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1). An Introduction To Microsoft Vista Business As I'm sure you already know, Microsoft Vista is on the way! Microsoft projects that all five versions of Vista will be available by mid-2006, and if that holds this will be the longest time period ever between versions of Windows. Yes, that's right - I said "all five versions". Microsoft says that past versions of their OS, such as Wi... 2). CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Assembling Your Cisco Home Lab A CCNA or CCNP candidate who wants to be totally prepared for their exams is going to put together a home lab to practice on. With used Cisco routers and switches more affordable and plentiful then ever before, there's really no excuse to not have one! With the many different models available, there is some understandable confusion amo... 3). CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: The VLAN.DAT File CCNA and CCNP candidates who have their own Cisco home labs often email me about an odd situation that occurs when they erase a switch's configuration. Their startup configuration is gone, as they expect, but the VLAN and VTP information is still there! Sounds strange, doesn't it? Let's look at an example. On SW1, we run show vlan brie... 4). CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Cisco Switching Modes To pass the CCNA exam and earn this important certification, you’ve got to know switching inside and out. While you’re learning all the basic switching theory, make sure to spend some time with the one of three switching modes Cisco routers can use. Store-and-Forward is exactly what it sounds like. The entire frame will be stored befor... 5). CCNP / BCMSN Exam Tutorial: VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Passing the BCMSN exam and getting one step closer to the CCNP certification means learning and noticing details that you were not presented with in your CCNA studies. (Yes, I know – you had more than enough details then, right?) One protocol you’ve got to learn more details about is VTP, which seemed simple enough in your CCNA studies! Part of lea... 6). CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Route Summarization And The OSPF Null Interface CCNP exam success, particularly on the BSCI exam, demands you understand the details of route summarization. This skill not only requires that you have a comfort level with binary conversions, but you have to know how and where to apply route summarization with each individual protocol. You also have to know the "side effects" of route... 7). CCNP Certification / BCMSN Exam Tutorial: Getting Started With HSRP Defined in RFC 2281, HSRP is a Cisco-proprietary protocol in which routers are put into an HSRP router group. Along with dynamic routing protocols and STP, HSRP is considered a high-availability network service, since all three have an almost immediate cutover to a secondary path when the primary path is unavailable. One of the routers... 8). CCNP Certification / BCMSN Exam Tutorial: HSRP MAC Addresses And Timers To earn your CCNP certification and pass the BCMSN exam, you've got to know what HSRP does and the many configurable options. While the operation of HSRP is quite simple (and covered in a previous tutorial), you also need to know how HSRP arrives at the MAC address for the virtual router - as well as how to configure a new MAC for this virtual rout... 9). CCNP Certification / BCMSN Exam Tutorial: QoS Service Types To pass the CCNP exams, you’ve got to master Quality of Service, and the first step in doing so is knowing the differences between the different QoS types. Now this being Cisco, we can't just have one kind of QoS! We've got best-effort delivery, Integrated Services, and Differentiated Services. Let's take a quick look at all three. 10). CCNP Certification / BSCI Exam Tutorial: EIGRP Stuck-In-Active Routes Passing the BSCI exam and earning your CCNP is all about knowing the details, and when it comes to EIGRP SIA routes, there are plenty of details to know. A quick check in a search engine for "troubleshoot SIA" will bring up quite a few matches. Troubleshooting SIA routes is very challengin in that there's no one reason they occur. View... 11). Cisco / MCSE Exam Study: Creating A Road Map To Success Planning for success on the CCNA, CCNP, and other Cisco exams is much like taking a trip in your car. You've got to plan ahead, accept the occasional detour, and just keep on going until you get there. But what do you do before you get started? Create a road map - for success. If you were driving from one side of the count... 12). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Attending A Video Boot Camp When you're studying for the CCNA and CCNP exams, you've got a lot of different choices when it comes to training. One popular choice is choosing one of the many "boot camps" and five-day in-person courses that are out there. I've taught quite a few of these, and while many of them are good, they do have drawbacks. Of course, one is c... 13). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Creating A Study Plan Whether you're just starting to think about passing the CCNA or CCNP exams, or you've been on the certification track for a while, you've got to have a plan for success. If you wanted to drive your car from Florida to California, you'd create a plan to get there. You'd get a map and decide how far you wanted to drive per day, and maybe even make so... 14). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification: Introduction To BGP Attributes BGP is one of the most complex topics you'll study when pursuing your CCNP, if not the most complex. I know from personal experience that when I was earning my CCNP, BGP is the topic that gave me the most trouble at first. One thing I keep reminding today's CCNP candidates about, though, is that no Cisco technology is impossible to understand if yo... 15). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification: OSPF E2 vs. E1 Routes OSPF is a major topic on both the CCNA and CCNP exams, and it's also the topic that requires the most attention to detail. Where dynamic routing protocols such as RIP and IGRP have only one router type, a look at a Cisco routing table shows several different OSPF route types. R1#show ip route Codes: C - connected, S - static, I - IGRP, ... 16). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification: How And Why To Build An Etherchannel CCNA and CCNP candidates are well-versed in Spanning-Tree Protocol, and one of the great things about STP is that it works well with little or no additional configuration. There is one situation where STP works against us just a bit while it prevents switching loops, and that is the situation where two switches have multiple physical connections. 17). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification: Learning To Navigate Cisco& When studying for your Cisco CCNA, CCNP, or CCIE exam, you’ve got a powerful online weapon at your disposal. It’s Cisco Connection Documen 18). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Exam Tutorial: Five Debugs You Must Know To pass the BSCI exam and move one step closer to CCNP certification success, you've got to know how and when to use debug commands to troubleshoot and verify network operations. While you should never practice debug commands on a production network, it's important to get some hands-on experience with them and not rely on "router simulators" and bo... 19). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Setup: How To Configure Reverse Telnet Occasionally, during your CCNA and CCNP studies, you'll run into a term that just doesn't quite make sense to you. (Okay, more than occasionally!) One such term is "reverse telnet". As a Cisco certification candidate, you know that telnet is simply a protocol that allows you to remotely connect to a networking device such as a router or switch. But... 20). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: A Guide To Cable Types When you're putting your CCNA and/or CCNP home lab together, you're not just buying routers and switches you're creating a blueprint for success. There is no better way to learn about how real Cisco routers and switches work than to work with the real thing! Of course, it's not enough to just get the routers and switches you've got to ... 21). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Buying And Configuring An Access Server A Cisco access server is generally the last item a CCNA or CCNP candidate has on their mind when they're putting together a home lab. The thinking tends to be that since this router isn't really doing anything in the production part of your practice lab, it's not really important. Once you have more than two devices in your home lab, t... 22). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Cabling Your Access Server A Cisco home lab is an invaluable study tool when you're preparing for CCNA and CCNP exam success. Once you've gotten a couple of routers and switches, you'll quickly get tired of moving that blue console cable every time you want to configure a different device. The solution to this problem is purchasing and configuring an access server (AS). 23). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Configuring An Access Server As your CCNA / CCNP home lab expands, an access server such as the Cisco 2509 or 2511 is one of the best investments you can make. In this article, we'll look at the basic configuration for an access server and discuss how to connect to the other routers and switches in your pod through the AS. Here's part of a configuration from one o... 24). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Planning Ahead For IE Study Candidates preparing to pass the CCNP exams are putting together Cisco home labs like never before. With CCNA and CCNP home lab equipment more affordable than ever, candidates have realized the importance of working on real Cisco routers and switches on the way to earning their certifications. One question I get often from CCNP candida... 25). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Routing On A Frame Relay Switch When you're preparing for CCNA and CCNP exam success, the best investment you can make is to put together your own home lab. There is no better way to learn Cisco technologies and prepare for the CCNA, BSCI, BCMSN, CIT, and other exams than by working with the many protocols and services you'll need to master in order to pass the exams. 26). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: The (Many) Cable Types And Their Purposes One of the most common questions I get from CCNA and CCNP candidates who are setting up their own home labs is "What cables will I need?" The answer is "It depends." As you know from your exam studies, the physical layout of your lab is what determines the cables you'll need. Let's take a look at the most common home lab cable types and when you wi... 27). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: The 2503 Router I know from experience that part of the excitement and anxiety of putting together your own CCNA / CCNP home lab is deciding what to buy! While you can make a workable home lab out of almost any combination of Cisco routers and switches, some routers are better suited for home lab work than others because they can fill multiple roles. ... 28). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Using 2520 Routers I know from experience that part of the excitement and anxiety of putting together your own CCNA / CCNP home lab is deciding what to buy! While you can make a workable home lab out of almost any combination of Cisco routers and switches, some routers are better suited for home lab work than others because they can fill multiple roles. ... 29). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Starting Over When you're preparing for success on your CCNA or CCNP certification exams, sooner or later you're going to want to start totally from scratch on your Cisco routers and switches. It's easy enough to type "write erase" and "reload", but there are a few details you have to watch if you want your home lab or rack rental devices to act as though they j... 30). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: The 2501 Router To be truly prepared for your CCNA and CCNP exams, you need real hands-on experience with real Cisco routers and switches. However, a production network is a really bad place to practice your configurations, but an excellent way to get fired and/or sued. The key to becoming a true CCNA and CCNP is assembling your own Cisco home lab. Yo... 31). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab: Why You Need An ISDN Simulator 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 via their Basic Rate Interface (BRI) interfaces y... 32). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Labs: Developing Troubleshooting Skills CCNA / CCNP candidates are going to be drilled by Cisco when it comes to troubleshooting questions. You're going to have to be able to analyze configurations to see what the problem is (and if there is a problem in the first place), determine the meaning of different debug outputs, and show the ability not just to configure a router or switch, but ... 33). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Tutorial: Home Lab Assembly Case Study Part of your CCNA / CCNP education is deciding what network topology to use when you're putting together your home lab. Some of you are starting with one or two routers or switches, while others are starting with more. A customer recently sent me a list of his Cisco routers and switches that he has available for a home lab and asked for my help in ... 34). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Access List Details You Must Know! To pass the CCNA exam, you have to be able to write and troubleshoot access lists. As you climb the ladder toward the CCNP and CCIE, you'll see more and more uses for ACLs. Therefore, you had better know the basics! The use of "host" and "any" confuses some newcomers to ACLs, so let's take a look at that first. It is accep... 35). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Configuring And Troubleshooting VTP Not only is your CCNA exam going to have questions on VLAN trunking protocol, almost any network that has more than one VLAN is going to have VTP running. Whether you're planning on passing the CCNA exam or just brushing up on your networking skills, this VTP tutorial will help you learn the basics of this important protocol. VTP allow... 36). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Configuring Dialer Profiles The most common method of configuring ISDN is with dialer maps, but dial information can also be configured on a logical interface. To pass the CCNA exam, you must know how to configure and troubleshoot both dialer maps and dialer profiles. Dialer Profiles allow different dialing information to be configured onto logical interfaces. Th... 37). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: DNS And The IP Name-Server Command DNS behaviors of a Cisco router are important topics for both the CCNA exam and real-world production networks, and you probably didn't know there were so many DNS details before you began studying for the exam! In this tutorial, we'll look at the ip name-server command and its proper usage. When a command is mistyped on a Cisco router... 38). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Frame Relay DLCIs And Mappings Passing the CCNA is tough, and one of the toughest parts is keeping all the acronyms straight! Frame Relay has plenty of those, and today we're going to examine what DLCIs do and how they're mapped on a Cisco router. Frame Relay VCs use Data-Link Connection Identifiers (DLCI - pronounced "del-see") as their addresses. Unlike other Cisc... 39). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: ISDN Details You Must Know CCNA exam success depends partially on knowing the details of ISDN, and there are plenty of them! To help you review for your CCNA exam, here are a few ISDN details that you must know on exam day. (They help in the real world, too – and there are still plenty of ISDN networks out there! The Cisco-proprietary version of HDLC is the defa... 40). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: OSPF Hub-And-Spoke CCNA certification demands that you master the basics of OSPF, and for many studying for the CCNA exam, their first exposure to OSPF is a hub-and-spoke configuration. That's a tough way to get started, because a hub-and-spoke configuration built over an NBMA technology such as Frame Relay requires quite a bit of attention to detail. Let's take a qu... 41). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Prefix Notation When you're preparing to pass the CCNA exam and earn this coveted Cisco certification, you've got to be totally prepared for the many kinds of binary and subnetting questions Cisco may throw at you. You also have to be familiar with the different manners in which a subnet mask can be expressed, as in the following: 255.255.255.0 ... 42). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: RIP Details You Must Know RIP isn't exactly the most complex routing protocol on the CCNA exam, but that makes it easy to overlook some of the important details you must keep in mind in order to pass the exam! To help you review for the exam, here are just a few of those details! RIP’s default behavior is to send version 1 updates, but to accept both version 1 ... 43). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Variance And Unequal Cost Load Balancing To pass the CCNA exam, you've got to know how to work with IGRP and EIGRP unequal-cost load balancing. You may not see much IGRP in production networks anymore, but you'll see a lot of EIGRP, and part of fine-tuning your EIGRP network is making sure that all paths are in use while allowing for varying bandwidth rates. Using the varianc... 44). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: The OSI Model’s Physical Layer To pass your CCNA exam and earn this coveted certification, you've got to master the seven layers of the OSI model and what each layer does. For those of you taking the two-exam path, you can expect quite a few OSI model questions on the Intro exam. In this seven-part series, we'll spend some time taking a look at each of the OSI model layers, star... 45). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: The OSPF RID OSPF is a major topic on your CCNA exam, as well it should be. OSPF is a widely-used WAN protocol, and you need to learn the fundamentals before moving on to more complicated configurations. One such detail is the OSPF Router ID, or RID. The RID is the dotted decimal value by which other OSPF routers will identify a given OSPF router. ... 46). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam: Five Frame Relay Details You Must Know When you're studying for your CCNA exam on the way to earning this coveted Cisco certification, the details can seem overwhelming! In this article, I'll point out five Frame Relay details that you must keep in mind when you're on your way to the CCNA exam! Inverse ARP starts working as soon as you open the serial interface. This protoc... 47). Cisco CCNA Certification Tutorial: Segmenting Your Network When you're getting started on your CCNA studies on your way to earning this certification, you're swamped with network device types that you're familiar with, but not quite sure how to use. Let's look at these networking devices and their main purposes. Hubs and repeaters operate at Layer One of the OSI model, and they have one main p... 48). Cisco CCNA Certification: Broadcasts, Unicasts, And Multicasts When you begin your CCNA studies, you get hit with a lot of different networking terms right away that you might not be familiar with. What makes it a little more confusing is that a lot of these terms sound a lot alike. Here, we're going to discuss the differences between broadcasts, multicasts, and unicasts at both the Data Link (Layer 2) and Net... 49). Cisco CCNA Certification: Cisco Switching Modes Tutorial To pass the CCNA exam and earn that coveted certification, you've got to know Cisco switches inside and out. Among the many important details you've got to know are the three methods that Cisco switches use to forward frames, and the differences between the three. The first switching method is Store-and-Forward. The name is the recipe,... 50). Cisco CCNA Certification: Defining And Creating Collision Domains When you're studying to pass the CCNA exam and earn your certification, you're introduced to a great many terms that are either totally new to you or seem familiar, but you're not quite sure what they are. The term "collision domain" falls into the latter category for many CCNA candidates. What exactly is "colliding" in the first place... Browse Pages: 1 [2] [3] [4] [5]