NetworkingExamAcademy

7 Great Cisco Networking Engineers to Learn From

blake — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:35:49 +0000

The CCIE has been around since August 1993 and a lot has happened within the last 17 years. One big thing that has changed is that now there is actual curriculum to study and courses that you can take. That just didn't exist 17 years ago. There was no book to study from, you had to learn everything from experience working for many years in the Networking Field. Now because Cisco offers courses you can take as part of your high school curriculum you have 18 year old CCNA's who get their certification before they even graduate and have a job. Like me! I was fortunate to work for a VOIP company while still in high school which helped me tremendously get my certification. Then college happens, while many universities offer some networking classes they usually are just Associate degrees which in my opinion doesn't mean much any more.

There have been several questions that I have always had about getting a college degree and balancing that with getting Cisco Certifications. And since I'm not as experienced as many other people out there I decided to ask the experts what they thought. I was really impressed with their replies and I would love to share them with you.

Click to continue...

Bridging The Gap between IPv4 and IPv6

blake — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 07:01:35 +0000

Many networks these days are still using IPv4 and are not yet ready for IPv6 and so in this article I wanted to talk about the necessary steps to start the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing. A while back I wrote a general introduction to IPv6 addressing that you should look at again to get a little bit more background.

Click to continue...

How to Properly Use Wildcard Masks

blake — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:01:54 +0000

You will need to become familiar with how wildcard masks work in order to properly configure many different Cisco IOS commands. Mostly you will encounter wildcard masks with access control lists and when configuring the dynamic routing protocol OSPF. ACL's are also used when configuring NAT and PAT settings. Because wildcard masks come up often they are a very important topic to understand for your ICND2 and CCNA Exam.

Click to continue...

Managing Traffic With Access Control Lists

blake — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:30:13 +0000

Access Control Lists are very important to ensure that network traffic is well managed and under control. Just like a toll both checks every car before it proceeds on the highway, Access Control Lists can be set up on a router to check each and every packet as it comes through and block unwanted traffic.

A proper Access Control List configuration will increase security and ensure proper network speeds for time sensitive traffic like voice calls or video conferences.

Click to continue...

Introduction to EIGRP

blake — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:07:12 +0000

EIGRP stands for Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol. It is considered a hybrid routing protocol because it uses features from both link-state and distance vector routing protocols.

EIGRP is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol. Meaning that it can only run on Cisco routers.

Click to continue...

How to Configure Static Routes on a Cisco Router

blake — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:01:15 +0000

I think static routes get trash talked a lot by those studying for their CCNA exam. Mostly likely because they are just learning about dynamic routing for the first time and find it really fun to set up. And from that moment on static routes get pushed to the back burner and never make it into the router configuration. While static routes may have some disadvantages they also have many advantages that are worth considering.

Click to Continue...

The Spanning Tree Protocol Explained

blake — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:01:43 +0000

My last post talked about many details of the Spanning Tree Protocol. While I did my best to explain how it works using carefully selected words, sometimes videos are just better.

Click to continue...

Introduction to the Spanning Tree Protocol

blake — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:01:19 +0000

I'm currently studying for my CCNP SWITCH exam. Which is obviously all about switches, but mostly builds upon the foundation of the ICND2 and CCNA exam about switches and the Spanning Tree Protocol. So, if you are planning on getting your CCNP definitley make sure you pay attention to STP (Spanning Tree Protocol for short), you will need to know a lot about it.

Click to Continue...

Router OSPF – Part 3

blake — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 10:54:05 +0000

Now that we are finally to Part 3 of the Router OSPF Series its time to have some fun configuring OSPF. I even made a video showing you how to configure a two area OSPF implementation!

If you still havn't read Part 1 or Part 2 yet please do so that you understand some OSPF fundamentals.

Click to continue...

Router OSPF – Part 2

blake — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:28:21 +0000

This is Part 2 of the Router OSPF Series which will cover topics about OSPF Areas and OSPF LSA's. Before continuing on I recommend reading Part 1 of the Router OSPF Series which gives an introduction on the topic.

For the ICND2 and CCNA exam you will only need to configure a single area OSPF implementation, but you will still be required to know many different things about a full multi-area OSPF network.

Click to continue...