Road to CCNA: Week 0

I plan to document my process starting from 0 to passing the CCNA 200–301 exam.

Introduction

I recently passed the eJPT, a cyber-security/pentesting certification which I really enjoyed. But there is one name that has been present in my head for a few years: CCNA.

I work as a Network Administrator, and at the time of writing I have been doing so for the past 2 years and 10 months. “Wow, and you don’t have your CCNA yet?” Correct. Almost three years of experience and I can’t (yet) throw that on my resume. And this is no ones fault but mine. I tried to get this done in the past with no success. I would say that the 2 principal things that drove me away from it were my procrastination habits and knowing that the content was huge and involved a lot of theory. My last failed attempt to study was 2–3 months before cert-apocalypse, after just a few weeks I quitted. “What is the difference between now and your last attempts?” I feel motivated after passing the eJPT and I really think that I need to lay a strong foundation to keep evolving as a technician. Don’t think that because I hold a position as a Network Admin I know everything and the CCNA will be a breeze for me, this just isn’t true. I learned and I still learn a lot in my job, especially hands-on skills involving Cisco equipment and other vendor’s equipment, but I need to fill a lot of gaps in my knowledge and understand WHY and HOW certain things work, not just do things without understanding what am I doing.

Weekly Updates

From now on, I will try to post every Sunday until exam day sharing my progress with you, dear reader. This will help me track my progress and hopefully will also help you.

Study Material

Every single person that I personally know and owns this certificate has been enrolled in an academy, which provides you with study material and class sessions with an instructor. This is a good option but I don’t like it. I think it’s to expensive and I prefer to study by myself.

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After Googling around and looking on Reddit for resources I made a list of which I consider to be the best possible candidates for my future studying sessions. You can find it below, in order of preference for each section:

Books:

1. Wendell Odom: CCNA 200–301 Official Cert Guide Library Premium Edition eBook and Practice Test
2. Allan Johnson: 31 Days Before your CCNA Exam: A Day-By-Day Review Guide for the CCNA 200–301 Certification Exam

Video Courses(some labs included):

1. Neil Anderson: Cisco CCNA 200–301 — The Complete Guide to Getting Certified
2. Kevin Wallace: CCNA 200–301 Complete Video Course
3. David Bombal: Cisco CCNA 200–301 Exam: Complete Course with practical labs
4. Jeremy’s IT Lab YouTube Channel (Free)
5. Keith Barker YouTube Channel (Free)

Labs:

1. David Bombal: Cisco CCNA Packet Tracer Ultimate labs: CCNA 200–301 labs
2. Boson NetSim

Exam Simulation:

1. Boson ExSim
2. Pearson Test Prep (Included with Wendell Odom’s books.)
3. Jon Buhagiar: CCNA Certification Practice Tests: Exam 200–301

As you may imagine, I won’t be using all of this resources from start to finish, but will become handy later on if I struggle with certain topic so I will be able to study it and have it explained to me by different people.

Luckily for me, I have access to both Udemy for Business and O’Reilly for free as a courtesy of my employer so for now I only spent money on Wendell Odom’s books(these are available on O’Reilly but I wanted the books in Kindle format). I will keep updating this post if I buy some other material. For the moment and given the good reviews, I will definitely buy Boson ExSim later on to test my knowledge before the exam.

Study Progress

Not too much yet. I just finished the introduction of the OCG(Official Cert Guide) and started reading the first chapter. I plan to start watching some of the video courses too.

See you next week!