The CCNA/Cisco Certifications Thread

I would like to make it very clear that I in no way advocate brain dumps.
In fact, anybody who asks for or admits to using them gets banned from my FB group.

They are a bad idea. If you don't understand how the technologies in a given certification work, you don't deserve the cert.
It devalues the certification, and can have consequences for other people. As far as I know they also break the NDA that you agree to when you take a Cisco exam.
 
Braindumping is just pure cheating, and in my experience if cheats are readily available then the cheating is widespread, the same is true of just about everything in life, it's sad - but true.

I remember when I worked at VM there was a clown who did all the CCIP exams in one day, then marched around like he owned the bloody place - proclaiming that if you get less than 1000 in any of the exams then you suck, said person was then caught printing cheat sheets on the works printer.

I don't have any problem admitting that i've failed my fair share of exams, I failed the CCNA a few years ago - that exam is harder than the CCIE written exam because it covers so much ground imo.

I think many people get caught up in a race to get as many certifications as possible via any available means, then become disillusioned and forget one of the reasons the certifications exist - to give employers confidence that an individual has a certain level of knowledge on a subject, that with experience makes them a safe(ish) bet.

Abuse of braindumps has led to people who are paper experts, but when faced with a whiteboard and a simple question such as "how does the packet get from point A to point X" break down into embarrassed laughter and red faces.
 
V-Spec said:
It always ends in tears.

On Monday I interviewed a guy who had 13 years experience and the following certifications:

CCNP
CCIP
CCDP
CCNA
And his IE written

The position was for a senior design engineer for one of our biggest SP clients so you'd have thought he'd know a thing or two.. He didn't know anything, couldn't explain anything - even the simple concepts, he sort of knew a few very basic bits but it was a total waste of time.

Every other person I interview seems to be like this now, there seems to be a big group of people going around getting interviews, in the hope they'll one day manage to blag their way through lol..
Click to expand...

I hate this purely because I'm bad at passing exams (in general) but I am good at it in the real world. An ex colleague of mine burned through his Cisco exams like they were nothing but he just didn't have any real world experience with any of it and didn't always know what was best for certain set-ups etc.

He's now working in London doing half the work for double the wage! I'm most Jealous :p
 
I've not read it myself but Todd Lammle had a lot of praise for his old CCNA book.

I always use and recommend Cisco Press personally. :)
 
Only really used Cisco press myself so can't really comment on 3rd party books. Mainly due to Cisco Press being tailored around their own course/exam - if something is contradicted in a 3rd party publication, it may be different to Ciscos' official answer

- GP
 
Great thread :) Guys how are you connecting to your devices with the console cable? Are you all running Serial to USB adapters?

Also what software are you using to comunicate to the Cisco device? (Hyper terminal etc)

Many thanks

Andy
 
Serial to USB adapters for me :)

I plug a bunch of them into a Raspberry Pi, which acts as an access server of sorts (using Ser2net).

If using Windows then I stick with SecureCRT, or if that's not available, one of the Putty variants.
Using the CLI in Linux is preferable though. I like to use Terminator when using Ubuntu.
It's free, pretty customisable and has the ability to split the window into multiple terminals.

E.g. one window with multiple terminals active on the screen at once. Also lets you create groups
for broadcasting keystrokes.
I just keep a few shortcuts on the desktop. Each one uses a different profile.
I.e. one of them opens 6 terminals in one tab, and 6 more terminals in another tab, automatically
using telnet to connect to the console cables on the Raspberry Pi :)
 
Made the mistake of looking at a practice test for CCENT, yipes! It's a lot tougher than I was expecting, really going to need to get my head down.
 
V-Spec said:
It always ends in tears.

On Monday I interviewed a guy who had 13 years experience and the following certifications:

CCNP
CCIP
CCDP
CCNA
And his IE written

The position was for a senior design engineer for one of our biggest SP clients so you'd have thought he'd know a thing or two.. He didn't know anything, couldn't explain anything - even the simple concepts, he sort of knew a few very basic bits but it was a total waste of time.

Every other person I interview seems to be like this now, there seems to be a big group of people going around getting interviews, in the hope they'll one day manage to blag their way through lol..
Click to expand...

That's shocking. With 13 years of experience you'd think he'd have some knowledge/skills to show for it.

I'm currently at the other end of things, studying for my CCNA, come from a 1&2nd line Technical support with some System Admin experience as well and trying to find a way/path of entry into networking based role rather than a general tech support role. So far it's proving very difficult.
 
andy325i said:
Great thread :) Guys how are you connecting to your devices with the console cable? Are you all running Serial to USB adapters?

Also what software are you using to comunicate to the Cisco device? (Hyper terminal etc)

Many thanks

Andy
Click to expand...

USB to Serial Adaptor and Putty for me.
The USB to Serial adaptor wouldn't originally work under windows 8 64bit as the windows 7 64bit driver actually has a bug in it (known issue). Anyhow long story short found the windows vista 64bit driver for the adaptor online which doesn't have the bug in it and it's all working nicely.
 
Gazb said:
I'm currently at the other end of things, studying for my CCNA, come from a 1&2nd line Technical support with some System Admin experience as well and trying to find a way/path of entry into networking based role rather than a general tech support role. So far it's proving very difficult.
Click to expand...

Pretty much every decent engineer worth his salt, will at some point have spent a proportion of time doing support of some sort, either early on in a 1st/2nd line role or later in 3rd line, it's just something most people have to go through - and it's all perfectly valid experience. I started off fixing printers - now I design chunks of infrastructure for telcos and mobile operators, just gotta keep plugging away.
 
Agree with V-Spec. You don't need to do that, but it teaches you a mind set and provides experience that I feel everybody should have.

- GP
 
GhostlyPea said:
Agree with V-Spec. You don't need to do that, but it teaches you a mind set and provides experience that I feel everybody should have.

- GP
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guessed that most network people probably have worked their way through the tech support side of things, and to be honest I don't really mind 2nd line and Sys Admin stuff as it can be fascinating diagnosing systems and getting them working etc.
Unfortunately my contract ended a few months ago and I'm struggling to get anything that will help me at all in the direction I want to go.
 
Something you lot might wanna know about, there's currently a really good alternative to GNS3 if you have the hardware - the CSR1000v

It's a virtualised ASR1000 which runs in a vmware instance, and it's ****** brilliant, only trouble is it's pretty resource hungry - requires 4GB of ram per router but it's not emulated - it's proper IOS-XE running in a real environment so all the bells and whistles work perfectly (advanced features normally reserved for the hardware)

You can read about it here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12559/

You can get it as a free download here (basic non-priv CCO access required)

http://software.cisco.com/download/...lind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=ED&reltype=latest

It comes with a 60 day trial license which allows you to push about 50Mbps through it, after 60 days that does down to 2.5Mbps apparently - so it's still fine for labbing..

I've installed it on VMware workstation 10, you need a 64 bit CPU for it to work, I have two connected together with BFD and IP FRR for OSPF, basically if you can do it on a real 1k, you can do it in this thing, it comes with adventerprise IOS-XE so there's not much missing..

Simply create network segments in vswitch, add as many Gig network cards to the router as you like, and you're good to go :D

Cagc1UP.jpg



qTB94O2.jpg



This is a total godsend for me, because Dynamips sucks for doing all the advanced service-provider stuff, RSVP constantly crashes, BGP adjacencies go up and down all over the place, and stuff like BFD crashes....

(checks the cost of 64GB of ram...)

:D
 
Hello gents,thanks for a cracking thread.

I want to install GNS3 but need a Cisco IOS to continue,is there any way I can get an IOS to use on that emulator without entering into a service contract with Cisco or buying an old Cisco router off ebay?

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Not legally. Pick up a cheap router off the bay like this LINK. Just make sure from the seller that it's not faulty and the IOS revision is 12.4 or newer. Obviously you then have an IOS image on the router so 1+1=GNS3

- GP
 
@ V-Spec - We have Cisco in the other day to go over some queries around the 9kASR platform and they mentioned the CSR1000v. Great as far as I'm concerned but haven;t downloaded it yet. What's your impressions? Will be good for my CCIE lab, or so I hope. particularly interested in active memory with it so I can look at potentially over provisioning my PC with a number of them

- GP
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom