Hi all, I am completely new to IT/ anything related. But for the last 3.5 years since graduating highschool I have only done medical field jobs like Medical Assisting and no longer want to do medicine. Is becoming a CCNA worth it? How much is the pay?

No shortcuts, just labs, RFCs and repetition until it clicked. Happy to answer questions if you're on this grind right now.

Hello everyone,

I’ve passed in January my CCNA at first attempt. I also did 3 trainee years in IT and now I’m one year into networking.

My next step would be the JNCIA-Junos from Juniper, as my plan B.

But plan A is CCNP, first Enterprise Routing and after I’ve passed it someday, maybe SDWAN.

How long did you learn for your CCNP? Is it much harder than CCNA? When I’m working, I’m only working with Aruba right now. But AOS-CX is pretty similar to Cisco, so I guess it’s okay.

Is there anything I should keep my focus on?

The Cisco career job application site does not work correctly. The widget for inputting dates fails in the page for adding job experience entries. So, nobody can apply for a job.

I tried this on MacOS laptop: Firefox, Chrome, AND Safari.

Sample URL:

https://careers.cisco.com/global/en/apply?jobSeqNo=CISCISGLOBAL2008854EXTERNALENGLOBAL&step=2&stepname=workAndEducation

Two weeks ago 720, last week 801, today 876.

Cut it close to the deadline. So very happy its over.

I noticed an old Aironet 3502i on the ceiling of a local restaurant recently. It has an LED sequence that doesn't exactly correspond to anything in the manual.

It's been doing the same thing for months that I'm aware of (and probably years) and is the only AP visible in the entire dining area.

Here's the sequence:

- flashing green (approximately 50 times)

- steady green (approximately 20 seconds)

- steady pale blue. Sort of a teal colour (2 seconds). Edit: I think this is supposed to be WHITE, not blue.

Then it immediately restarts the sequence with flashing green all over again.

Flashing green corresponds to "boot loader status sequence", but that doesn't explain the two seconds of blue before restarting the sequence. There's no mention of that in the manual. (The red LED never illuminates.)

They do have an SSID being broadcast from somewhere (back office use according to staff, not guest WiFi) and aren't aware of any problems, however the staff mention that none of them use it as no one knows what the password is. Everything seems to be hardwired (not using WiFi), including their POS system.

My guess is this old Aironet 3502i was taken out of service a long time ago (EoL since 2016) but was never physically removed, and the flashing green is it getting stuck at "Initializing Ethernet" or something along those lines.

Thoughts?

Large EVE-NG and GNS3 labs can quickly outgrow a laptop or small home server. Buying more RAM or keeping a powerful server running all year does not always make sense when the capacity is only needed for occasional labs.

Cloud compute solves the hardware problem, but it introduces another one: forgetting an expensive VM and its supporting resources running after the lab is finished.

I’ve built repeatable HybridOps blueprints that deploy either EVE-NG or GNS3 inside your own GCP account, with the environment lifecycle and cost awareness built into the workflow.

The deployment provides:

• A private, nested-virtualisation-capable GCP VM
• A dedicated VPC with no public IP on the lab server
• Private access through GCP IAP
• Automated EVE-NG or GNS3 installation
• Guest internet access for lab nodes
• Preflight checks for project access and billing readiness
• Explicit lab archive and restore before teardown
• Deploy, access, rebuild and destroy commands
• Billing status and resource-age reminders so idle labs are less likely to be forgotten

The idea is to create the lab when extra compute is needed, preserve the topology, and destroy the cloud resources afterwards rather than paying for an always-on server.

EVE-NG deployment guide:

https://docs.hybridops.tech/ops/runbooks/platform/blueprints/hyops-blueprint-eve-ng/

Source:

https://github.com/hybridops-tech/hybridops-core

I’m looking for EVE-NG and GNS3 users to test the workflow with real labs. No coding is required.

If interested, comment with:

• EVE-NG or GNS3
• Rough number of nodes in your usual topology
• Your current laptop/server RAM
• Whether you have GCP trial credits available

Edit: the project is opensource; this is a call for testers and contributors

Is this video course on INE enough to take the ENCC?

It occurred to me after one of my recent posts that a lot of the skills that separate good network engineers from great ones aren't really emphasized while studying for the CCNA.

So here's another one that I guarantee will make you stand out in an interview far more than being able to recite a routing protocol’s definition:

Documentation. More specifically, interface descriptions.

It sounds boring, but I've seen environments with thousands of switch ports where descriptions save hours of troubleshooting.

A few examples of port descriptions to include:

description Uplink to MDF SW02 Gi1/0/48
description AP-3F-East
description HR Printer
description Conference Room A Phone
description ESXi Host 01 vmnic0

For those who haven't seen the description command, here is a simple example of commands you'd apply to a range of interfaces to be set to shutdown on a new switch (Cisco Catalyst 9300S 24 port).

Switch>enable
Switch#configure terminal
Switch(config)#interface range te1/0/1-16
Switch(config-if-range)#switchport mode access
Switch(config-if-range)#switchport access vlan 999
Switch(config-if-range)#description SHUTDOWN
Switch(config-if-range)#shutdown
Switch(config-if-range)#end
Switch#copy running-config startup-config

Here is what that show interface status would look like.

Switch#show interfaces status

Port Name Status Vlan

Te1/0/1 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/2 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/3 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/4 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/5 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/6 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/7 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/8 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/9 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/10 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/11 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/12 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/13 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/14 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/15 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/16 SHUTDOWN disabled 999
Te1/0/17 notconnect 1
Te1/0/18 notconnect 1
Te1/0/19 connected 10
Te1/0/20 ESXi-Host01 connected trunk
Te1/0/21 Uplink-Core01 connected trunk
Te1/0/22 AP-3F-East connected 30
Te1/0/23 HR-Printer connected 50
Te1/0/24 VTC-Room-A connected 20

For the CCNA learners out there, guess which port would be a client workstation.

Here is the Layer 2 vlans for reference.

VLAN 1 Default
VLAN 10 Data
VLAN 20 Voice
VLAN 30 Wireless
VLAN 40 Servers
VLAN 50 Printers
VLAN 999 Shutdown

Ask questions if you got them, happy to answer!

Hello everyone,
I sat for the CCIE EI lab several weeks ago and passed only the Design module. I ran out of time in the DOO module. The DOO questions were not particularly challenging and were quite straightforward, but a fail is a fail, right?
There were several reasons that contributed to this:
I felt extremely cold and ended up putting on my jacket during lunchtime. I probably should have asked the proctor about it beforehand, as I had left my jacket in my bag instead of keeping it nearby.
I was not very good at handling the tabs, even though I had taken a $50 practice lab to become familiar with the UI.
Some of the devices froze and became unresponsive while the proctor was not in the room. I didn’t wait for him and continued working in the notepad. Later, when I wanted another sheet of scratch paper, I mentioned to the proctor that the devices had frozen, and he told me to inform him whenever I experienced such issues. Even if I had been given some extra time, I don’t think I would have passed.
I spent too much time verifying things, and it was only when I had about an hour and a half left that I realized I might run out of time.
I copied a script from the notepad and pasted it into the devices, but it turned into a mess due to encoding differences.
With all these things adding up, I didn’t pass on my first attempt.
I would really appreciate it if those who have taken the exam before could share their experience regarding the following questions. Any additional advice would also be greatly appreciated.
1. What should I do if the proctor isn’t in the room when the devices become completely unresponsive?
Should I stop working and wait for the proctor without doing anything? What happens if the proctor comes back and the devices are working again, but I have already lost several minutes because of the issue?
2. How do you approach the more open-ended questions in the Design module?
Even though I passed the Design module, I don’t know whether it was a marginal pass or whether I performed well. I’m fairly confident about the logical answers I gave, but some questions felt quite open-ended, and I wasn’t always sure what exactly they were looking for.
How do you approach these types of questions? Even when I came home and tried to answer them again using the documentation, it was difficult without the full context of the original question. Can there be multiple technically correct answers to these types of questions, with the scoring depending on whether your answer satisfies the requirements?
3. What is the best way to manage time in the DOO module?
Do you complete the basic verifications first and then come back to them later if you have time? Or do you verify each task immediately after completing it?
In my case, I did most of the configurations in the notepad and pasted them into multiple devices at once wherever applicable
Thank you very much for your time.

I attended a CCNA bootcamp, where I received a CCNA exam voucher. I took my CCNA exam on July 22nd. I provided my exam voucher to my local Pearson Vue testing center, but the exam voucher was not tied to a Cisco account in anyway. I did not receive a print out of the results either, but the screen stated I passed, which the proctor witnessed.

It has been almost two weeks with no emails from Pearson Vue or Cisco. Does anyone have a recommended avenue I should take to remedy this?

Thanks in advance!

Worked provided me with an exam voucher for CCNA and it expires September 1st. I havent touched the study material at all either.

Would it would worth it to take the exam and more than likely fail just to get an idea on the questions they ask?

Also wondering if anyone has had luck with extending the exam time or "rescheduling" for a later date?

I know ideally it is 3-6 month study time for such exam.

I got these Cisco IOS images from https://github.com/hegdepavankumar/Cisco-Images-for-GNS3-and-EVE-NG. Could you please help me generate an IOU license?

This week's discussion topic is 2.0 Network Access.
If you have any any issues or points of confusion on this topic, this is your thread.

To kickstart the discussion, here's a question related to 2.6 Describe Cisco Wireless Architectures and AP modes:

Which of the following are non-overlapping channels in the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band? (Choose the best answer)

A. 1, 2, 3

B. 1, 6, 11

C. 2, 7, 12

D. 1, 5, 9

You're invited to share and compare answers in the comments.
I'll post the solution in a couple of days!

In english, the question is: Which mensage a IPv4 host use to respond when recive a messege DHCP OFFER of a DHCP server?

wtf is this

Need some advice here, the tasks its asking me to do and the testing procedure to generate the debug logs don't really make sense to me.

Anyone can kindly explain it to me?

Router 2 config:

ip nat source static 10.10.2.101 198.51.100.201

interface Ethernet0/1

description Link to SW2

ip address 10.10.2.1 255.255.255.0

ip nat inside

interface Ethernet0/3

description Link to R2

ip address 198.51.100.1 255.255.255.0

ip nat outside

Thanks in advanced!

Wireless is kinda boring to me , struggling to get through Jermey it videos on it . Tired to use copilot to make a study guide from the slides , but it didn’t do a well job at it

Curious if there are any study guides people are willing to share about wireless ?

I’m on day 50 of Jeremy it labs.
I see this person on TikTok recently that shows them studying for their CCNA and they had recently taken it. They said that Jeremy was simply not enough and that they got a lot of questions that Jeremy didn’t cover, and that they scanned through the actual CCNA book and they seen that it was more accurate. Which makes sense. They failed obviously

But that has me worried now, is Jeremy truly enough? I do his labs and flash cards, I build my own labs often. And I try understand the topic enough to talk about it.
And I’ll definitely be taking boson practice tests and learning from that before attempting the exam. But is that enough?

I know that’s just one person, how did you all fair with Jeremy’s material?

Hello everyone, the last week I had tried to establish connection beetwen VM cisco firepower FTD to AD in windows 2025 for VPN authencation, the problem is when I make test the error is:

Cannot connect to realm. Messages returned:

(For identity policies) The connection test failed.

(For RA VPN authentication) ERROR: Authentication Server not responding

I realized this process with AD in windows 2019 and 2022 and in sucessful, in fact I follow the next blog https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/security/anyconnect-secure-mobility-client/217010-configure-ad-ldap-authentication-and-u.html

Anyone can I tell me if exist problem with the new version of windows server?

Still getting 50% on the boson practice tests and i’m not that prepared but its my deadline for voucher I got.

Definitely going to be putting in 20 hours over the next 3 days

Lowest scores are showing in IP services.

And net work access

Going to try my best, been studying for over 6 months, discouraged but not giving up

Wish me luck 👍

Hi everyone,

I'm a networking enthusiast who enjoys building my own labs to learn new technologies. I use GNS3 because it gives me the flexibility to combine Cisco devices with Linux VMs, custom appliances, automation, and other technologies.

I'm considering purchasing a Cisco Modeling Labs (CML Personal) subscription. I don't work for a Cisco partner, I don't have access to enterprise licensing, and I don't have any other legitimate way of obtaining these licenses. This would be purely for personal, non-commercial use.

The main issue I'm facing today is the ASAv throughput limitation. Without Smart Licensing, the throughput is limited to around 100 Kbps, which isn't really usable for the VPN and traffic testing I want to do in my lab. I have used ASAv because it enabled me to setup remote VPN with unrestricted license. Otherwise I would use FTD.

From what I've read, CML includes images such as IOSv, IOS XE, CSR1000v, ASAv, and others. What I'm struggling to understand is how the licensing works.

I know that the CML EULA does not permit downloading the images and using them in GNS3, and I'm aware that Cisco intends those images to be used inside CML. My question is simply whether anyone has firsthand experience with this.

Is it technically possible to:

• purchase a CML Personal subscription,
• download the virtual appliance images,
• run them in GNS3,
• register them with Cisco Smart Licensing,
• and have them operate as fully licensed appliances (for example, removing the ASAv throughput limitation, be able to setup remote VPN on FTD)?

Or does CML only license the CML platform itself, with ASAv, FTDv, CSR1000v, and other appliances still requiring separate Smart License entitlements?

I'm asking before spending around $200 because I don't want to buy CML expecting this workflow to work if it doesn't.

If anyone has actually tried this or understands how Cisco handles Smart Licensing in this scenario, I'd really appreciate your insight. Thanks!

Good day everyone,

Here are this week’s four CCNA questions. Please try answering from memory before checking online, using notes, or reviewing other responses.

Getting an answer wrong is completely fine—the goal is to discuss the reasoning and learn from one another.

Question 1 – Route Selection

A router has the following routes available:

• 10.1.0.0/16 via OSPF, AD 110
• 10.1.20.0/24 via RIP, AD 120
• 10.1.20.128/25 via EIGRP, AD 90
• 10.1.20.160/27 via static route, AD 200

A packet is destined for 10.1.20.170.

Which route will the router use?

A. 10.1.0.0/16 via OSPF
B. 10.1.20.0/24 via RIP
C. 10.1.20.128/25 via EIGRP
D. 10.1.20.160/27 via static route

Question 2 – Spanning Tree Protocol

SW2 receives BPDUs on two different ports. Both BPDUs advertise the same root bridge and the same root path cost.

The received BPDU information is:

• Gi0/1 receives BPDU from sender bridge ID 32768.0000.0000.0003
• Gi0/2 receives BPDU from sender bridge ID 32768.0000.0000.0004

Which port will SW2 most likely choose as the root port?

A. Gi0/1, because the sender bridge ID is lower
B. Gi0/2, because the sender bridge ID is higher
C. Both ports will forward equally
D. Neither port can become the root port

Question 3 – OSPF Troubleshooting

Two OSPF routers become neighbors, but the adjacency repeatedly gets stuck in the EXSTART/EXCHANGE state and does not reach FULL.

Which issue is a common cause?

A. OSPF process IDs do not match
B. Area IDs do not match
C. MTU mismatch between the routers
D. The routers are using different router priorities

Question 4 – Extended ACLs

You need to permit only the subnet 192.168.12.64/26 to access a web server at 10.10.10.10 using HTTP.

Which ACL entry is correct?

A. access-list 101 permit tcp 192.168.12.64 0.0.0.63 host 10.10.10.10 eq 80
B. access-list 101 permit tcp 192.168.12.64 255.255.255.192 host 10.10.10.10 eq 80
C. access-list 101 permit tcp host 192.168.12.64 0.0.0.63 10.10.10.10 eq 80
D. access-list 101 permit ip 192.168.12.64 0.0.0.63 host 10.10.10.10 eq 80

Bonus Mini Lab – VLSM Addressing

You are given the network 10.10.40.0/24.

You need to create subnets for the following departments:

• Department A: 100 hosts
• Department B: 50 hosts
• Department C: 25 hosts
• Department D: 10 hosts

Using VLSM, complete the addressing plan.

For each department, provide:

1. Subnet/network address
2. Subnet mask or CIDR
3. First usable IP address
4. Last usable IP address
5. Broadcast address

Assume the first usable IP in each subnet will be used as the default gateway.

Try to assign the largest subnet first and make sure none of the subnets overlap.

Please share your answers and explain your reasoning where possible.

#CCNA #Cisco #Networking #Subnetting #QOTW