So I finally decided to take the CCNA exam – 12 years after going through a great portion of the topics during my training as an IT professional.
Since my vocational college was (and still is) a Cisco Networking Academy (1999-2003) we used the Curriculum as a part of our daily lectures and they have given me both the knowledge and the motivation to dig into one of my favorite areas of IT engineering.
Back when I set up my first 10Base2 Local Area Network at the age of 15 – I knew practically nothing about IP Adresses and how to deploy them correctly. At some point, I got the 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0 thing right and Local Area Network gaming opened up a whole new world to us. Keep in mind, back then most of the kids our age had only limited access to the internet.
Together with the GNU/Linux Operating System networks not only became my profession, but also my passion.
The last few years I spent with designing, implementing and troubleshooting medium sized networks in a university campus environment. After recently planning and deploying a medium sized wireless network (130 Lightweight Access Points) my next 2 candidates on the list of exploration (and at some point perhaps mastering) will be BGP and MPLS at a CCNP level, so I might as well take the CCNA on my path and then go for the CCNP. Even with many years of experience the CCNA exam will definitely not be a cakewalk since there are always some gaps that need to be filled (Frame-Relay, y u no go extinct!) and the exam yet has a reputation to be hard.
My Lab is still missing some WIC-1T cards + DCE/DTE crossover cables but then i should be good to go.
