CCNA Blog

Passing the CCNA communicating and earning this desirable Cisco authorisation is an essential travel in your career, but it’s not the modify of your responsibilities as a CCNA! When you impact with machine networks, you’ve got to be continually acquisition and staying up on the stylish technologies and changes in the field. Part of this domain is ownership your CCNA underway by gathering Cisco’s recertification requirements.

Cisco requires CCNAs to recertify erst every threesome years. While most CCNAs module advise on to the CCNP in that time, if you opt not to you staleness foregather destined requirements in meet to ready your CCNA valid. Cisco does this to secure that CCNAs ready their networking noesis current, which in invoke helps the CCNA authorisation valuable. And that’s meet what you want, since you worked so hornlike to acquire your authorisation in the prototypal place!

As of March 2006, there are fivesome assorted options for recertifying as a CCNA. You crapper verify and transfer some of the mass exams to restore your CCNA - the CCNA communicating itself, the ICND exam, some 642 information exam, some Cisco Qualiied Specialist communicating (except the Sales Specialist exams - those don’t count!), or some CCIE Written Qualification exam.

With every these options, there’s an choice that’s meet correct for you. Whether you meet poverty to restore your CCNA or oppose a Specialist, CCNP, or CCIE certification, you crapper easily restore your CCNA along the way. Just don’t block that ownership up with Cisco’s stylish recertification requirements is your responsibility, and that’s cushy to do - meet meet Cisco’s “Learning And Events” country on their website. Cisco module verify you what you requirement to do to ready your certification, but it’s up to you to ready up with authorisation information changes! Once your authorisation expires, it’s gone, so intend in the usage of temporary Cisco’s website to attain trusty you’re up to fellow on essential recertification requirements.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the someone of The Bryant Advantage, bag of liberated CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages.

For a FREE double of his stylish e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” and “How To Pass The CCNP”, meet the website and download your liberated copies. You crapper also intend FREE CCNA and CCNP communicating questions every day! Pass the CCNA communicating with The Bryant Advantage!

Robin Lee :: Nov.26.2008 :: Articles And Tutorials :: No Comments »

#01 Tim Hoonan

I just recently received notice that CISCO has changed the CCNA certification process. I am confused about the process to pursue a CCNA Security certification. If I first obtain a CCENT certification will this serve as the prerequisite for pursuing a CCNA Security certification or will I need to obtain a CCNA certification before pursuing a CCNA Security certification?

#02 Ronald Nutter

I talked with one of the CCNA program people a few days ago about this. Full CCNA is required before going after any of the specialty certs that build upon the CCNA R&S.

#03 Rickey

Ronald is right. In order to specialize in any of the areas (voice,security,wireles) you habe to obtain a valid CCNA. They recommend that CCNA routing and switching (640-802) be the first one you get. You can get the CCNA by taking the one test route or two test route. one test route is the 640-802. The two test route is 640-816 and 640-822. I personally am working on my 640-816 now. So, I should be CCNA in a couple of weeks. They did an IPTV on all this information. if you have any questions, you could watch that video and they will present everything to it. I thoroughly enjoyed the information presented and will probably be specializing in wireless. I hope this helps.

#04 Tim Hoonan

Ron, thanks for the quick response. I have some networking experience from supporting different work related projects-although not extensive. Given the level of difficulty reported for the current CCNA certification, do recommend someone with my experience pursue the CCENT path or 802?

#05 Ronald Nutter

I was in a similar situation to you. I had worked with Cisco gear for about 5 years but nothing heavy duty. I went for the single exam route. The biggest challenge I had was learning to deal with the math that you need to do to successfully navigate through the exam. I strongly recommend Paul Brownings web site (google on his name and you should find the link). He is out of the UK and an ex Cisco person who has done well for himself.

#06 Tim Hoonan

Ron, thanks for the recommendation regarding Paul Brownings. I pulled up some info from his web site and it sounds like a very solid home study course-albeit not cheap at $1186. Did you pass the CCNA certification after taking his course?

#07 Ronald Nutter

Yes I did. The big thing I got from his setup (which used to be available seperately) is the math “shortcut” that he came up with. Once I understood how things worked, I could do the math faster than the binary approach that I had seen with other texts.

There is a java gui he makes available for free and a website done by one of his students www.subnettingquestions.com that are an excellent source of subneting questions to use for the math drills. I would do at least 10 of these a day until my speed came up to where it needed to be for the test.

I think Paul also has a monthly membership option that might be a little more affordable. If you dont see it on his website, email him. He is very good about getting back to folks. Mention my name, we talk periodically, dont know if that get you a discount or not.

#08 Tim Hoonan

Ron, thank you very much for your assistance.

Robin Lee :: Nov.24.2008 :: CCNA Q&As :: No Comments »

#01 solara

As part of my study for CCNA Security I have been making a list of all the commands I need to be adept with. I thought I would share this list of commands with others who may be interested.

For simplicty the list doesn’t offer explanations and in most cases there are a variety of options that could be used with each command that are not shown. It is also not suitable for copy/paste into a router or switch. However, I think it is still a useful quick reference sheet.

Attachments: CCNA-Security-Commands.txt (4.8 K)

#02 B Haines

You are running both RADIUS as well as TACACS+ servers in your example configuration. I was wondering what RAD/TACS you were running on those two servers? FreeRadius? And what Tac Plus? Just trying to determine what software you are using for your lab studies! Thanks!

By the way, thanks for sharing your config!

#03 solara

The previous example isn’t my config but rather just a list of commands to be familiar with and so I’m not actually running TACACS+ and RADIUS on the separate server addresses that I have shown.

I do my lab work using GNS3 with the C3745-ADVENTERPRISEK9_SNA-M IOS and currently I’m using the 90-day trial version of Cisco ACS 4.2 running on a Win2k3 VMWare box.

Just for interest I’ve attached a text file showing a basic config I’ve used for testing TACACS+. I have enabled debugs on aaa authentication and IP packets between the router and the ACS server and then attempted to logon to the router via SSH.

Attachments: example-TACACS+.txt (3.8 K)

Robin Lee :: Nov.21.2008 :: CCNA Q&As :: No Comments »

When you started studying for your CCNA certification exam, one of the very first things you learned was the major difference between the enable password and the enable secret – the enable secret is encrypted by default, where the enable password is just sitting there in clear text, waiting to be read!

When you look at the enable secret in a Cisco router configuration, it looks like it would be impossible to guess. After setting the enable secret on this router to the word security, here’s how it appears in the configuration:

enable secret 5 $1$24me$gVFxUOI4gYp0IQbhtH8Rz0

That password has been encrypted by MD5, the Message Digest 5 algorithm. The result of the MD5 algorithm being applied to the password is a 32-character hexadecimal value.

That password is hard to guess, but not terribly hard to crack. Anyone looking over your shoulder would not be able to come up with that password, but there are readily-available password cracking software devices that can crack that encryption in a matter of minutes. That’s true of any MD5-encrypted password, not just those on Cisco routers.

So what can we do about this? We can add SALT to our MD5.

The salt itself is simply a string of random characters that are added to the encryption process. Salting makes it much more difficult for a hacker to come up with the password; each bit added by the salt process literally makes it twice as difficult for the password to be compromised. A recent Wikipedia entry states that if a password was one of 200,000 words, a 32-bit salt would require 800 trillion hashes for a full-blown brute force attack.

The actual creation and application of a salt is beyond the scope of the CCNA Security exam, but once you’ve earned that valuable certification – or maybe while you’re preparing for it – do a Google search on “salt md5” and read up on this powerful security tool. In the meantime, look for more CCNA Security tutorials on the site you’re on now as well as my website!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of over 100 free certification exam tutorials, including Cisco CCNA certification test prep articles. His exclusive Cisco CCNA study guide and Cisco CCNA training is also available! Visit his blog and sign up for Cisco Certification Central, a daily newsletter packed with CCNA, Network+, Security+, A+, and CCNP certification exam practice questions! A free 7-part course, “How To Pass The CCNA”, is also available, and you can attend an in-person or online CCNA boot camp with The Bryant Advantage!

http://www.thebryantadvantage.com

Robin Lee :: Nov.20.2008 :: Articles And Tutorials :: No Comments »

The Cisco CCNA Security certification is recognized throughout the networking and security industries as an indication of a candidate’s knowledge of and ability to work with Cisco technology. Achieving this certification requires passing the Implementing Cisco IOS Network Security (IINS) exam. Michael Watkins is an expert on this exam, having co-authored the CCNA Security Official Exam Certification Guide. In this interview, Michael explains his best practices for preparing for and passing the IINS exam. Michael is a full-time senior technical instructor with SkillSoft Corp., with over 13 years of network management, training and consulting experience. For more information, check out our chapter excerpt from his book, as well as a collection of questions designed to test your knowledge in this quiz.

• How important is having CCNA certification to IT professionals? Why should they pursue it?
• Have there been any recent changes to the CCNA exam, to adapt to changing technologies?
• What do you think is the best way to prepare for the CCNA exam?
• Are there any particularly tricky or difficult sections of the exam? How would you advise test takers to tackle these areas?
• From your extensive work experience with network management, what advice would you have for aspiring network managers looking to succeed with Cisco certification?
• Are there any supplementary resources that you would recommend to test takers and IT professionals looking for more information on the Cisco Security certification?

You can read the whole article on searchnetworkingchannel.com.

Robin Lee :: Nov.14.2008 :: Articles And Tutorials :: No Comments »

For the past 5 years I’ve been that lone hero in the back room.  Monitoring servers, measuring performance, and fixing errors all to keep a few computers running with high availability.  It has been an interesting road and I’ve become an expert at the Windows Server enviroment and I’m not to shabby with the Linux enviroment either.

However, there’s one major frustration I have with working in the systems environment and that is the scope of the job.  I’m constantly asked if I can write a program, create a new object oriented database, create web page graphics, configure several different brands of switches and routers, etc.  Well I’m sure you get my point; the Network Administrator position in most company’s eyes is that an around everything IT related job.

Although it’s fun to have something different everyday it doesn’t allow me to develop a very unique skill set that’s worth a lot (I want to start a side IT consulting company for a supplemental income).  Because of this I decided that my general Bachelors degree in computer science isn’t enough. I needed a certification but I wanted one that’d change my roll from that all to general network administrator.  I had a few choices, but I decided the best would be networking.  I’m not talking about getting two computers to play well together.  I’m referring to the links that you see going from businesses to ISP’s or B2B, etc.  This is a very technical field and requires a very specialized skill set.  It was exactly what I wanted, something that I could learn and then update once a year rather than once every 3 months.  This field also put me in a great place to have alternate career paths later on when I’m ready for a change.   I could easily add a few things and become a network design professional, a security professional, or a specialized project manager.

So what’s the plan now?  Well first things first, I need to get my certifications.  I’ll start off with my CCNA and probably late this year or early next year move toward my CCNP.  I’ll probably stay in that general Network Administrator’s job for another 2-3 years while I gain actual experience taking side projects at night or weekends.

Article From ehazen’s Blog

Robin Lee :: Nov.14.2008 :: Articles And Tutorials :: No Comments »