As you good folks, I also attended the Accademy and had good experience with my teachers. I have aced well over half the quizes in the class. I found that reading chapters ahead gave me greater perspective on the topics. From our class, me and other two guys have taken CCNA cert after finishing 2nd semmester (about half-way through semester 3). I have scored about the same that I was getting on my classroom exams, which was 973 (yes I've missed 2, also know which too, will never forget those, I was so close to perfect score of 1000). My other co-students scored 870 and 780, about what they were getting in the class. Bare in mind that I have cramed for solid 2 weeks all 4 semesters and only the accademy text. Why? Because that is what the CCNA exam is made from.

I have taken the class at Community college of Denver, Colorado. They have great teachers and a great technology program. They not only teach you CCNA, they also teach you how to think logicaly about how things on the network happen and why. They all are CCNA's and CCAI's(same as CCNA but for instructors) and most are working on their CCNP certs, since they will offer CCNP academy in spring 2002.

The only thing to rag about is the time limit per semester, which is 8 weeks each. And there is lots of material to cover in each semester. So you have to forget about living for that time, it will be you and cisco, nothing else. Use all the links that cisco provides in each chapter. Practice all you can, time on routers and switches is a must. If you have finished accademy before cisco realeased RouterSim, then you should contact your instructor and he should e-mail you a copy. You should visit http://students.netacad.net/ to keep track of changes in curriculum.

I have aquired other text like IP Routing Fundamentals, which is a great book that covers realy well Layers 2 and 3 in easy to understand language. And another must have book is by Jeff Doyle :Routing TCP/IP, no one should work on routers without reading this book. Finaly the last book I highly recommend is : Cisco Router OSPF / Design and Implementation Guide by William Parkhurst. It covers RIP and IGRP in detail that is well beyond CCNA requirement, but this higher detail will allow you to breeze through CCNA cert. One thing that you might not known is that IP RIP has triggered updates and load sharing on multiple equal cost paths. Now did you know that?

Don't be fooled, CCNA without 2 years of experience will not get you a job. The entry level was risen by the Dot.com fallout, to CCNP level for new to the field like me. But I just keep on learning more, after all, do you think the need for networking will walk away. I don't think so, it will come back to the same level of Dot.com boom, if not bigger. Give it 4-6 years. So get bussy and Good luck. If you cannot remember it all just keep on trying, cisco realy want you to know all that detail, don't be fooled about that, so will your next employer.

GG, CCNA, CCAI.

Last edited by GilGrabber on 11-27-01 at 12:58 AM

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