some on serial, some on ethernet, some on frame-relay. Try different data-link protocols, and muck around with authentication.

As good as it is to understand the theory of something, I personally find there's no better way to drill it into your memory than working hands-on.

zulfikarMD

Please find below link for CCNA material:

http://computernetworkingnotes.com/ccna_certifications/ccna_free_study_guides.htm

Thank you.