CCNA (IT Technical Support Training) Course

red_bairn

Just went to the aptitude test and interview for the ictirelandskillnet.org course. Both were fine and fingers crossed for a nice mark and possible place.

Anybody attend today? What background you coming from? How did you find out about the course? Did you study any networking in college or through some other way? Why do you want yo do the course? To find a new job or for career progression?

APJAMES

I took the 2 exam route , and passed my ICND2 this week. I didn't do it with FAS, so I cant answer any of them questions, but regarding experience, I had little in networking(I have an N+ which helped) and worked in a helpdesk role for a few years, experience obviously helps but isn't absolutely necessary. I bought a few routers and switches to lab on, if you can't afford these use packet tracer as it has 99 pct of the commands- you definitely need hands on experience with either PT or real equipment.

The 2 main books available are Todd Lammles Wendell Odoms, I studied both from start to finish as I had no experience and often I've seen that one book doesn't cover absolute everything. I don't know much about the course you're doing, but if its through FAS, or a govt body, I've heard that they can be hit and miss so I would recommend buying one of them and going through it yourself to make you have covered everything, Todds is slightly shorter and less in depth, alot of people say its easier to read than Wendells, Wendell goes more in depth which I liked.

A huge part of the exam is subnetting, there will be specific subnetting questions that you'll have to answer, but you'll need to be able to subnet to answer questions of other questions - routing , vlans etc , so unless you have subnetting down to a T, you won't pass. My advice would be to grab Todd Lammles book and learn subnetting the way he teaches it , I looked at so many tutorials and youtube videos of subnetting and the way it was thaught took me a long time to answer a subnetting question and had to write it out to work it out, with Todds method I can answer most subnetting questions in my head in about 10 seconds, which makes a huge difference in the exam .

I don't have a huge amount of experience in IT, but from what I can see the CCNA is a great cert as networking covers so many areas, I want to do a VMWare and MCSA 2012 next and I'm told the CCNA (or equivalent networking experience) is a huge help, so it doesn't just limit you to working with Cisco
.
Fire away if you've any more questions.

whitelightrider

APJAMES wrote: »

I took the 2 exam route , and passed my ICND2 this week. I didn't do it with FAS, so I cant answer any of them questions, but regarding experience, I had little in networking(I have an N+ which helped) and worked in a helpdesk role for a few years, experience obviously helps but isn't absolutely necessary. I bought a few routers and switches to lab on, if you can't afford these use packet tracer as it has 99 pct of the commands- you definitely need hands on experience with either PT or real equipment.

The 2 main books available are Todd Lammles Wendell Odoms, I studied both from start to finish as I had no experience and often I've seen that one book doesn't cover absolute everything. I don't know much about the course you're doing, but if its through FAS, or a govt body, I've heard that they can be hit and miss so I would recommend buying one of them and going through it yourself to make you have covered everything, Todds is slightly shorter and less in depth, alot of people say its easier to read than Wendells, Wendell goes more in depth which I liked.

A huge part of the exam is subnetting, there will be specific subnetting questions that you'll have to answer, but you'll need to be able to subnet to answer questions of other questions - routing , vlans etc , so unless you have subnetting down to a T, you won't pass. My advice would be to grab Todd Lammles book and learn subnetting the way he teaches it , I looked at so many tutorials and youtube videos of subnetting and the way it was thaught took me a long time to answer a subnetting question and had to write it out to work it out, with Todds method I can answer most subnetting questions in my head in about 10 seconds, which makes a huge difference in the exam .

I don't have a huge amount of experience in IT, but from what I can see the CCNA is a great cert as networking covers so many areas, I want to do a VMWare and MCSA 2012 next and I'm told the CCNA (or equivalent networking experience) is a huge help, so it doesn't just limit you to working with Cisco
.
Fire away if you've any more questions.

Hi James, what length of time did this take you? Im doing the Self study route at the minute also and switching between Chris Bryant and Todd Lammle

APJAMES

whitelightrider wrote: »

Hi James, what length of time did this take you? Im doing the Self study route at the minute also and switching between Chris Bryant and Todd Lammle

ICND2 took me just over 4 weeks studying 9-5, studying both books and CBT nuggets