Ah, and now for Round 2.
ICND1 & ICND2 are the core requirements to take the CCNA exam. Paul and I didn’t take these classes for certification, but I believe with moderate study, we could pass them. In the end, the certification (cert) is nice to have so that people outside the department/university have a common understanding of your background.
ICND2 was focused almost completely on routing. We talked about RIP, IS-IS (not really), OSPF, IGRP, EIGRP, RIP v2 AND Frame relay, EGP (BGP), …
As we do basically zero routing on-campus, we lacked a lot of practical application for this training immediately, but the information is still very valuable. We also dug into IPv6 briefly and set it up on two lab routers.
Overall I was quite pleased with the training. The first week was a bit slower than the second, but our familiarity with the material and smaller class size allowed us to move through the 2nd week material more quickly. We spent time asking the trainer site-specific questions allowing us to take the moderately theoretical information and help apply it to our customized environment.
I’ll tell you what – design is a big deal. There is only about 12 different ways to setup any one network, so I’m glad we work closely with Cisco on our continued network design so that we are able to incorporate best practices while leveraging existing equipment.
I’m looking forward to additional training opportunities in the future. We’ll have a few more before TOO long…