Technical Training Courses

Welcome to Captain Schreiner’s CCNA page!

Congratulations on your choice to pursue a challenging, but also very rewarding course of study.  For those of you who have completed any of the CompTIA trifecta (A+, Net+, or Sec+) this course of study is going to be drastically different.  Some of the knowledge will benefit you, but you need to completely adjust your study habits.

Quick tips for preparing for the exam:

• Book knowledge is only half the battle- Do not spend all of your time memorizing facts and figures.  You will be tested on these, but you are better off knowing how to do something and how it actually works, vice the buzz words.
• Packet tracer is your best friend- Packet tracer is a free program available to all Cisco Networking Academy students.  It isn’t the perfect network simulation tool for all situations, but it is the perfect study tool for your CCNA exam.  I would highly recommend completing the packet tracer activities provided you through the academy curriculum, as well as just opening up a couple of switches and routers and trying stuff out.  For example, connect three switches in the “triangle of death” and see what spanning-tree did.  If you can’t understand what has happened or why, you clearly need to study up more on STP.
• Know your defaults-  Cisco, rightly so, puts a lot of stock in you knowing all of the defaults.  This is a jumping off point for understanding how network devices will respond to situations.  A couple examples, not an all encompassing list, would be: OSPF priority, administrative distances, hello and dead timers, STP timers, RIP timers, etc.
• Every topic has three prongs-  You will need to know, do, and verify.  Many students know their facts and figures, can accomplish tasks, but struggle with verification.  In the Cisco world, verification is often accomplished with “show” commands.  Be sure you know them, know what they contain, and know how to interpret the results.  You will most likely need instructor assistance with this in the beginning, but it will get easier and easier.  This will be nearly impossible to accomplish without using packet tracer.  There is so much information included in these tasks, that simply memorizing what these commands have would be unlikely.  Every time you do a packet tracer exercise, VERIFY before you quit by doing the show commands.  This will pay huge dividends when you get to the exam.  Outside of “show” commands, ping and trace route can also be very beneficial.  I would be familiar with their employment.
• Subnetting- One of the more important topics in CCNA.  Being able to subnet by itself is not enough.  Time can often be a limiting factor, so being able to subnet any network in under 45 seconds is a must.  It is highly recommended to create yourself a subnetting chart as soon as your test administrator gives you permission to.