Recommendations On Study Materials

Hello All,

Below are links to the resources I reference in the video.

1. Boson exam simulator
2. official Cisco Press books
3. Ultimate router/switch configs 
1. landscape photo of router w/ markup (jpg)
2. Ultimate Router Config (gdoc)
3. Ultimate Switch Config (gdoc)
4. Exam Objectives for 200-101 (pdf)

I forgot to mention in the video that the Cisco Press books also have a CDROM at the back that has videos, an Exam Simulator, and a Network Simulator.  Lots of value for your $25!!!  The vids are alright; I didn't really use them and you can find better/more on YouTube.  The Network Sim I can't really review as I only used Packet Tracer and that is what I'd recommend.

The Exam Simulator however, I loved as the questions were hard and the explanations were decent (not as good or thorough as Boson, however).  You could also easily export (copy/paste) the explanations to a document if you wanted; with Boson they've locked it down a bit more so you can't copy any of the text, but you could print it to a .pdf, then copy/paste it from there to a doc.  You also got more questions in the form of the DIKTA (do I know this already) questions at the beginning of every chapter; 10 or so questions/chapter.  Also, more questions from the 200-120 exam that was included.  If you purchase both books (sheeze, I sound like I'm doing an advertisement for them... honestly, I'm not getting anything for this...) you get 4 CCNA exams (2/book) plus 3 ICND1 (book 1) & 3 ICND2 (book 2) exams; 10 exams total!!!  That's a lot for the money!

I'd recommend:

1. ICND1 Book              = $ 25
2. ICND2 Book              = $ 25
3. Boson ExSim x 2         = $200
4. Packet Tracer Simulator = $  0
5. Total to get CCNA       = $250

This is a way better deal than if you went to a training center (take a look at the Boson site, they charge $7000) or community college (maybe $5K).  This, however doesn't take into account the value of your time, however you'd still be putting that in no matter what route you chose.

Finally, one last disclaimer, while I did create that exam objectives pdf available (with the comments) I didn't really look at it or review from it... it was the creating of it that helped me obtain and "retain" the knowledge... it forced me to go back to the book or to my configs and review the information again.  I hope I'm not doing you a disservice by providing it; it should still help as long as you review it again and again and really know it... and not only know it (as in memorization), but rather "understand" it as well.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments in the comment section below.

How I learned the “show” commands

Here's a couple memorization techniques I used during the last stages of my studying just prior to taking the ICND1 exam.  One was for memorizing a list of TCP/UDP port numbers and the other was for memorizing the show command output.  It's kind of "low-tech" and "old-school" but it got the job done.

I've made the files available below:

1. show commands
2. Show Command Memory Cheat Sheet

Subnetting Table & Technique

Hello all,

As if you hadn't already seen a million videos and read a million articles on how to subnet... here's my take on it and some of the techniques and charts I created and used in my exam prep.

Subnetting Chart

Also... I forgot to talk about this in the video, but there's a cool technique I learned in the ICND1 book put out by Cisco Press (written by Wendell Odom) where you can get the subnet multiplier by simply taking the value in the last octet and subtracting it from 256.  So if you have a mask of 255.255.255.192 then you can simply... 256-192=64... so the subnet multiplier is 64; so our subnets are 0, 64, 128, 192.  If you are given a /26, then you'll just have to convert it to the .192 first then subtract it from 256.

Cisco Games

Hello all,

here's a video demonstrating the fun and educational games that Cisco has available at their site; you'll need an account to access these on the Cisco Learning Network.  It seems like they've added some since I last visited it about 6 months ago, but I could be wrong.  In any event, these are could be a nice study-break for you and yet they will still keep you learning and moving forward toward your goal.  I like how they also pit you against the clock so as to make you learn to do it fast; could be a real boon come test time.

Please have a look and feel free to leave comments below.

OSPF Unequal-Cost Load Balancing

Note:
I posted this shortly after I obtained my CCNA and didn't fully understand the nature/differences between how OSPF handles multiple paths vs. how EIGRP does it.  OSPF can't really "load-balance" or take advantage of the higher bandwidth of one link over another slower link.

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Hello all,

here's a fun little demo (well... I had fun at least) of how to do unequal-cost load balancing w/ OSPF.  Now I know that your textbooks and other sources will tell you that EIGRP is the only routing protocol that can do this, and that's true in a strict sense, but they both can accomplish the same thing.

Technically, when the multiple routes to the same subnet are added to the routing table in EIGRP, some, and perhaps all, will show a different cost/metric to the right of the AD:

D    192.168.203.0/24 [90/27392000] via 10.10.10.12, 00:00:08, Serial0/0/0
                      [90/27392000] via 10.10.10.11, 00:00:08, Serial0/0/0
                      [90/28160000] via 192.168.202.2, 00:00:07, Tunnel2
                      [90/28160000] via 192.168.201.2, 00:00:06, Tunnel0

When you force unequal-cost load balancing on OSPF the costs will look the same even though they are over different types of connections that clearly should have vastly different costs:

This screenshot was taken from the video below.  In it you can see that all the routes say the cost is "3" (this is why it's said that OSPF only does "equal-cost load balancing), however the Serial line (1.5Mb) route should have a cost of 131 and the Ethernet (10Mb) route should be 21.  We've tricked the OSPF protocol to think that these routes are faster than they really are.

I've included a video below that shows how you can accomplish this by using the "bandwidth" interface subcommand.  You can also, under the "router ospf 1" process, use the "auto-cost reference-bandwidth" command, which might be easier than touching each interface on a router, however if you want to be very "granular" with which ones you want to include in the load-balancing scheme, then you'll probably want to just use the "bandwidth" command.

Apologies in advance for all the "uhs" and "ums" in the video; I groan every time I watch one of these that I've recorded.  Lastly, if you're trying to load-balance over more than 4 routes, then you'll need to adjust the maximum-paths value to anywhere from 5-16, as the default is set to 4.  This is accomplished with the "maximum-paths [1-16]" command under the ospf router process.

Also, in the video I mention that I'm not sure about the "auto-cost reference-bandwidth"; whether it's local to the router or if its setting applies to all routes that it "sees" on the network.  Turns out that it's only local to the router so you'd want to apply the same command to each OSPF process on each router in your network.

Feel free to leave comments below.  Thanks.

The adventure so far...

I did it!!!

WOOHOO!!!... I passed the 2nd Cisco CCNA exam and now, once again, have my Cisco CCNA certification.  I say "once again" because I previously held the cert from 2004-2007; yes, 10 years ago.  Having taken the exam back then, I can definitely say that it was MUCH HARDER this time around.  Back then there was only the "one-exam" option and I crammed pretty heavily, but then when I took it I passed with flying colors and couldn't believe how easy it was.  Fast-forward to October of 2012... again I took the "one-exam" option and failed it miserably... didn't even finish it in time.  Clearly, things had changed.  I put going after the cert on hold till I had finished my undergrad and, upon finding it very difficult to find a job, decided to revisit the cert in it's current "2-exam" form ICND1 100-101 & ICND2 200-101 (you can still take a unified exam if you prefer, however).

I wanted to start this blog off on the right foot so after a little bit of celebration I've started this blog with the desire to:

1. showcase my newly acquired skills
2. share my study methods
3. point out some shortfalls of the materials I used and how I made up for them
4. showcase all the great CCNA learning resources on the web
5. build my LinkedIn presence with cross-posting to Cisco-related LinkedIn groups

In a nutshell, I'd like to document/journal what it took to get here (looking back) thereby hopefully helping others on the same path and then chronicle the next phase/s of job-hunt and continued study for the next level of certification: the CCNP.  Life is a journey and an adventure... thus the title of this blog "Cisco Adventure."

Again, revisiting the topic of the "increased difficulty" of the CCNA exams; there is just way more content that is covered.  It almost seems like the CCNA today is what the CCNP was back then. 

Case in point: below I've posted a video of one such topic that is covered in the Cisco Press ICND2 book that I used in my studies; please forgive some of my comments during the recording regarding the neighbors becoming fully-adjacent; I recorded this a couple weeks ago and I think it was late when I did... anyway, I mention that once the variance is changed the new neighbors will eventually become "fully-adjacent", but that's not the case: fully-adjacent only happens with OSPF and adjusting a variance value (which is what this video is about) only happens with EIGRP.  This was a concept I had a hard time wrapping my brain around until I actually tried it on a test network.  Hopefully you find it useful.  Please feel free to leave comments below.