Been away for a week ...

[highlander]

Hello, not been posting much (if at all) this last week. This is because I've been in Wyboston, Bedfordshire, on an intensive training course with a company called Firebrand Training.

The net result of it is that I am now a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), having passed both the Cisco Inter-Connecting Network Devices (ICND) 1 and 2 exams with flying colours.

When I say "intensive training" I really mean it - my flight touched down at Luton on Sunday the 5th at 16:20, took a taxi ride to the training centre arriving at 17:50, had my induction at 18:00, and then training began immediately. I didn't see my hotel room that night until after 23:00. The next day I trained from 08:00 through to 23:30. Every day was like that, up until Friday when I sat my second exam at 12:00. I was back home at 21:00 on Friday night and have spent the whole weekend recovering.

Really happy with the course and with the result.

[Welly]

Well done matey!

(although it wouldn't have hurt to have put in more hours and made a bit more effort )

[highlander]

Of course not! Sleep is for wimpzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........

[Doggy]

Well done Graeme, though I have to agree with welly regarding you youngsters going for the soft option.

I normally stumbled out of bed at 3 am, then drive 30 miles to sort out some completely undocumented mess. At the inevitable unplanned overtime 'inquest' I'd usually be informed, 'that was the training course'.....

Anyway, glad you're back in one piece.

[highlander]

I normally stumbled out of bed at 3 am, then drive 30 miles to sort out some completely undocumented mess. At the inevitable unplanned overtime 'inquest' I'd usually be informed, 'that was the training course'....

Please don't tell me I'm the only person that read this and thought...

<monty python> Pthhhht, luxury. When Ah were a lad, there were 2,000 of us in classroom 4x6 wide, and t' lecturer taught us by throwing t' books right at our heads! </monty python>

... right?

Oh well. Thanks for the kind words, I've kind of got used to the concept of "sleep" and "relaxation" now that I've been rehabilitated back into normal society, but I will likely do it all again in the next couple of years to try and secure a Cisco Certified Network Professional qualification (or possibly CCNA-Voice). Because apparently I'm a masochistic glutton for punishment.

[plod]

<monty python> Pthhhht, luxury. When Ah were a lad, there were 2,000 of us in classroom 4x6 wide, and t' lecturer taught us by throwing t' books right at our heads! </monty python>

... right?

2,000!
2,000!
When I was a lad there was 2,000 of us in the 4x6 AND they held the local market in there as well!!!

[omega]

The net result of it is that I am now a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), having passed both the Cisco Inter-Connecting Network Devices (ICND) 1 and 2 exams with flying colours.

please tell me that iam not the only one not to know what this means?
but well done anyway

[highlander]

The net result of it is that I am now a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), having passed both the Cisco Inter-Connecting Network Devices (ICND) 1 and 2 exams with flying colours.

please tell me that iam not the only one not to know what this means?
but well done anyway

OK, so Cisco are the world's biggest and most influential company when it comes to computer networking. A massive percentage of all the routers and switching equipment that makes up the backbone of the internet is all made by Cisco, and if you look in the computer rooms of practically any large enterprise company, you'll find Cisco equipment at the heart of it. They also make wireless access points and VoIP telephones, amongst many other products. Their equipment is complex, because it offers a wide variety of features - practically all configuration of this equipment is performed through a command line (a bit like MS-DOS on older PCs, but focused around networking rather than applications).

The CCNA qualification is the lowest-grade major certification in Cisco's certification programme - it's also quite tough to achieve, because it requires you to have a knowledge of a wide variety of topics - this includes: routing protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, RIP) - switching concepts (VLANs, collision domains, broadcast domains, Spanning Tree Protocol) - the TCP/IP stack - the OSI model - WAN connections (including PPP and Frame Relay) - IP Version 6

By having a CCNA qualification, you're demonstrating to your company (and to any prospective employers) that you really know your subject matter. A lot of companies won't employ a network engineer who has not yet obtained CCNA (or higher) certification, and those that do employ non-CCNA holders will generally pay those with a CCNA a better wage.

There's a lot to fit into a 5 day course, but at the end of it all I've got something real and substantial I could use if my circumstances suddenly change and I need to find work elsewhere. Bonus: work paid for the whole thing - that's more than £2,000 worth of expenditure on this course, which is money I wouldn't have been able to spend on it myself.

Thanks for the congratulations - I'm still dead chuffed with myself!

[Welly]

OK, so Cisco are the world's biggest and most influential company when it comes to computer networking. A massive percentage of all the routers and switching equipment that makes up the backbone of the internet is all made by Cisco, and if you look in the computer rooms of practically any large enterprise company, you'll find Cisco equipment at the heart of it. They also make wireless access points and VoIP telephones, amongst many other products. Their equipment is complex, because it offers a wide variety of features - practically all configuration of this equipment is performed through a command line (a bit like MS-DOS on older PCs, but focused around networking rather than applications).

The CCNA qualification is the lowest-grade major certification in Cisco's certification programme - it's also quite tough to achieve, because it requires you to have a knowledge of a wide variety of topics - this includes: routing protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, RIP) - switching concepts (VLANs, collision domains, broadcast domains, Spanning Tree Protocol) - the TCP/IP stack - the OSI model - WAN connections (including PPP and Frame Relay) - IP Version 6

By having a CCNA qualification, you're demonstrating to your company (and to any prospective employers) that you really know your subject matter. A lot of companies won't employ a network engineer who has not yet obtained CCNA (or higher) certification, and those that do employ non-CCNA holders will generally pay those with a CCNA a better wage.

*Reads*

*Thinks of*

[lozz]

Good news highlander well done mate,
is your head not burnt out with all that Dos stuff,

Struth, you must have alot of paitience mate,

[highlander]

is your head not burnt out with all that Dos stuff,

Well put it this way - by the time I got done on Monday night (i.e. the end of the first full day there), I honestly didn't know what day it was, and it felt like I'd been there a week already.

It's complex, but logical - some of the more interesting parts of it included working out how network switches discover and prevent switching loops (Spanning Tree Protocol); once you know what it's doing, you get a better appreciation of how clever it actually is.

Struth, you must have alot of paitience mate,

I did 7.5 years of IT helpdesk support, and not only did I lose all of my patience as a result, but my faith in the intelligence of the average human being as well... Networking is better paid, far more interesting, and typically you don't have to deal with people who wouldn't know how to bang two rocks together if their lives depended on it (yes, I'm a "people person").

You don't need patience for this stuff, just a sense of logic.

[lozz]

Years ago, iworked for a Data recovery company,
the company actualy had Disaster recovery in its name, never knew why and never asked ijust minded my own buisness and ploded on with the work,

iwas Racking these big Reels abit like Vhs video tape but single spooled masive things,
each one was colour coded and iwas in a room full of millions of them, My employer said youl either walk out or endup colour blind by the end of the week,

suprisingly istuck with the job and worked it all out, imust say tho if idid that now, my head wouid be burnt out,
ive no paitience for number crunching or teadius tasks any more,

id sooner go out and work in the rain,

[Captain Jack]

Congrats!

I always thought about doing these professional qualifications but never found the time (or money) to do it. Just worked my way up through work experience from an IT helpdesk support monkey, to bespoke application support to my current system architect role (which is just app implementation). Pays OK and I get to travel all over the world ...and England, hence the 600+ miles per week rackage on the '6....