Cisco Systems Networking Class...:(

[JustinMcG67]

Ok, for this semester at school (11th grade HS) I got assigned a class called INtroduction to Information Technology. Well, the teacher pulled me aside and said that I had already covered all the material and he suggested that I be removed from class. So, I spent the next few days wondering what the heck I could do, in terms of a class relavent to computers and what not.

So my counselor suggests that I talk to my Network Administrator and see if I can do an Independent Study with him and get assigned a project. So I e-mailed him and everything, he suggests that I take a Cisco Networking Online Class. I was like OK, I'll do that. SO I arrange it, only today I was browsing through some tests and stuff, and "omfg..." this networking stuff is freakishly difficult. Have the crap I can't understand. It seems really confusing and boring. Maybe that's because some 30 year old guys were typing it and had nothing in their posts except plain old black and white text...lame?

So, I want to know if anyone has taken a Networking class online from Cisco before. If so, is it difficult, is the material easy to understand, what kind of benefits should I expect from taking this class? So yeah, anyone who can answer these questions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Natalya1]

Are you doing the one online at http://cisco.netacad.net ? ive taken the a+ (i just went to the website, they call a+ it essentaisl now) course on that, and CCNA 1 and CCNA 2 from that site. if you need any help i can help you, i have all the study guides etc etc, just say the word!

Oh and btw Networking is soooo much fun! once your start to learn all the things you can do your going to enjoy it heaps!! trust me!!

 

[TRDCorolla1]

I went through the online Cisco Academy program. Semester 1 of CIsco Academy is boring and strictly theory. Not much hands on stuff. You are given a password and login info to gain access to the CIsco Semester 1 curriculum online and you study from it. It talks about IP protocol, OSI model, basic networking hardware, other protocols used, IP class, etc. The curriculum is easy to understand and organized well. There are quizzes and test you take online pertaining to the online curriculum. I got an "A" in all 4 semester of my CCNA program. Semester 4 was HARD!!! I hate access list. I know they do a good job on restricting network access and all, but man, too many things to remember. It's enough I have to configure the IP scheme and subnet and create route path. We also did VLANs using CIsco switches in that semester. So fun. Virtual networks. All we did was see if we can ping and telnet into the other network over LAN and then WAN. Semester 3 was all hands on and Semester 2 too, now that I think of it. We had a CIsco lab all set up for us. The people in the class were divided into groups with each group being a different city/state. Our job was to create a LAN within our organization locally and then extend to our WAN because the company had different locations all over the US. So the WAN was a big part. Each router was sort of like a Gateway in which it goes out to the Internet. We configured the ports with IP's and subnet accordingly and the rest was trying to make sure we can communicate with each other (telnet and ping mostly). There were a lot of commands but I forgot them If you don't use it, you lose it. Once you know most of the troubleshooting commands, you have it made. Then you can isolate what part of the network is giving you problems. I liked it.

 

[alvino]

Wow...you're even lucky to have a class like that...all I have is JAVA Programming, which is a joke, and AP Computer Science, which is also another joke. I'm gonna have such a busy summer...going to a community college for computer classes and having a job will be kinda tough. At least it builds character...