Cisco CCNA Exam Tutorial: Configuring Standard Access Lists

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Access Control Lists (ACLs) allow a router to permit or deny packets based on a variety of criteria. The ACL is configured in global mode, but is applied at the interface level. An ACL does not take effect until it is expressly applied to an interface with the ip access-group command. [...]

Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab: Why You Need An ISDN Simulator

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

ISDN is a vital topic for today’s CCNA and CCNP candidates, especially for the ICND and Intro exams - you’ve got to know ISDN inside and out to pass those exams. Naturally you want to include it in your home lab. What many candidates don’t realize is that you can’t connect two Cisco routers directly [...]

The Hidden Benefit Of Computer Certifications

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

The web is covered with stories regarding the benefits of professional computer certification, and most of them are backed up with salary surveys and the like. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with making more money and having better job prospects, there’s one benefit of certification that many candidates forget about.
Confidence.
You can’t pay your rent [...]

Cisco CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: OSPF Route Redistribution Review

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

OSPF route redistribution is an important topic on the BSCI exam, and it’s a topic full of details and defaults that you need to know for the exam room and the job. To help you pass the BSCI exam, here’s a quick review of some of the OSPF route redistribution basics.
To see if a router [...]

Cisco CCNP Certification / BSCI Exam Tutorial: ISIS Hellos And Adjacencies

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

In my last ISIS tutorial, I mentioned that while ISIS and OSPF are both link state protocols, their actual operation differs greatly. To pass the BSCI exam and earn your CCNP, you’ll need to know these differences! Today, we’ll take a look at ISIS Hello types and the adjacency types that form through the use [...]

FIve Questions To Ask Before Attending A Computer Tech School

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

As with any field, there are good technical training schools, and bad ones. When you sign up with one of these schools, you’ve made a significant investment in time and money. You deserve to know everything about the school and your job prospects after leaving that school before you put down your hard-earned [...]

Cisco CCNA Exam Tutorial: IGRP And Equal Cost Load Balancing

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

To pass the CCNA exam, you’ve got to know the role of the bandwidth command with IGRP and EIGRP and when to use it. In this tutorial, we’ll configure IGRP over a frame relay hub-and-spoke network using the following networks:
R1 (the hub), R2, and R3 are running IGRP over the 172.12.123.0 /24 network. This is [...]

Cisco CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Configuring And Troubleshooting OSPF Virtual Links

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Knowing when and how to create an OSPF virtual link is an essential skill for BSCI and CCNP exam success, not to mention how important it can be on your job! As a CCNA and CCNP candidate, you know the theory of virtual links, so let’s take a look at how to configure a virtual [...]

Cisco Routing For The CCNA And CCNP: Administrative Distance

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

The textbook definition of “administrative distance” is simple enough: “the measurement of a protocol’s believability”. It’s not enough to know the definition, however you’ve got to know when AD comes into the picture and when it does not.
When a packet needs to be routed, the router looks in its routing table for the next-hop IP [...]

Cisco CCNA Exam Tutorial: Five OSPF Hub-And-Spoke Details You Must Know!

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

CCNA exam success depends greatly on knowing the details, and if there’s one protocol that has a lot of details, it’s OSPF! This is true particularly of hub-and-spoke networks, so in this CCNA OSPF tutorial we’ll take a look at some of the more important hub-and-spoke OSPF details. This will help you in [...]