Bryant Articles

1). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Setup: How To Configure Reverse Telnet By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Occasionally, during your CCNA and CCNP studies, you'll run into a term that just doesn't quite make sense to you. (Okay, more than occasionally!) One such term is "reverse telnet". As a Cisco certification candidate, you know that telnet is simply a protocol that allows you to remotely connect to a networking device such as a router or switch. But.
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2). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Variance And Unequal Cost Load Balancing By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass the CCNA exam, you've got to know how to work with IGRP and EIGRP unequal-cost load balancing. You may not see much IGRP in production networks anymore, but you'll see a lot of EIGRP, and part of fine-tuning your EIGRP network is making sure that all paths are in use while allowing for varying bandwidth rates. Using the variance command is the easy part - it's getting the metric that's the hard part with IGRP.
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3). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Configuring An Access Server By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
As your CCNA / CCNP home lab expands, an access server such as the Cisco 2509 or 2511 is one of the best investments you can make. In this article, we'll look at the basic configuration for an access server and discuss how to connect to the other routers and switches in your pod through the AS. Here's part of a configuration from one of my access servers: ip host FRS 2006 100.
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4). Cisco CCNA Certification: Defining Broadcast Domains By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
When you're studying to pass the CCNA exam and earn your certification, you're introduced to a great many terms that are either totally new to you or seem familiar, but you're not quite sure what they are. The term "broadcast domain" falls into the latter category for many CCNA candidates. A broadcast domain is simply the group of end hosts that will receive a broadcast sent out by a given host.
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5). Passing Cisco's CCNA And CCNP Exams: Ping And Extended Ping By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Passing Cisco's CCNA And CCNP Exams: Ping And Extended Ping
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6). Cisco CCNP / BSCI Certification: The Local Preference BGP Attribute By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
When studying for your BSCI exam for the CCNP, you get your first taste of BGP. One of the major differences between BGP and the other protocols you've studied to date is that BGP uses attributes to describe paths, and to influence the selection of one path over the other. In this free tutorial, we're going to take a look at the Local Preference attribute and compare it to the Cisco-proprietary BGP attribute "weight".
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7). Cisco CCNA Certification: How And Why Switches Trunk By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Your CCNA studies are going to include quite a bit of information about switches, and for good reason. if you don't understand basic switching theory, you can't configure and troubleshoot Cisco switches, either on the CCNA exam or in the real world. That goes double for trunking! Trunking is simply enabling two or more switches to communicate and send frames to each other for transmission to remote hosts.
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8). Cisco CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Using The OSPF Command �Area Range� By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Your BSCI and CCNP exam success depends on knowing the details, and one such detail is knowing the proper way to summarize routes in OSPF. Route summarization is not just a test of your binary conversion abilities, but knowing where and when to summarize routes. It will not surprise any CCNA or CCNP certification candidate that OSPF gives us the most options for route summarization, and therefore more details to know! OSPF offers us two options for route summarization configurations.
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9). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification: OSPF E2 vs. E1 Routes By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
OSPF is a major topic on both the CCNA and CCNP exams, and it's also the topic that requires the most attention to detail. Where dynamic routing protocols such as RIP and IGRP have only one router type, a look at a Cisco routing table shows several different OSPF route types. R1#show ip route Codes: C - connected, S - static, I - IGRP, R - RIP, M -.
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10). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Labs: Developing Troubleshooting Skills By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
CCNA / CCNP candidates are going to be drilled by Cisco when it comes to troubleshooting questions. You're going to have to be able to analyze configurations to see what the problem is (and if there is a problem in the first place), determine the meaning of different debug outputs, and show the ability not just to configure a router or switch, but troubleshoot one.
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11). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Configuring And Troubleshooting VTP By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Not only is your CCNA exam going to have questions on VLAN trunking protocol, almost any network that has more than one VLAN is going to have VTP running. Whether you're planning on passing the CCNA exam or just brushing up on your networking skills, this VTP tutorial will help you learn the basics of this important protocol. VTP allows switches to advertise VLAN information between other members of the same VTP domain.
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12). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: Keep Your Most Important Appointment By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Imagine this. You have an appointment with a client to work on a server or router install. A few minutes before you're scheduled to be there, you decide there's something really good on TV you'd like to watch. Or you decide to go to the gym, or play a game, or do anything else except go see the client. Even if you weren't going to get fired for not showing up, it's certainly unfair to the client.
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13). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: The OSI Model�s Physical Layer By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass your CCNA exam and earn this coveted certification, you've got to master the seven layers of the OSI model and what each layer does. For those of you taking the two-exam path, you can expect quite a few OSI model questions on the Intro exam. In this seven-part series, we'll spend some time taking a look at each of the OSI model layers, starting with the Physical layer.
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14). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Exam Tutorial: Five Debugs You Must Know By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass the BSCI exam and move one step closer to CCNP certification success, you've got to know how and when to use debug commands to troubleshoot and verify network operations. While you should never practice debug commands on a production network, it's important to get some hands-on experience with them and not rely on "router simulators" and books to learn about them.
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15). Passing Cisco's CCNA and CCNP Exams: The VLAN.DAT File By : Chris Bryant
CCNA and CCNP candidates are often confused about why VLANs and VTP information is still present on a switch after the configuration is erased. Learn why this happens and how to really delete VLAN information in this free tutorial from Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933.
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16). Tips On Buying A Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Kit By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Buying a CCNA / CCNP home lab is the best way to be totally prepared for your Cisco exams. Most home labs are put together one router or switch at a time, but many CCNA / CCNP candidates prefer to buy kits where you get multiple routers and switches, along with all the cables and other connection devices you'll need. While this is a good idea, keep a few things in mind when purchasing Cisco home lab kits.
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17). Cisco CCNA Exam Tutorial: Troubleshooting Directly Connected Serial Interfaces By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
CCNA exam success depends largely on noticing the details, and this is especially true of configurations involving directly connected serial interfaces. And of course, it's not enough to notice these details - you've got to know what to do about them! A Cisco router is a DTE by default, but directly connecting two DTEs with a DCE/DTE cable is not enough.
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18). CCNP Certification / BSCI Exam Tutorial: The BGP Neighbor Process By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Like TCP, BGP is connection-oriented. An underlying connection between two BGP speakers is established before any routing information is exchanged. This connection takes place on TCP port 179. As with EIGRP and OSPF, keepalive messages are sent out by the BGP speakers in order to keep this relationship alive. Once the connection is established, the BGP speakers exchange routes and synchronize their tables.
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19). Cisco CCNP Certification / BSCI Exam Tutorial: An Introduction To BGP By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
When you're studying for the BSCI exam on the way to earning your CCNP certification, it's safe to say that BGP is like nothing you�ve studied to this point. BGP is an external routing protocol used primarily by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Unless you work for an ISP today or in the future, you may have little or no prior exposure to BGP. Understanding BGP is a great addition to your skill set � and you have to know the basics well to pass the BSCI exam.
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20). CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Route Summarization And The OSPF Null Interface By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
CCNP exam success, particularly on the BSCI exam, demands you understand the details of route summarization. This skill not only requires that you have a comfort level with binary conversions, but you have to know how and where to apply route summarization with each individual protocol. You also have to know the "side effects" of route summarization.
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21). Cisco CCNA Certification Exam Tutorial: OSPF Hub-And-Spoke By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
CCNA certification demands that you master the basics of OSPF, and for many studying for the CCNA exam, their first exposure to OSPF is a hub-and-spoke configuration. That's a tough way to get started, because a hub-and-spoke configuration built over an NBMA technology such as Frame Relay requires quite a bit of attention to detail. Let's take a quick look at several common OSPF configuration errors and how to avoid them on your CCNA test.
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22). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab: Why You Need An ISDN Simulator By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
ISDN is a vital topic for today's CCNA and CCNP candidates, especially for the ICND and Intro exams - you've got to know ISDN inside and out to pass those exams. Naturally you want to include it in your home lab. What many candidates don't realize is that you can't connect two Cisco routers directly via their Basic Rate Interface (BRI) interfaces you've got to have another device between them called an ISDN simulator.
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23). Cisco CCNP / BSCI Tutorial: The Role Of The OSPF ASBR By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass the BSCI exam and earn your CCNP certification, you've got to master the (many) details of OSPF. You might have thought there were quite a few OSPF details in your CCNA studies, but you'll now build on that foundation on the way to earning your CCNP. One such detail is the role of the Autonomous System Border Router (ASBR) in OSPF. The name.
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24). CCNA / MCSE / CCNP Certification: Making Failure Work For You By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Whether you're on the road to the CCNA, CCNP, MCSE, or you're on any other computer certification track, the odds are that sooner or later, you're going to fail an exam. It's happened to almost all of us, yours truly included. What you have to keep in mind in these times is that success is not a straight line. You've probably seen charts showing the growth of an industry or a business -- you know, the ones that go from left to right, and look kind of jagged.
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25). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Cabling Your Access Server By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
A Cisco home lab is an invaluable study tool when you're preparing for CCNA and CCNP exam success. Once you've gotten a couple of routers and switches, you'll quickly get tired of moving that blue console cable every time you want to configure a different device. The solution to this problem is purchasing and configuring an access server (AS). For those of you new to access servers, note that these are not white boxes running Microsoft operating systems.
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