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The new CCNA training - experiences and recommendations

As of February 24, 2020, Cisco completely turned the entire system of courses and certifications upside down. There has never been a comparable change in Cisco Career Certifications with such great effects and changes.

 What has remained are the basic designations of the Entry, Associate, Professional and Expert career levels. The well-known personal certifications are still called CCNA, CCNP, and CCIE. However, the path to these labels in the various disciplines is very different from before.

 With CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), there is no longer any specialization at the associate level. In the past, a distinction was made between CCNA Routing & Switching, CCNA Security, CCNA Collaboration, CCNA Cloud, CCNA Data Center, CCNA Service Provider and CCNA Wireless. There was also the CCDA for the specialty network design. In contrast, there is only one CCNA certification today. This serves as the basis for further development in the fields of enterprise, service provider, data center, security, and collaboration.

 Only a five-day course is required for the new CCNA. Previously there were two courses for each CCNA. With the old entry-level ICND1, only the status CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician) could be acquired, which was not particularly in demand in the market.

 In addition to the new general CCNA, there are now only the special cases DevNet Associate (new) and Cyber ​​Ops Associate.

 In February 2020 we carried out the first courses "CCNA - Implementing and Administering Cisco Solutions" according to the new standard. We would like to report on the experiences of these training courses and derive some recommendations from them.

course  CCNA training in Dhaka

Anyone who is at home in the Cisco world and hears CCNA usually thinks of the previous CCNA routing & switching. To acquire this status, the two courses ICND1 and ICND2 should be heard. These had developed into real classics in the field of IT training over many years.

 Thus, the former CCNA Routing & Switching still serves as a benchmark for many participants in order to better classify the new course and the associated exam requirements.

 Both the course participants and the trainers unanimously report that the new training "CCNA - Implementing and Administering Cisco Solutions" covers a wide range of topics. There are significantly more issues now than was the case with the previous combination of ICND1 and ICND2.

 In terms of content, it comes down to business

The new CCNA training focuses on the basics of network communication. Networking technologies, LANs, switching, routing, the IP protocol, IP addressing in the variants IPv4 and IPv6, as well as subnetting, are explained.

 The participant gets to know the Cisco IOS and configures Cisco routers and switches. The packet delivery process is conveyed end-to-end. This shows how an IP packet e.g. B. is transported from a client to a server and what role the routers and switches involved play. The course also includes a first introduction to troubleshooting the systems.

 It continues with the configuration of static routes, VLANs and trunks, routing between VLANs, OSPF, EtherChannel, ACL Basics and Internet Connectivity (DHCP and relay agent or IP helper-address).

 Up to this point, old Cisco rabbits will say - nothing new in the West. After all, the topics mentioned are known from the previous ICND courses. However, it should be noted that this content is presented in a fairly compact form. The courses ICND1 and ICND2 together lasted at least ten days - the most important topics in the new course will be taught in about four and a half days.

 Compared to the previous courses, the content has expanded considerably, taking up the second half of the last day of the course. This is about software-defined networking (SDN) and network programming, the REST API, Netconf and Yang. A look at network automation tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef. There is also some information on device management and simple device hardening.

 This content is certainly a special challenge for the classic old-school networker. The paradigms of network architecture are changing and here such developments are reflected in the new Cisco basic course. Nice that this part is treated in great detail in the course documents! A lot of new content was created by Cisco here in Course Development. Incidentally, the documents are, as is usual for all Cisco courses, made available in digital form in English.

Homework - self-study after the course

How do you get the contents of ten course days in just five days? And will you add a new topic?

 On the one hand, some of the contents of the old ICND courses were outsourced. For example, EIGRP is no longer handled at the CCNA level. This topic is now included in the advanced course ENCOR - Implementing and Operating Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies, which is part of the CCNP certification.

 On the other hand, there are special chapters on the topics of wireless, security and data center (virtualization). These are not included in the official course schedule and are therefore not dealt with - this is not possible for reasons of time alone. Rather, these chapters are intended by Cisco as a self-study. This means that after attending the course, participants should learn this content on their own. There are three days for this - in practice, it could take a little longer, depending on your individual knowledge.

Discovery Labs and FastLabs

Each participant receives a virtual lab from Cisco. The labs include routers, switches, servers, and PCs. The topology is based on a small company network with an internet connection. The network topology varies from task to task in order to convey the respective topic as clearly as possible.

 There are two types of labs, Discovery Labs and FastLabs. The latter was previously called the Challenge Lab. At a Discovery Lab, the participant follows detailed instructions. Each step is described exactly like in a recipe. These are followed meticulously and so the functional result comes about at the end of an exercise.

 A FastLab, on the other hand, already relies on more independence. The task is only described in principle. The participant must find out and implement the necessary individual steps themselves. In addition to the exercise option itself, the FastLab also includes quiz questions to check your own level of knowledge.

 You can access the labs for 90 days or a maximum of 60 hours. Incidentally, only a small part of this quota is required in the course, so that you can then practice extensively. For example, this lab time can be used to practice the contents of the self-study chapters or to prepare for the CCNA exam.

 The labs are largely proven exercises that were already included in the previous courses ICND1 and ICND2.

 VLAN and Trunk Lab in CCNA training

 Who is the new CCNA course for?

The new CCNA training is positioned in the entry-level area but is nevertheless filled with a whole lot of material from a wide variety of topics. Therefore, it will not be easy for beginners who have little previous knowledge to follow the course in all aspects.

 Our recommendation is, therefore: If you do not yet have a good basic knowledge of the network environment, you should acquire this beforehand. For this target group, we have developed the Cisco Routing & Switching in Enterprise - The compact introduction to the IOS-XE. In this event, considerably more time is provided to teach the essential basics for building networks. In this way, the necessary background knowledge can be built up. This enables the participants to understand the results of the practical exercises and to process them in such a way that they can also be used in practice.

 What does the new CCNA exam look like?

Of course, there is also a new exam for the new CCNA training. This exam must be taken in a VUE test center and has the number 200-301.

It is very gratifying that Cisco states which subject areas are included in the exam with which share.

 Network Fundamentals 20%

Network access 20%

IP connectivity 25%

IP services 10%

Security fundamentals 15%

Automation and programmability 10%

This is a great help in preparing for the CCNA certification. This makes it clear that the most extensive part of the course documents (Automation and Programmability) is far from having the greatest weight when it comes to exam questions.

 Those who have passed the exam can be awarded CCNA status for three years!

 CCNA certificate

 Our conclusion

The new training "CCNA - Implementing and Administering Cisco Solutions" offers a comprehensive overview of the current technologies in the networks. He has what it takes to quickly become a classic in IT training. However, without any prior knowledge, it will be difficult to follow all aspects and pass the subsequent exam. We, therefore, recommend that all interested parties check their previous knowledge. If these are not available, the basic knowledge should first be built up so that the subsequent visit to the CCNA training is also a success!

CCNA online training

By the way, we don't just offer CCNA courses as face-to-face training. You can also take part in CCNA online training. As a rule, we offer hybrid courses in which online participants can join a face-to-face course.