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Time to take a victory lap – I’ve finally gotten around to getting the CCNA – officially in the Cisco gang!

While still an entry-level certification, it is nice to actually get some validation for the skills I’ve been learning on the job. According to Wikipedia:

“The exam tests a candidate’s knowledge and skills required to install, operate, and troubleshoot a small to medium size enterprise branch network devices. The exam covers a broad range of fundamentals, including network fundamentals, network access, IP connectivity, IP services, security fundamentals, automation, and programmability.”

It’s a nice collection of buzzwords, to be sure! But the key here is that it tests foundational skills…to get this certification, you have to actually have skills, not just knowledge. Being able to work through labs, read and interpret outputs, and having knowledge command line are indispensable…you won’t pass the exam without them!

89 questions, including 3 labs. Can’t about the questions themselves or the topics, but they were all within the exam topics.

The labs weren’t difficult aside from one specific sub-task that I completely forgot to review and had no clue how to implement, but at least I know what to review and brush up on!

If I could change anything about the exam, I would place a greater emphasis on saving the configs before moving on. There’s one lab I specifically remember easily completing 100% perfectly, but forgot to save it somewhere along the second half of the task…that’s so lame.

That and maybe a “go back / review” function.

I had 29 minutes remaining when I finished the exam … out of 120 minutes total. Dang!! Honestly, I didn’t find it overly difficult. Between the stuff I’ve learned from work, Jeremy’s IT lab, and Boson’s study materials, the exam was fine. Meh, no big deal.

I know a pass is a pass and I should just be happy and fine with it, but still – it would have been nice to have a second look at some of the questions! I went through the first bit of the exam really quickly because I wasn’t sure how the pacing would be….turns out that yeah, I had tons of time left but wasn’t able to review 😦

I’ll have to remember that for the next exam.

The problem is that I’m not sure where to go from here….do I go for systems certifications — Azure / AWS ? Do I go for security certs? Networking specialization certs? Management? The list of certifications out there is truly massive, and this is probably not even comprehensive! Man….

Good news is that I’m out of the ‘beginner level’ stuff now. YES! I really don’t know what’s next, but that’s something I’ll have to figure out sooner rather than later.

It also is kind of up to my current employer in terms of what I can get access to, what training they can offer me, and of course, outside of that, what the market is looking for if I decide to move on.

Can’t wait to see what’s next!