May 18, 2015 at 16:45The course of the young fighter. Practical Course on Cisco Packet Tracer. Conclusion
- Tutorial
Relatively recently, I published a short article “The course of a young fighter. Cisco Packet Tracer Practical Tutorial . ” There I talked about the experience of creating a training course for the internal needs of the organization. The main goal of the course is the quick preparation of a specialist for “field work”. The lessons were simultaneously published on YouTube in the public domain. The project itself was called NetSkills. After the publication on the YouTube channel, more than 2 thousand subscribers were added. I got a great feedback (one that I could barely handle) and an incentive to get things done.
A few days ago I published the last video lesson and wanted to share some results and thoughts as a conclusion. Everyone who is interested, welcome to cat.
Small course statistics
1) In total, the course turned out 23 lessons. For some, for many, for few. At the beginning of the course, I promised more typical network schemes, but then I realized that this would not be entirely appropriate. Most likely it will result in some separate lessons or courses.
2) The duration of the course was 9 months. Although I planned to manage for about 6. Overestimated my capabilities. The reasons for the delay were different. Sometimes work, sometimes banal laziness. Now I can say with confidence that if I took the course more seriously and spent a little more time, then I could manage in a couple of months! But for now, it's just a hobby.
3) During the creation of the course, there were 56 thousand (now over 60) views of video lessons. This is certainly less than the Max of +100500, but nonetheless. It can be seen that people are interested.
4) For 9 months, 2400 (now more than 2500) subscribers have been added to the channel, which is also very good! And the total number of subscribers is now slightly more than 3 thousand.
5) Subscribers also actively commented on video lessons and the number of comments on the course exceeded 5 hundred.
6) I received more than 100 letters in the mail with questions and clarifications. I tried whenever possible to answer everything and provide all kinds of help.
Here is such a small statistic.
I also noted for myself an important thing - the need for intermediate homework. This turned out to be very important for consolidating the material covered. Unfortunately, I realized this too late. But next time I will definitely consider it.
As mentioned above, in the process of publishing the course, I received many questions. Many of them were the same and I decided to make a small TOP of questions for beginners. I will answer them again.
1 So, one of the most frequently asked questions: “Do I need to take the CCNA exam?”. Yes - in short. I will try to answer a little more detailed. Generally speaking, neither the CCNA certificate nor the CCNP certificate says absolutely anything about human competence. Yes, you can be sure that he knows some basic concepts, but nothing more. In the presence of actual dumps, even a monkey can pass the exam (no matter how regrettable it may sound). But that is not the question. The question is, does CCNA certification help us? And here the definite answer is YES. As soon as you receive a certificate, your value in the labor market increases, no matter what. Naturally, this does not immediately guarantee you a cool job with a good salary. Good experience is already needed here. But the certificate will clearly be a big plus in your resume and a good start in your career. Many companies are intentionally looking for people with certificates, in order to establish partnerships with vendors (Cisco, MicroSoft, CheckPoint). Partnerships usually require certified professionals.
2) The next question: "How to prepare for CCNA?". There really is no single answer. There are many opinions on this subject. Someone thinks that it is necessary to take authorized courses, someone thinks that there are enough books, and someone just cram dumps. I can only share my opinion on this issue. I had to take 6 exams (CCNA, CCNA Security and 4 exams from the CCNP Security branch), as a result of which I had my own preparation algorithm. Just reading a book was always boring for me. And at one time I was very well advised to pay attention to CBT Nuggets courses. And this is the best I've seen from self-study materials. Very qualified specialists who explain complex things in an easy and sometimes playful way. I recommend everyone to take their courses as the basis for preparation. There are only two minuses. The first minus is English courses. But if you plan to be an IT specialist, then you need to get used to it and tighten your English. So maybe this is a plus. The second minus - the courses are paid.However, they can be downloaded for free on the torrent . This is piracy, but ... it saves a lot of money. If there are big problems with the English language, then it is worth reading the books icnd1 and icnd2, they are also on the torrent in Russian. Although the new version of the CCNA exam is currently only in English. When preparing, be sure to use exam dumps, which can be downloaded from examcollection.com. Total. To prepare for CCNA, I recommend using CBT Nuggets video courses, icnd1, icnd2 books and exam dumps so that you can solve all the questions in advance and check your preparation. Also pay your attention to the site 9tut.com where you can not only learn the answers to questions from the exam, but also their explanation.
3) Third question:"Is there enough Cisco Packet Tracer to prepare for the CCNA?" . In the general case, yes, enough. I never understood people who bought whole laboratory stands for training, in my opinion this is unnecessary. Most common tasks can be implemented in the Cisco Packet Tracer. Of course, there are several topics that are not available for modeling, but in this case, GNS3 comes to our aid, to which one of the following courses will be devoted.
4) The question immediately arises: “Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3? What's better?". Another controversial question. I will express my opinion. For beginners, the Cisco Packet Tracer is the best solution to date. It is easy to use, not demanding on the characteristics of the computer and it is enough for most tasks from the CCNA course. GNS3 is more functional, interesting, allows you to prototype devices that are not available in Cisco Packet Tracer. Teams in routers are not trimmed. You can take full advantage of the Cisco ASA firewalls. You can create heterogeneous networks from devices of various vendors (Cisco, Juniper, CheckPoint, Mikrotik, etc.). But GNS3 is very demanding on computer resources, there are a lot of bugs that will confuse the beginner. Thus, for beginners, I highly recommend starting with the Cisco Packet Tracer, and then switching to GNS3 to solve more interesting and complex tasks.
5)“What books to read?” . Another very common question. Minimum icnd1 and icnd2. And then everything depends on your tasks. Always try to set clear goals. A task like “I want to learn Cisco” is a wrong task. And the task of “organizing a network with Internet access for 50 users” is correct. This task can already be divided into smaller ones: “configure VLANs”, “configure ip addresses”, “configure NAT”. It will be much easier to find the right literature for these queries. By setting a specific task, it will be much easier for you to advance in the learning process. Here is my advice.
6) “What else needs to understand the networker?”I also hear this question very often. Here you can say: "The more the better." But most require specifics. I will express my purely personal opinion. In my opinion, the networker is simply obliged to navigate in unix-like systems. Be able to configure the ip address, register a route, restart the service, use the vi editor, grep utility and much more. A huge number of network devices work either on linux or on freebsd. Therefore, a minimum set of knowledge must be present.
7) Often there are questions like “There’s porridge in my head, everything is messed up, what should I do?”. Such a problem arises when a person reread theoretical materials and did not pay due attention to practice. In such cases, I recommend to relax a couple of days and start working with specific practical problems. Try to simulate several networks, try the settings in Cisco Packet Tracer, this will help structure your knowledge. You will still have questions in terms of design (where to put the switch, where the router, etc.), but these are temporary difficulties, with time you will definitely figure it out.
8) “How to develop?”. This is a philosophical question. On the Internet, a huge number of books on personal and career self-development. For example, I like Brian Tracy's book “Get Out of Your Comfort Zone” the most. Highly recommend reading. I will not go into details on this subject, as she is very extensive. I will give only a few tips. Plan your time, be sure to read IT news, regularly watch webinars, subscribe to YouTube channels of famous IT companies, in general, be in the trend! IT should be your favorite hobby.
There was also experience in training new employees in the created course. The result was pleasantly surprised. Within a week, a person manages to complete about half of the course and completing intermediate tasks can already begin to configure not complex network configurations. It is noticeable that employees are much more willing to learn video lessons with parallel practice in Cisco Packet Tracer (which could not be said about reading books). The effect of the courses is definitely there and very positive.
Based on the experience gained, there are plans to create a short GNS3 course, as well as to prepare for commissioning (development of L2 / L3 circuits, ip cards, cable logs). If successful, it will be possible to significantly simplify and improve the training of new specialists.
PS Many thanks to all the subscribers for their support and constructive criticism!
A few days ago I published the last video lesson and wanted to share some results and thoughts as a conclusion. Everyone who is interested, welcome to cat.
Small course statistics
1) In total, the course turned out 23 lessons. For some, for many, for few. At the beginning of the course, I promised more typical network schemes, but then I realized that this would not be entirely appropriate. Most likely it will result in some separate lessons or courses.
2) The duration of the course was 9 months. Although I planned to manage for about 6. Overestimated my capabilities. The reasons for the delay were different. Sometimes work, sometimes banal laziness. Now I can say with confidence that if I took the course more seriously and spent a little more time, then I could manage in a couple of months! But for now, it's just a hobby.
3) During the creation of the course, there were 56 thousand (now over 60) views of video lessons. This is certainly less than the Max of +100500, but nonetheless. It can be seen that people are interested.
4) For 9 months, 2400 (now more than 2500) subscribers have been added to the channel, which is also very good! And the total number of subscribers is now slightly more than 3 thousand.
5) Subscribers also actively commented on video lessons and the number of comments on the course exceeded 5 hundred.
6) I received more than 100 letters in the mail with questions and clarifications. I tried whenever possible to answer everything and provide all kinds of help.
Here is such a small statistic.
I also noted for myself an important thing - the need for intermediate homework. This turned out to be very important for consolidating the material covered. Unfortunately, I realized this too late. But next time I will definitely consider it.
FAQ
As mentioned above, in the process of publishing the course, I received many questions. Many of them were the same and I decided to make a small TOP of questions for beginners. I will answer them again.
1 So, one of the most frequently asked questions: “Do I need to take the CCNA exam?”. Yes - in short. I will try to answer a little more detailed. Generally speaking, neither the CCNA certificate nor the CCNP certificate says absolutely anything about human competence. Yes, you can be sure that he knows some basic concepts, but nothing more. In the presence of actual dumps, even a monkey can pass the exam (no matter how regrettable it may sound). But that is not the question. The question is, does CCNA certification help us? And here the definite answer is YES. As soon as you receive a certificate, your value in the labor market increases, no matter what. Naturally, this does not immediately guarantee you a cool job with a good salary. Good experience is already needed here. But the certificate will clearly be a big plus in your resume and a good start in your career. Many companies are intentionally looking for people with certificates, in order to establish partnerships with vendors (Cisco, MicroSoft, CheckPoint). Partnerships usually require certified professionals.
2) The next question: "How to prepare for CCNA?". There really is no single answer. There are many opinions on this subject. Someone thinks that it is necessary to take authorized courses, someone thinks that there are enough books, and someone just cram dumps. I can only share my opinion on this issue. I had to take 6 exams (CCNA, CCNA Security and 4 exams from the CCNP Security branch), as a result of which I had my own preparation algorithm. Just reading a book was always boring for me. And at one time I was very well advised to pay attention to CBT Nuggets courses. And this is the best I've seen from self-study materials. Very qualified specialists who explain complex things in an easy and sometimes playful way. I recommend everyone to take their courses as the basis for preparation. There are only two minuses. The first minus is English courses. But if you plan to be an IT specialist, then you need to get used to it and tighten your English. So maybe this is a plus. The second minus - the courses are paid.
3) Third question:"Is there enough Cisco Packet Tracer to prepare for the CCNA?" . In the general case, yes, enough. I never understood people who bought whole laboratory stands for training, in my opinion this is unnecessary. Most common tasks can be implemented in the Cisco Packet Tracer. Of course, there are several topics that are not available for modeling, but in this case, GNS3 comes to our aid, to which one of the following courses will be devoted.
4) The question immediately arises: “Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3? What's better?". Another controversial question. I will express my opinion. For beginners, the Cisco Packet Tracer is the best solution to date. It is easy to use, not demanding on the characteristics of the computer and it is enough for most tasks from the CCNA course. GNS3 is more functional, interesting, allows you to prototype devices that are not available in Cisco Packet Tracer. Teams in routers are not trimmed. You can take full advantage of the Cisco ASA firewalls. You can create heterogeneous networks from devices of various vendors (Cisco, Juniper, CheckPoint, Mikrotik, etc.). But GNS3 is very demanding on computer resources, there are a lot of bugs that will confuse the beginner. Thus, for beginners, I highly recommend starting with the Cisco Packet Tracer, and then switching to GNS3 to solve more interesting and complex tasks.
5)“What books to read?” . Another very common question. Minimum icnd1 and icnd2. And then everything depends on your tasks. Always try to set clear goals. A task like “I want to learn Cisco” is a wrong task. And the task of “organizing a network with Internet access for 50 users” is correct. This task can already be divided into smaller ones: “configure VLANs”, “configure ip addresses”, “configure NAT”. It will be much easier to find the right literature for these queries. By setting a specific task, it will be much easier for you to advance in the learning process. Here is my advice.
6) “What else needs to understand the networker?”I also hear this question very often. Here you can say: "The more the better." But most require specifics. I will express my purely personal opinion. In my opinion, the networker is simply obliged to navigate in unix-like systems. Be able to configure the ip address, register a route, restart the service, use the vi editor, grep utility and much more. A huge number of network devices work either on linux or on freebsd. Therefore, a minimum set of knowledge must be present.
7) Often there are questions like “There’s porridge in my head, everything is messed up, what should I do?”. Such a problem arises when a person reread theoretical materials and did not pay due attention to practice. In such cases, I recommend to relax a couple of days and start working with specific practical problems. Try to simulate several networks, try the settings in Cisco Packet Tracer, this will help structure your knowledge. You will still have questions in terms of design (where to put the switch, where the router, etc.), but these are temporary difficulties, with time you will definitely figure it out.
8) “How to develop?”. This is a philosophical question. On the Internet, a huge number of books on personal and career self-development. For example, I like Brian Tracy's book “Get Out of Your Comfort Zone” the most. Highly recommend reading. I will not go into details on this subject, as she is very extensive. I will give only a few tips. Plan your time, be sure to read IT news, regularly watch webinars, subscribe to YouTube channels of famous IT companies, in general, be in the trend! IT should be your favorite hobby.
In-house training
There was also experience in training new employees in the created course. The result was pleasantly surprised. Within a week, a person manages to complete about half of the course and completing intermediate tasks can already begin to configure not complex network configurations. It is noticeable that employees are much more willing to learn video lessons with parallel practice in Cisco Packet Tracer (which could not be said about reading books). The effect of the courses is definitely there and very positive.
Plans
Based on the experience gained, there are plans to create a short GNS3 course, as well as to prepare for commissioning (development of L2 / L3 circuits, ip cards, cable logs). If successful, it will be possible to significantly simplify and improve the training of new specialists.
PS Many thanks to all the subscribers for their support and constructive criticism!