The Cisco certifications have always been regarded as one of the prestigious certifications in the networking field. There are various levels of the Cisco certification: Entry level, associate, professional and expert. The Cisco CCNA certification represents the associate level of certification. The Cisco Certified Network Associate has been one of the prominent entry level certifications related to networking. This certification was made to test the basic and foundation of the candidates’ networking knowledge and concepts. Thus the Cisco CCNA certificate holders are assumed to have the basic foundations of the networking concepts. This certification mainly covers the installation, configuration, operation and troubleshooting issues of the Cisco products and services.
If a fresh job candidate has this certification in their resume, then they will be automatically recognized by the employers. This is the power of Cisco certification. Besides employers also prefer to give raise or promotion to the employees who have Cisco certifications. This Cisco CCNA certification was designed to test the candidates’ knowledge and skills related to the foundation of the current networking technologies.
As mentioned above, this certification helps fresh candidates to land a good networking job and the existing employees to land good raise and promotion. There is certain job roles where this certification is much favored than in other job roles. Here is a list of those job roles that this certification helps the candidates to achieve.
- Network Administrators
- Network Specialists
- Network Support Engineers
The main aim of this certification is prove that the candidate has the necessary knowledge and skills related to the foundation of the networking technologies and concepts. It validates the candidates’ skills and knowledge related to installation, operation and troubleshooting of enterprise branch network that may range from small to medium. If the candidate achieves this certification then it can be assumed that this person has all these knowledge and skills, and knows how to perform installation, operation and troubleshooting on the Cisco products and services to build a good and working network.
The Cisco CCNA certification covers a lot of exam topics that are used in the networking field in daily basis. So, this certification validates the candidates’ skills related to those exam topics. Let’s have a look at some of the skills that are validates by this certification.
- Recognition, identification, operation of network protocols and IP data networks.
- Proper selection of appropriate network devices.
- Identification, installation, operation and troubleshooting of Cisco switches and routers.
- Configuration and verification of VLANs.
- Identification and operation of IPv4 and IPv6 scheme.
- Configuration and verification of EIGRP, OSPF, DHCP, ACL, NAT, static routing and dynamic routing.
- Configuration and verification of network security features.
- Solving the issues that cause errors in the network.
- Identification, configuration and verification of WAN technologies.
There are number of other fields related to the Cisco CCNA certification. Networking field is a vast field that covers a lot of topics. Cisco has made different types of CCNA certification available for different types of topics. Here is a list of various pathways that are available for the Cisco CCNA certification.
- CCNA Data Center,
- CCNA Routing and Switching,
- CCNA Security,
- CCNA Service Provider,
- CCNA Service Provider Operations,
- CCNA Video,
- CCNA Voice,
- CCNA Wireless
The Cisco CCNA certification does not have any formal prerequisites that the candidates have to fulfill if they want to sit for the certification exam. However, it is highly recommended that the candidates get 1 to 3 years of experience in the networking field before sitting for this certification exam.
Required exams:
There are no required exams for the Cisco CCNA. The candidates won’t have to complete any kind of exams before they can sit for this certification. During the certification exam they will have to sit for a written exam to get this certification.
Required courses:
There are no mandatory courses that the candidates will have to take for this certification. But they are recommended to take the recommended training provided by the Cisco itself. The recommended training courses are: Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices: Accelerated, Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 and Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 2.
Exam cost:
The Cisco CCNA certification exam costs about $150 to $295. This depends on the type of the Cisco CCNA certification that the candidates want to take.
Study materials:
The Cisco website contains all the information about the study materials that are beneficial for the candidates. The Cisco Learning Network Resources website provides access to all the study materials that might come handy during the exam preparation. Besides that there are a number of books, practice tests and other resources that the candidates can look for. The e-learning labs and hands-on lab practice can also help a lot during the preparation time.
