Help Studying Cisco concepts

[DirtyDane]

So I am currently taking a college course and we are going over Cisco routing and switching. We recently covered spanning tree, and VLANs. I want to try to get my hands dirty with this and attempt to get as much practice as I can in understanding how these two concepts work. I have packet tracer available, and so my question, is if anyone would be willing to make up scenarios for me to try to replicate that would help show off the various aspects of those two concepts. 

 

Sorry, this is poorly phrased. I'm just looking to get a stronger understanding of exactly what is going on when spanning tree is in place and how implementing/ configuring VLANs really works. 

 

Even a link to a YouTube video on this stuff would be helpful. 

[Lurick]

Search for CBT Nuggets on YouTube or just the topic you're looking to cover

 

I can definitely give you some zingers if you let me know what you want to focus on exactly

[suchamoneypit]

Do you have access to Netacad? This is a cisco site most college students get access to and they provide hundreds of packet tracer scenarios for every single chapter section to help you learn how to implement what you just read.

[Ryujin2003]

Professor Messer is a pretty good resource for Cisco and CompTIA

 

https://www.professormesser.com/

 

Otherwise, Linda.com would be my second suggestion.

[Levisallanon]

This is a good group of video's explaining most of the items in ICND 1

[DirtyDane]

Thank you to those who have sent me videos and ideas, I'm pretty busy at the moment; but have taken a look at the ideas you all suggested. 

[DirtyDane]

22 hours ago, Lurick said:

Search for CBT Nuggets on YouTube or just the topic you're looking to cover

 

I can definitely give you some zingers if you let me know what you want to focus on exactly

Sure, at this moment in time I could use some extra practice with routing on a stick. I think I get the idea but a new scenario could help. 

[DirtyDane]

21 hours ago, suchamoneypit said:

Do you have access to Netacad? This is a cisco site most college students get access to and they provide hundreds of packet tracer scenarios for every single chapter section to help you learn how to implement what you just read.

Sadly no we don't have access to that, the course is only a few weeks long before we move onto the next topic. 

[jde3]

Cisco has a simulator, your going to want that and spend a lot of time with it.. Cisco isn't something people learn in a couple weeks.. (at least not well) When I was in collage I spent upwards of 2 years on Cisco.

[ReaperIsRollen]

Just about any college course that collaborates with Cisco has a Netacad element tied into it, typically when you start, your professor should have given you a Netacad ID and temp password. Just double check with your professor and make sure you’re not missing it. If the Netacad tie in isn’t offered, and it’s some 3^rd party offering through the school, for at home studying there are some options, depending on how deep into the Cisco world you want to go.

 

Packet Tracer: Good enough for most CCNA topics, best free option for learning switching. Cons, can exhibit some strange behaviors (save your work often) and is missing some networking topics due to software limitations (mostly more advanced Layer 3 topics). It is not a true simulation of Cisco IOS and hardware.

 

GNS3: Needed for most CCNP routing topics and works for just about all layer 3 topics. Cons are it has almost no ability for Cisco Switching concepts. There are a few workarounds to simulate switching, but I can’t verify personally they work. You have to setup the software (or VM) yourself, “source” the IOS images yourself, and depends on your computer hardware to simulate the network.

 

Cisco Virl: A yearly paid option $200 a year for 20 nodes, plenty for home study. Offers almost full access to fully simulated cisco devices, running on the latest licenses. In addition, depending on your knowledge on Linux and Virtual machines, allows customs VMs to be added to the simulations to interact with the sim network, and allows bridging into your physical network if you desire. A viable alternative to study for most Cisco CCIEs and anything below, except for serial or fiber technologies, ethernet is the only supported connection mode atm .Cons are it cost money, is complicated to set up, and is a complete resources hog (for small simulated topologies you need at a minimum, a modern-ish Quad core CPU that supports virtualization such as VT-x, 12 GBs of ram, and about 70GBs of hard drive space for a basic install).

 

For coming up with your own home labs/assignments (if the school isn’t providing them), there are a plenty of sites that will provide labs, for example

http://www.packettracernetwork.com/labs/packettracerlabs.html

 

Or you could try coming up with your own, integrating concepts that you learn about as you go along. A classic cisco lab topology is one router hooked to a switch, the switch is hooked to two separate switches, and those switches are hooked into each other, with 3 PCs on each (each pc on a different vlan per switch), 3 subnets/vlans in total, and when you can get each pc to ping one another you’ve gotten the very basic network done. As you go along, implement the new thing you learned into your personal topology.

 

Some other tips;

 

Packet Tracer has a simulation mode, where you can visually watch packets get forwarded, and how the headers change, be sure to apply the filter though.

 

Notepad is your best friend when working on configs for Routers or Switches, copy and paste the config notepad, save it as a backup, make changes, and use it to compare, troubleshooting etc.

 

Cisco.com has resources and demo configs as well, in regards to spanning-tree for example;

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/catalyst4500/12-2/25ew/configuration/guide/conf/spantree.html

 

Hope this was helpful, good luck.

[Levisallanon]

1 hour ago, ReaperIsRollen said:

-snip-

Why not mention Eve-NG? In my experience that one has the best of both worlds. There are clould based solutions (which cost something) but there is also the community edition which you can install on a vm and run yourself.

[ReaperIsRollen]

4 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

Why not mention Eve-NG? In my experience that one has the best of both worlds. There are clould based solutions (which cost something) but there is also the community edition which you can install on a vm and run yourself.

I apologize if I didn't include other choices, I'm mostly suggesting things that Ive personally used enough to say I know what they are capable of and what I used to pass my Cisco college classes and CCNA cert. Sorry if I didn't clarify that. OP their are a lot of resources out there, use what suits you best of course.