Serial Articles

1). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: A Guide To Cable Types By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
When you're putting your CCNA and/or CCNP home lab together, you're not just buying routers and switches you're creating a blueprint for success. There is no better way to learn about how real Cisco routers and switches work than to work with the real thing! Of course, it's not enough to just get the routers and switches you've got to have the right cables and other devices to allow them to communicate.
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2). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Tutorial: Home Lab Assembly Case Study By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
Part of your CCNA / CCNP education is deciding what network topology to use when you're putting together your home lab. Some of you are starting with one or two routers or switches, while others are starting with more. A customer recently sent me a list of his Cisco routers and switches that he has available for a home lab and asked for my help in coming up with the best way to use them.
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3). Cisco CCNA Exam Tutorial: Directly Connected Serial Interfaces By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
To pass the CCNA exam, you've got to master quite a few services and routing protocols that may be new to you. Between RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, and switching, there are hundreds of details you've got to absorb! It's easy to spend all your time on those topics and not pay proper attention to "easier" technologies, and then all of a sudden on exam day you can't quite remember the details of those particular services.
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4). 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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5). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Cabling Your Home Lab By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
More CCNA and CCNP candidates than ever before are putting together their own home labs, and there's no better way to learn about Cisco technologies than working with the real thing. Getting the routers and switches is just part of putting together a great CCNA / CCNP home lab, though. You've got to get the right cables to connect the devices, and this is an important part of your education as well.
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6). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Troubleshooting Direct Serial Connections By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
A prime topic of your CCNA and CCNP CIT exams will be connecting Cisco routers directly via their Serial interfaces, and while the configuration is straightforward, there are some vital details and show commands you must know in order to pass the exams and configure this successfully in production and home lab networks. Let's take a look at a sample configuration.
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7). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: The 2503 Router By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
I know from experience that part of the excitement and anxiety of putting together your own CCNA / CCNP home lab is deciding what to buy! While you can make a workable home lab out of almost any combination of Cisco routers and switches, some routers are better suited for home lab work than others because they can fill multiple roles. When you buy CCNA or CCNP "lab kits" - bundles of routers and switches - you can get a little confused about whether you're getting a good deal.
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8). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Frame Relay Encapsulation Types By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
When you're studying to pass the Cisco CCNA and CCNP certification exams, you quickly learn that there's always something else to learn. (You'll really pick up on this in your CCIE studies, trust me!) Today we'll take a look at an often-overlooked topic in Frame Relay, the encapsulation type. You don't exactly change this on a daily basis in production networks (not if you want to stay employed, anyway!), but it's an important exam topic that you must be familiar with.
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9). Cisco CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial: Using 2520 Routers By : Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933
I know from experience that part of the excitement and anxiety of putting together your own CCNA / CCNP home lab is deciding what to buy! While you can make a workable home lab out of almost any combination of Cisco routers and switches, some routers are better suited for home lab work than others because they can fill multiple roles. My personal favorite is the Cisco 2520.
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