FAO CCNA students

Luseac

Luseac

Luseac

Soldato
Joined
23 Jun 2005
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York
I'm currently coming to the end of the first semester. However there is one thing that I just can't get... subnet masks =/

I find the cisco course material really user unfriendly and have looked at various web guides to no avail.

I would be most grateful if someone could post a guide about them and applying them, or a website that they used when studying them.

Thanks :)
 
By far and away the best guide I've ever seen to subnetting. It even teaches you how to memorise and write a table that you can use duing the exam.

Clicky
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Bear with me a second m8 and i'l upload a doc that I made when I first did em - your right about the cisco material being crapo :p
Click to expand...

cheers mate :)

wyrdo and Goliath, those look quite good :)
 
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Here you go ... helped a few of my mates who struggled to understand it :\

http://www.twobeds.com/upload/userfiles/SteveH/Subnetting guide.doc

Subnetting is a weird one - once you grasp it its stupidly easy ... you've probably got your skills test coming up -- it's kind of weird to understand but you can download an online copy usually before you have to do the test - so have a go at that and work it thro :) Can give you a sample with answers if you want.

Then read up on CIDR ;)
 
I found the cisco material more confusing than anything else. The
Sybex book by Todd Lammle, called "Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide" did a far better job of explaining it all :D

Subnets are actually quite easy once you get your head around them. I now can't see why it took me so long to understand them.
 
As with a lot of things network-related, once you understand how binary numbers relate to their decimal equivalents and can shift between binary, octal, decimal and hexadecimal with relative ease this sort of thing becomes second-nature. Which is why I tend to :rolleyes: at people doing courses like this and the microsoft courses without a decent comp-sci/ discrete maths background. Even on the off-chance they DO get a grasp of how to DO it, they probably dont know WHY it's done that way or HOW it works.

Mind you, keep this approach going, at least so we get people who "work in IT" asking questions such as "whats the difference between a quick format and a full format in Windows" or getting stuck in unix because they dont understand the permissions structure.

(quoted for truth tbh, I once had to give a 15 min talk during a Mac OS X training session on the octal permissions structure in UNIX and most of them (who had been using their 1-buttoned toys for years) still didnt get it.)
 
Kind of agree with the above tbh, but then again you could say that goes for a lot of university based degrees!

I did CCNA 1+2 two years back, and have pretty much read up on 3+4 (not done the exams) .. however, I've got to redo 1 + 2 due to it being part of the networking module at uni (not too fussed, makes it easy ;)) .. but you wouldn't believe some of the people in the class! We'd done 6 weeks worth of lectures on the Cisco material and this guy came up to me and asked me which piece of the equipment was a switch :confused:

It annoys the hell out of me because some of the people doing the degree should so not be there.. then again, I guess they'l just fail ... (A lad I know just failed 3/4 of his first semester modules, and only passed the other one based on his group assignement (that we did for him)) and he's decided to carry on .. oh well.
 
The problem with all of the MCSE/CCNA/CCNP type exams is that you can learn to do them parrot fashion - take enough Boson tests before the actual exam and you've got a pretty good chance of passing. I've interviewed countless candidates over the years who have perfect credentials as far as exams are concerned, but couldn't configure a switch to save their life.
 
Goliath said:
The problem with all of the MCSE/CCNA/CCNP type exams is that you can learn to do them parrot fashion - take enough Boson tests before the actual exam and you've got a pretty good chance of passing. I've interviewed countless candidates over the years who have perfect credentials as far as exams are concerned, but couldn't configure a switch to save their life.
Click to expand...

Thats the problem for some thing is for me self studying the CCNA actually gives me the opportunity to learn something. In the past month having read the Intro book, done the questions and labs I feel like I've learned a hell of a lot about networking. My computer networks degree was far too basic and this is building on that. So its allowing me to go exactly where I want to. I am quite confident that it'll give me the ability to practically configure cisco equipment.

I think when a ccna or something of the sort is done in a uni enviroment you dont learn as much. I did cisco router/switch programming at uni for 15 weeks. Afterwards I hadnt learned jack. It was pretty much copying commands out of books with no real understanding on what i was doing.
 
I'd take a candidate that has self-studied and passed the exams over a boot-camp graduate any day. If you've got the time and the discipline, self-study is the way to go as you won't pass over a subject when you don't understand it.
 
NiCkNaMe, in your guide you use the term

"To establish how many bits you want to borrow, use the formula 2^(b) -2 (where b = borrowed bits)"

what does 2^ mean?
 
Goliath said:
The problem with all of the MCSE/CCNA/CCNP type exams is that you can learn to do them parrot fashion - take enough Boson tests before the actual exam and you've got a pretty good chance of passing. I've interviewed countless candidates over the years who have perfect credentials as far as exams are concerned, but couldn't configure a switch to save their life.
Click to expand...

That's the problem with a ton of people entering the industry these days, it does my head in. I work with guys who get a job because they have a bit of paper but haven't got the foggiest idea what they're doing.
 
wyrdo said:
That's the problem with a ton of people entering the industry these days, it does my head in. I work with guys who get a job because they have a bit of paper but haven't got the foggiest idea what they're doing.
Click to expand...
They soon get flushed out.
 
Goliath said:
The problem with all of the MCSE/CCNA/CCNP type exams is that you can learn to do them parrot fashion - take enough Boson tests before the actual exam and you've got a pretty good chance of passing. I've interviewed countless candidates over the years who have perfect credentials as far as exams are concerned, but couldn't configure a switch to save their life.
Click to expand...

Hardest part I'm finding at the moment is having recent (passed last october) CCNA credentials and 6+ years networking support experience.. but none of it having been in a Cisco environment. No one seems to want to employ me in a networking role :(
 
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