CompTIA Network+

[porina]

I just arrived on a work paid intensive training course, CompTIA Network+. It goes from zero to exam in 3 days! I've never done anything like it before, and the only reason I'm doing it is there was training budget that had to be used up. I was the only person who could do it when it was on, and hadn't already done it!

 

Had introductions and a short practice exam to see where people on the course were starting from. I got 70%, where 80% is a pass so hopefully not much of a stretch. Including myself there's 8 people on the course. Scores varied from 15 to 75, so quite a spread. It sounds like some others are starting from almost nothing. I've never had formal training in networks, what I know comes purely from being a geek and tinkering (with a good dose of Google in there). Gonna be long and tough days ahead...

 

Anyone else done similar before?

[schizznick]

When I was early in my career, I was sent to a 5 day CCNA bootcamp. I'd never logged into a Cisco device before. Needless to say I passed the ICND1 course but failed ICND2. I was so disappointed I crammed for 2 weeks after and retook the test on my own dime and passed. Network+ is pretty basic, so if you are a tinkerer/pro user. You should be fine. Good luck!

[Blake]

9 hours ago, porina said:

I just arrived on a work paid intensive training course, CompTIA Network+. It goes from zero to exam in 3 days! I've never done anything like it before, and the only reason I'm doing it is there was training budget that had to be used up. I was the only person who could do it when it was on, and hadn't already done it!

 

Had introductions and a short practice exam to see where people on the course were starting from. I got 70%, where 80% is a pass so hopefully not much of a stretch. Including myself there's 8 people on the course. Scores varied from 15 to 75, so quite a spread. It sounds like some others are starting from almost nothing. I've never had formal training in networks, what I know comes purely from being a geek and tinkering (with a good dose of Google in there). Gonna be long and tough days ahead...

 

Anyone else done similar before?

Only reasons to get any of the + certificates are:

1. You're a 'normie'. (i.e. probs smart, like a doctor but when someone mentions computers you start acting retarded).

2. You're looking for a job which has the certificate as a requirement and HR (normally full of 1) keeps auto rejecting you.

3. Your a 'normie' transitioning to nerd (i.e. just got a help desk job and are actually going to move up the IT ladder)

[Windows7ge]

I'm not familiar with CompTIA Network+ but I can say from taking both the CCENT and currently 1/2 through the CCNA curriculum the amount of information CISCO expects you to memorise is intense. If you're not good at memorising random information very quickly it's not a class I'd recommend. (Which makes me a hypocrite because my memory is terrible but here I am anyways.)

[porina]

14 hours ago, Blake said:

Only reasons to get any of the + certificates are:

4 Work are paying for it. 

 

13 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I'm not familiar with CompTIA Network+ but I can say from taking both the CCENT and currently 1/2 through the CCNA curriculum the amount of information CISCO expects you to memorise is intense. If you're not good at memorising random information very quickly it's not a class I'd recommend. (Which makes me a hypocrite because my memory is terrible but here I am anyways.)

The instructor for the course has done various Cisco certifications before, and... they don't sound like fun unless you're really into that. 

 

Still the one I'm on has been interesting so far. I just finished the 1st day of actual learning. If I never have to do subnet splitting again after the exam I'll be happy. Rest doesn't seem particularly difficult, just some new things to learn. Food at the place I'm doing it at is really nice. All meals included

 

[NZLaurence]

15 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I'm not familiar with CompTIA Network+ but I can say from taking both the CCENT and currently 1/2 through the CCNA curriculum the amount of information CISCO expects you to memorise is intense. If you're not good at memorising random information very quickly it's not a class I'd recommend. (Which makes me a hypocrite because my memory is terrible but here I am anyways.)

Actually the new ccna is almost all practical. If you have had some useful experience then it's not to bad. The knowledge based questions are mostly ones you can take good guesses at if you understand what is going on.

 

Currently practicing for my ccnp-switch. That requires some interesting memory based stuff, tcam vs cam sizes anyone?

[Windows7ge]

8 hours ago, porina said:

Still the one I'm on has been interesting so far. I just finished the 1st day of actual learning. If I never have to do subnet splitting again after the exam I'll be happy. Rest doesn't seem particularly difficult, just some new things to learn. Food at the place I'm doing it at is really nice. All meals included

Ah, subnetting. If you ever plan to do work for a moderate size business you better get use to it. Just wait until they teach you about supernetting. Like it sounds it is the opposite of subnetting.

 

There's nothing inherently difficult. You'll want to know some relatively basic math like base 2, base 10, & base 16. You'll also want to be good at understanding 1^2 times itself basically 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 etc. You'll need to know some hex numbers which is base 16 but really nothing is seriously difficult it just requires a lot of memorization.

[Windows7ge]

5 hours ago, NZLaurence said:

Actually the new ccna is almost all practical. If you have had some useful experience then it's not to bad. The knowledge based questions are mostly ones you can take good guesses at if you understand what is going on.

 

Currently practicing for my ccnp-switch. That requires some interesting memory based stuff, tcam vs cam sizes anyone?

All I can say is CIS271 Networking Fundamental (CISCO CCNA) soooo manny acronyms...I'm not a fast learner and I'm bad at memorizing mass amounts of information. A lot of the Chapter exams comprised of questions referencing quite literally a single sentience on a random page of the chapter. I can memorize things that stand out to me but not every single detail. Passing that class was hard for me. Now I'm in 272 Expanding Networks. More hands on. Not nearly as much information getting crammed down my throat but I already screwed up. Missed the chapter 1 exam because I didn't know there was one on the first week back to school. F*** me...

[NZLaurence]

6 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

All I can say is CIS271 Networking Fundamental (CISCO CCNA) soooo manny acronyms...I'm not a fast learner and I'm bad at memorizing mass amounts of information. A lot of the Chapter exams comprised of questions referencing quite literally a single sentience on a random page of the chapter. I can memorize things that stand out to me but not every single detail. Passing that class was hard for me. Now I'm in 272 Expanding Networks. More hands on. Not nearly as much information getting crammed down my throat but I already screwed up. Missed the chapter 1 exam because I didn't know there was one on the first week back to school. F*** me...

The best way to learn is the do it, break it, work out why, fix it, and then repeat.

Get packet tracer and then give it a go. And learn the OSI model.

 

What an example of the acronyms are you talking about?

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, NZLaurence said:

The best way to learn is the do it, break it, work out why, fix it, and then repeat.

Get packet tracer and then give it a go. And learn the OSI model.

 

What an example of the acronyms are you talking about?

I learned about Packet Tracer back when I started the CCENT course about 5 years ago. Used it then, used it during CCNA Networking Fundamentals, and am using now for CCNA Expanding Networks. And oh god the OSI model I know all about it...in the sense that I know what you're talking about. I have a basic understanding of each layer but I still haven't memorized the order. data link, application, physical, network...Network is 3, Data Link is 2, application 6? Physical 7? I'm missing 3 of them and I can't remember them without googling it...I've been trying to memorize the OSI model for at least 2 years. This is the extent of my bad memory but I keep on trying because I love the field.

 

The list is so long I don't even know where to start: ARP, DHCP, DNS, AS, OSPF, OSPFv3, EIGRP, PPPoE, PPP, ARK, UDP, TCP, TCP/IP, UTP, STP, MAC, ICMP, WAN, LAN, WLAN, WWAN, IEEE, CSMA/CD, CSMA/CA, MTU, PDU, DS, TTL, DSCP, ECN, HDLC, MPLS, VSAT, DLCI, VoIP, QoS, ISP, BRI, PRI, ATM, TDM, DSLAM, CMTS, VPN, WiMAX, SMTP, HSSI, BOOTP. POP3, ARPANET, NAT, ISOC, IAB, IETF, IANA, ICANN, WPAN, LLC, T1, T3, HDLC, IOS, ROM, POST, NVRAM, TFTP, SSH, FTP, ARIN, LACNIC, AfriNIC, RIPENCC, APNIC, and many many many more...

[NZLaurence]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

I learned about Packet Tracer back when I started the CCENT course about 5 years ago. Used it then, used it during CCNA Networking Fundamentals, and am using now for CCNA Expanding Networks. And oh god the OSI model I know all about it...in the sense that I know what you're talking about. I have a basic understanding of each layer but I still haven't memorized the order. data link, application, physical, network...Network is 3, Data Link is 2, application 6? Physical 7? I'm missing 3 of them and I can't remember them without googling it...I've been trying to memorize the OSI model for at least 2 years. This is the extent of my bad memory but I keep on trying because I love the field.

 

The list is so long I don't even know where to start: ARP, DHCP, DNS, AS, OSPF, OSPFv3, EIGRP, PPPoE, PPP, ARK, UDP, TCP, TCP/IP, UTP, STP, MAC, ICMP, WAN, LAN, WLAN, WWAN, IEEE, CSMA/CD, CSMA/CA, MTU, PDU, DS, TTL, DSCP, ECN, HDLC, MPLS, VSAT, DLCI, VoIP, QoS, ISP, BRI, PRI, ATM, TDM, DSLAM, CMTS, VPN, WiMAX, SMTP, HSSI, BOOTP. POP3, ARPANET, NAT, ISOC, IAB, IETF, IANA, ICANN, WPAN, LLC, T1, T3, HDLC, IOS, ROM, POST, NVRAM, TFTP, SSH, FTP, ARIN, LACNIC, AfriNIC, RIPENCC, APNIC, and many many many more...

That's a fun list. By and large as long as you know what it does you will probably be fine even if you don't know what the exact acronyms means. I know probably less then 75% of what those stand for but know what probably 95% of what they do. Learn the concepts and you can normally get by.

 

These ones I have no idea. Pure guesses....

DS, Data sheet???

ECN, Electronic Comm Net??? I think this is a payment gateway thing.

VSAT, No idea

CMTS, ??

HSSI, High-Speed serial/socket/something interface?

ISOC, ???

IAB, ??

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, NZLaurence said:

That's a fun list. By and large as long as you know what it does you will probably be fine even if you don't know what the exact acronyms means. I know probably less then 75% of what those stand for but know what probably 95% of what they do. Learn the concepts and you can normally get by.

 

These ones I have no idea. Pure guesses....

DS, Data sheet???

ECN, Electronic Comm Net??? I think this is a payment gateway thing.

VSAT, No idea

CMTS, ??

HSSI, High-Speed serial/socket/something interface?

ISOC, ???

IAB, ??

A lot of them are related to things I know I'll never use but in the event I do chances are Google will be there to shed light on it and if Google isn't I can say for sure it won't cost me my job.

 

Besides I've been playing with programming. I could write a dictionary application to look up all of these and what they pertain to.

 

These are a fraction of what I've been expected to memorize and understand in between CIS170, 271, & 272 in just the past 2 years. Nothing about it is actually hard it's just memorization.

 

For your questions:

DS = Differentiated Services (Previously refereed to as ToS [Type of Service] is an 8-bit field used to determine the priority of each packet.)

ENC = Explicit Congestion Notification (Used to prevent dropped packets during network congestion)

VSAT = Very Small Aperture Terminal (A solution that creates a private WAN using satellite communications)

CMTS = Cable Modem Termination System (Sends and receives digital cable modem signals on a cable network)

HSSI = High Speed Serial Interface (Congrats you were right, but on a Cisco Exam it'd be marked wrong if you said "socket" or anything else other than Serial)

ISOC = Internet Society (Responsible for promoting the open development and evolution of Internet use throughout the world)

IAB = Internet Architecture Board (Responsible for the overall management and development of Internet standards)

 

I understand CISCO's desire to be thorough but I think the material is a bit much.

[NZLaurence]

23 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

A lot of them are related to things I know I'll never use but in the event I do chances are Google will be there to shed light on it and if Google isn't I can say for sure it won't cost me my job.

 

Besides I've been playing with programming. I could write a dictionary application to look up all of these and what they pertain to.

 

These are a fraction of what I've been expected to memorize and understand in between CIS170, 271, & 272 in just the past 2 years. Nothing about it is actually hard it's just memorization.

 

For your questions:

DS = Differentiated Services (Previously refereed to as ToS [Type of Service] is an 8-bit field used to determine the priority of each packet.)

ENC = Explicit Congestion Notification (Used to prevent dropped packets during network congestion)

VSAT = Very Small Aperture Terminal (A solution that creates a private WAN using satellite communications)

CMTS = Cable Modem Termination System (Sends and receives digital cable modem signals on a cable network)

HSSI = High Speed Serial Interface (Congrats you were right, but on a Cisco Exam it'd be marked wrong if you said "socket" or anything else other than Serial)

ISOC = Internet Society (Responsible for promoting the open development and evolution of Internet use throughout the world)

IAB = Internet Architecture Board (Responsible for the overall management and development of Internet standards)

 

I understand CISCO's desire to be thorough but I think the material is a bit much.

I am about 99% confident that you won't need to know any of those for the ccna. Also almost none of those make any sense out of context. For example, no one would ever say set the ds to 4 without some context as its so general its meaningless.

 

The question is far more likely to be something like, What would the default DS setting be in a standard LAN QoS deployment. So you will normally get contextual queues.

 

If you really want to actually study for the CCNA get the cisco press book. Its pretty limited to the content you actually need.

 

http://www.ciscopress.com/markets/detail.asp?st=44711

 

 

[porina]

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Ah, subnetting. If you ever plan to do work for a moderate size business you better get use to it. Just wait until they teach you about supernetting. Like it sounds it is the opposite of subnetting.

I got my head around it 1st time, and got almost all the practice questions correct. Just one minor mistake where I forgot to reduce the usable host addresses by 2, and  I  put the total space instead.

 

The difference is between "can do it" and "want to do it"  Need to wake up properly for day 2 now. Time for a quick breakfast...

 

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, NZLaurence said:

I am about 99% confident that you won't need to know any of those for the ccna. Also almost none of those make any sense out of context. For example, no one would ever say set the ds to 4 without some context as its so general its meaningless.

 

The question is far more likely to be something like, What would the default DS setting be in a standard LAN QoS deployment. So you will normally get contextual queues.

 

If you really want to actually study for the CCNA get the cisco press book. Its pretty limited to the content you actually need.

 

http://www.ciscopress.com/markets/detail.asp?st=44711

 

 

As I mentioned earlier. A lot of what they teach is information that you'll rarely if ever use in the field. I have no issue with how they choose to tell us this information but I do have issues with how the Exams which determine if you pass are fairly heavily weighed based on this random information. Only a handful of questions involve packet tracers or troubleshooting questions. A lot of it is just random very tiny sections of the chapter material about random things like CISCO want to make sure you were paying attention.

 

I just think the tests should be more angled towards questions that will give real world scenarios. Almost anyone can memories a sentence in a chapter but not everyone can troubleshoot a subnet configuration, a sub-interface, a VLAN misconfiguration, or how to setup DCHPv6 & NAT. That's usable information worth memorizing but I've taken chapter exams that would skip over whole sections involving it.

[Windows7ge]

33 minutes ago, porina said:

I got my head around it 1st time, and got almost all the practice questions correct. Just one minor mistake where I forgot to reduce the usable host addresses by 2, and  I  put the total space instead.

 

The difference is between "can do it" and "want to do it"  Need to wake up properly for day 2 now. Time for a quick breakfast...

 

Good luck. It's 3AM EST in the US because I'm an idiot drinking two 12oz pepsi's late at night and now I can't sleep.

 

Might as well discuss networking & certifications...I do need to crash though. I need to write a php script for a whole bunch of html code by Sunday.

[porina]

Had the exam today, scoring 801 out of 900, where a pass is 720. That'll do. It was a fun experience overall. I wouldn't mind doing something like it again, although not too soon!

[AbstractView]

Not necessarily similar, but I've been going to a vocational tech school (2nd year), starting out with Computer Systems and now Advanced networking. I'm currently studying for my PCPro certification AND Networking+, that exam is this month... but after I finish and pass both exams I have 1 year to get my CompTIA Cisco Certification.

[Lurick]

11 minutes ago, GFXTech said:

Not necessarily similar, but I've been going to a vocational tech school (2nd year), starting out with Computer Systems and now Advanced networking. I'm currently studying for my PCPro certification AND Networking+, that exam is this month... but after I finish and pass both exams I have 1 year to get my CompTIA Cisco Certification.

CompTIA Cisco cert? No such thing that I'm aware of.

Do you mean the CCENT or CCNA cert?

[AbstractView]

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

CompTIA Cisco cert? No such thing that I'm aware of.

Do you mean the CCENT or CCNA cert?

Damn, my mistake, I meant CCENT cert. Thanks for catching me on that, as a class we refer to it as our Cisco certification.

[Lurick]

10 minutes ago, GFXTech said:

Damn, my mistake, I meant CCENT cert. Thanks for catching me on that, as a class we refer to it as our Cisco certification.

Yah, CCENT is like a CompTIA cert in terms of difficulty but it's a nice gateway for the CCNA since I think CCENT 1 and 2 count as the first half of the CCNA.

[NZLaurence]

15 hours ago, Lurick said:

Yah, CCENT is like a CompTIA cert in terms of difficulty but it's a nice gateway for the CCNA since I think CCENT 1 and 2 count as the first half of the CCNA.

CCENT is gained by doing ICNT1 exam.

If you have CCENT and do ICND2 exam you will gain the CCNA cert.

[8uhbbhu8]

went through a whole CCENT, CompTia A+, Server+, Network+, Microsoft MCSE and MCSA, and Linux LPI course 2 years ago. Even for a full time course it was pretty intense. As such I will be redoing a part of it

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, 8uhbbhu8 said:

went through a whole CCENT, CompTia A+, Server+, Network+, Microsoft MCSE and MCSA, and Linux LPI course 2 years ago. Even for a full time course it was pretty intense. As such I will be redoing a part of it

I haven't bothered with most certs, well really any at all. My CCNA material I learnt is so old now lol.

 

I don't like learning for the sake of an exam, puts me off completely. I like doing stuff with a purpose and goal insight, to solve a problem or to just be generally inquisitive. Sort of compounds the issue of studying for an exam too because if I stop and I try and do it I get bored very quickly as I know most of it already but one should never take anything for granted and throw away money on an exam you'll likely fail due to lack of preparation.

 

If only we were in the matrix and could just download knowledge, would make things so much easier.

I know Kung Fu 

[Lurick]

5 hours ago, NZLaurence said:

CCENT is gained by doing ICNT1 exam.

If you have CCENT and do ICND2 exam you will gain the CCNA cert.

That's right, been forever since I dealt with those