Cisco 640-802 CCNA Online Training

Lorek

I'm looking to do some education at home and maybe earn a Cisco cert on the side. Unfortunately, all the training courses I can find are crazy expensive; so I was looking into some of the online courses. Has anyone done the online versions of these training courses or can recommend a good website that provides them? Or even any advice on how to go about learning more about systems networking that doesn't cost a fortune and I can basically do nights/weekends around my day job.

ceres

Well, there are always the books... but eventually you're probably going to have to take a class.

I had some trouble with the ICND2 training, so I took one of those crazy-expensive classes with Global Knowledge. It was a very good class, but one of the first things he said to us was NOT to take the ICND1 and ICND2 as separate tests... instead take the unified test. Sure the ICND1 is a lot easier than the 640-802, but the ICND2 is unnecessarily difficult unless you're going on, and even then. The unified test has questions from both parts, so you get a mix of easy and hard instead of X hours of Questions from Hell. It's not really considered better to take the two-parter than the unified test by employers who don't care as long as you're certified, so it's better to stack the odds in your favor. I took the CCNA (640-802) two years ago.

I actually used the official preparation guides from cisco, which were really good. The entire library is available from Amazon for a lot cheaper than a class at least, and carried me through ICND1 learning easily (and some of the ICND2). My husband also strongly recommends the Sybex books. They might not take you all the way there, but if you decide this is your thing, they'll make whatever class you end up taking so much easier.

taliosfalcon

It's a bit harder than taking a class, but it's entirely doable (and i know several people who have) with just the cisco press books and something like boson netsim for getting the labs down. Really without taking a class you're very likely to fail the tests the first time you try them, so factor that in to your budgeting.