Let's Get Started...

Okay, so after the non-negligible distractions of the past 6 months (which I'm not going to pay lip service to), it's time to finally get moving forwards again, and get working towards finally taking and passing  the Cisco CCNA exam.

I graduated in early spring this year from college, taking with me both a level 2 and a level 3 C&G IT certificate, which I'm pretty pleased with. Essentially, I passed both courses.
I still need, however, to take the final CCNA exam, which is vendor certified, which in a nutshell means that the certificate comes direct from Cisco, and says "We approve of this guy configuring our hardware, we trust him to do it properly etc etc". 

With that in mind, in April I bought my own lab. What this is, is essentially my own kit to practice on at home. Packet Tracer is all well and good, and it's pretty versatile, but since I'm a hands-on type person, I much prefer getting to grips with the hardware itself rather than just the concepts.

 What you're looking at is my own little internetwork, primarily comprised of 7 connected devices, which then have computers/laptops/printers etc connecting at either end.

From top to bottom, we have:

• A pair of Catalyst 2950 24-port layer 2 switches. 
• A Catalyst 3550 48 (without expansion GBICs) layer 3 switch. 
• Two 2610XM Routers
• A 2620XM Router
• A Dell PowerEdge SC1425 Server. 

  Total cost about, hmm, about £450 including the little stuff like cables and whatnot. Sounds expensive, but when it's to help with qualifications, it's really not. Networking hardware depreciates faster than a brand new car. In a derby. With monster trucks.

Seriously, this expansion module (For something even bigger and expensive-erer) is nearly 50 grand! This is what networking hardware costs, and this is why people want engineers who are qualified and certified, by the vendor, by the book.

I'm doing my studying with the help of a rather cool book, which is one of the few paper books I've bought for a while.
I've actually had it for a while so I'm stretching the definition of 31 days somewhat, but hey, I've got to take the exam sooner or later. Would be a waste otherwise.

So, let's see how we go. Rather than take the exam 31 days from now (I don't have the money to book it at the minute) I'll run through the book, and make sure that I understand the concepts described therein. I've got some additional hardware that may be on the way (gratis) so it's my intention to practice the concepts I describe in each section.

So for the time being, this is going to turn into something of a network oriented blog. That's my intention anyway. Let's see how it goes...