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Cisco Net Academy (Feedback Please!!)

Tags:
  • Making It In IT - Certification & Training
  • Networking
  • Learning Tree
  • Cisco
Last response: in Networking
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March 11, 2014 9:09:58 PM

I'm considering the Cisco Net Academy course but not sure I see any benefit versus other methods. I could buy some home equipment, a network simulator or download GNS3 to practice on and even purchase tutorial videos. SO, can anyone tell me what the Net Academy course offers that the others don't? I'm working towards the CCNA certification.

The Netacad course costs $460 x4 to take for a total of $1840. So for those of you in the field and knowing what I don't at this point I am asking for some good input to my dilemma before I throw money at any one option.

Thank any and all of you for your input.

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March 12, 2014 5:27:31 AM

It depends how you like to learn. Some people need a more structured class and other can just read the books and play with the equipment.

Used to be I would always recommend buying real equipment but the simulators are good enough for ccna. The real equipment tend to give more useful experience since you will be doing things like password recovery and ios upgrades etc etc to get your test environment setup. You also learn lots about serial and communication cables. This is the only way you are going to learn things like that and this is a common thing on a real job. The certification test though barely touches on that.

Unfortunately the simulators are only a small part of the CCNA I find that part the easy part. A large chunk of the test is memorizing tiny detailed stuff you can just look up in real life. Even though I have had CCIE for many years there are many questions I would have gotten wrong when I help people study for CCNA.

Just be careful there are many so called study guide that actually have all the real test questions in them. You do not just want to memorize the test questions and answers. Unfortunately there are many people who do get their certs using that method. This is where having real equipment will help since you can discuss in job interviews all the difficulties of setting up a lab. It shows you more likely know your stuff than the memorize the test guys. Still real equipment does not help all that much to actually get the certification itself.

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