COMMSUPPORT - Cisco CCNA 6 day course

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I've just completed COMMSUPPORT's 6 day intensive CCNA course, and I would like to give my 2 cents to the forum to help others thinking of doing the course, I know when I was researching before I signed up I checked here and would like to think my comments below would help others.

A little bit of background
I originally looked into the CCNA about 4 years ago before I worked in IT; I called COMMSUPPORT and spoke with someone there about the course explaining that I was looking to make a start in IT. I was told not to do the CCNA as it would not help me get a start; especially with no experience. I instead went away did the Comptia A+ and Network +, got my 'break' in IT and currently work as a Senior Support Analyst for a global luxury retailer. Cisco is about 30% of my work load and I felt I wanted to do the course/cert to get a good base level of skill to move forward.

First Impressions
Joe runs the company and teaches the majority of the classes, in our case he was our teacher. He's a very down to earth, funny outspoken guy who doesn't mix is words. You can tell he loves to teach, he's got a whole heap of analogies and metaphors to teach concepts to you, and made some of the complex subjects much easier to swallow.

Layout of the class / lab
As promised each student had 4 x Cisco ISR routers and 3 x Switches one of them was a Layer 3 switch. This allowed us all to get on with the labs when it came to do the practical application of what we were taught. Generally Joe would go over a subject first on the board explaining the concept, then switching to his lab putting it on screen and going through and showing us examples of the concepts discussed put into practice, then giving us a 'lab' exercise with the concept to work on ourselves.


The course as you might imagine is INTENSIVE, it's a 6 day course covering the CCNA so don't expect to have your hand held for too long. I would HIGHLY recommend you attend the course having done a basic networking course and have already read the CCNA material so you know the basic concepts and ideas, and if you can some experience of working with Cisco kit will go a long way. If you turn up thinking a quick skim through the books will be enough then you will get left behind early on.

Joe teaches you networking, i.e implementing the various concepts on the kit and showing how to be a network engineer. He doesn't 'teach' you the CCNA exam or stick to a specific syllabus. He will show you a subject, explain how it works and then build on the subject or example to show how to implement it in a production environment, and build on it further to CCNP or CCIE level if it helps to show you what's possible. It's tough and you need to keep your wits about you to keep up but it really helps.

The SonOfABitch assessment lab Joe gave us on the last day was a lot of fun to do, felt very happy when I got it up ;)

Sub-netting
I was pretty sceptical when I saw Joe's chicken video as I thought he was teaching me to suck eggs (...get it? ... never mind), BUT having gone through it in class and practising it at home, I have to say JOE IS A GENIUS at teaching sub-netting. Like he says sub-netting is easy if you break it down and let go of all the other crap people teach you. I can now subnet, not too fast because I'm crap at maths, but I know how to get the answer.


Overall
I'm very happy with the course, it was tougher than I had anticipated but I was lucky I had some experience to help me out. I would recommend the course to those who are looking to do the CCNA and will certainly return if I wanted to do other courses Joe offers.

I'm currently hitting the books and lab to revise for the exam which I will be taking soon.

 

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Joe is definitely a one of a kind.

He is an awesome teacher who goes on occasional rants about weird and wonderful things.

Thanks for sharing your experience with others.

 

Commsupport rules, hope to do the CCNA-Sec next year

 

just wanted to update the thread, I sat the CCNA composite exam yesterday, just over a week and half after the course and Passed .... ;)

Thanks again Joe, hope to be back for the ASA / Security course.

 

Congrats on the pass

NB

 

Once again sir well done, I take it you got the confirm. Like I said the 72 hours is so that "they" have a chance to dispute the result if they believe it to be fishy

Work on those ACL's, on the ASA they are more or less the same although ACL's on the ASA are statefull unlike the ACL's on the Cisco IOS which are stateless unless you fire up Reflexive or Zone Based Firewall, or indeed CBAC (Nearly Midnight and I am still in teaching mode )

See on the webinars. I might even make the next one (on Monday) on ACL's in your honour!!

Cheers

Joe

 

Hello guys.
I know this is not new posts but i have read FiveHorse post and I think it is very interestin. Specially bit about not going straight to CCNA but comptia a+ first.
As Iam completely new to IT after what I have read I think I might just start exactly as you.
My question is: did you take your a+ and network+ course in London? Could you recommend your college maybe? Was it expensive? I have so many questions but dont want to make my first post on this forum.so long and boring. Any help appreciated.
Thanks
Peter

 

I personally would also take a look at the CCENT as well if you want to progress along Cisco lines, the Network+ is great to get the fundamentals of what networks do and get a non-vendor specific cert for 3 years, but I probably enjoyed doing the CCENT a few years ago and it was a more natural progression to CCNA with much of the same concepts.

 

Well for starters i have found free computer and maintenance course that I start this saturday and it will go.over 12 saturdays I.think. I was thinking to study at the same time comptia a+ and network+ as I was told it is very similar. Then I can just pay for comptia exams at the end. Hopefully ill manage to do that and maybe start looking to get some experience as a volunteer somewhere for few hours in a week. Then proper job maybe? Am I dreaming here?

 

We all have to start somewhere.

Good luck, I would recommend Mike Meyers (No not Austin Powers) books for self study of A+ (and N+ if he does one of those).

Search the forum as well there was a link to free online A+ videos (the name of the site escapes me at the moment) as well

 

Thanks a lot. I will check that book and find video lessons.

 

Here is the link

Professor Messer, CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, Linux, Microsoft Certification Training

 

Thanks a lot!!!!