Opinions on CISCO training from local adult education program

[Velvis]

A little background on me:
I am 42 and have always worked for myself and for the last 10 years as a PC tech. I have never worked in a business environment as up until the last 4-5 years always focused on home users.

In the last 4-5 years I have moved into supporting small business and managed services with good success.

So everything I know has been what I gained as I experienced it as a one man shop supporting local businesses. So my knowledge is missing whatever I would have gained at a "real" job doing in-house IT support. All that to say I am far from a SYSADMIN, I would guess. So I feel there are holes in my knowledge.

A local adult education program offers a CISCO CCNA program broken up into 3 semesters. Each semester is about $500. They have been offering it for the last 4-5 years at least, so it must be popular enough to continue to offer it.

On one hand I think I'll just use my iPad and study using one of their free online courses, on the other hand I may never actually sit down and do that.

I was wondering if any of you had any experience with such a program and if you would recommend it or not over a traditional IT training program, or studying on your own.

Any thoughts?

 

[teksquad]

I studied for all my cisco certs on my own using cisco press books, my own home lab, and more recently GNS3. I have used video training from Internetwork Experts and some Trainsignal and CBT Nuggets training as well. I think it really depends on the individual and how they adapt to "self study".

The drawback I see from a course you described is the amount of time it will take to complete it. One of the benefits is that you will get hands on practice with live equipment. If you go the self study route then you have to either put together your own home lab (A CCNA lab won't be that expensive), use online rack rentals or use a free product like Dynamips or GNS3.

There is alot of free CCNA training out there. The question is how reliable it is.

Internetwork experts is offering their free streaming CCNA bootcamp for free. All you need to do is create a free account with them to gain access. Their products are excellent as well as their instructors.


www.ine.com


If interested in GNS3 check out this link. You can easily create a virtual lab for your CCNA studies. The only thing GNS3 is limited with is the switching side, so you can either substitue your own equipment or rent rack time for things you can't do in GNS3 or dynamips. If using dynamips you will need a Cisco IOS to use which does require a valid support contract and a CCO login to get.


http://gns3.org

 

[3ft]

Here's a great reference tool as a starting point for CCNA self-study. GNS3 is a great tool, but hands-on the equipment is always the way to go, imo, especially if you want to go beyond the CCNA.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24916

 

[teksquad]

You can add real equipement into GNS3. Also GNS3 can't run any IOS for the ISR GEN1 or GEN2 platforms (1800,2800, 2900's etc) and it cant run any new code from the .15 Train except on the 7200 platform but for CCNA it will be fine.

I also advocate using real equipment but if you look at the prices on the ISR's (granted GEN 1 ISR's arent that expensive anymore) and the ISR GEN 2's it can add up quick. For instance I am using alot of GNS3 for CCNP-Security as I cant afford to purchase 2 ASA 5520's but I can run ASA code 8.4 in GNS3 and it works really well. Another benefit of real equipment is that you also get to learn how to physically cable your devices which is important.