I want to share my experience studying for, and taking the DevNet associate test. It took a long time to get enough momentum In my study routine to take the test, but I did finally take it and passed! I will admit that I did not one-shot the test but I managed to pass on…
What is your LAN uplink strategy? Uplinks are an important component of LAN design since they provide the upstream pathway to other devices within the network, and are the method by which traffic is transported out of the network. In this example, I’d like to look at a 2960 access-layer switch and work through an…
I want to address the human element of troubleshooting a bit. As a network engineer or any other type of IT contributor you will find yourself in troubleshooting scenarios involving people other than yourself. You may collaborate with other members of your team to solve problems whether you’re seeking help or receiving it. You also…
There will be times when you want to test a physical copper link to validate the layer 1 path between two interfaces. If you were on-site of course you could use a physical cable tester but if you are working remotely like we often are, you still have an option. On some models of Cisco…
Wondering how to get started as a network engineer? In this post I’m going to cover some ways to get started on your journey to be in the networking specialization field of Information Technology which will be hereby referred to as I.T. I’ve been working within this field for more than 10 years now and…
I don’t know if you’re like me, but I seem to always mix up the neighbor relationship requirements of OSPF and EIGRP if I haven’t been recently studying the topic. I’d like to do a quick review so that we both have a new frame of reference and something we can quickly come back to…
Your perception of how a routing protocol should operate may be heavily influenced by the first protocol you support in a production environment. For example I was first exposed to BGP when I settled into my entry level NOC position some years ago. As a result I referred to the communication of prefix and NLRI…
This could be considered somewhat of a niche topic but voice vlan/switchports are covered in the CCNA exam, and perhaps more importantly you will deal with this configuration in most Cisco friendly production environments. Relevant CCNA Topics Covered: Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 (100-105) Section 2.4 Most Cisco IP phones have an embedded 3-port…
This post will be somewhat of a continuation of the last post entitled “A bit about 802.1q Trunk ports”. Relevant CCNA Topics Covered: Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 (100-105) Section 2.0 The last post touched on the need for a layer 3 device to switch or route inter-vlan traffic. The configuration in which a…
What is a trunk port, and how do they help your network? Relevant CCNA Topics Covered: Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 (100-105) Section 2.0 A trunk port is a port that has the ability to switch frames on multiple vlans. Switchports assigned to only one vlan are called access ports, and can be statically assigned…
