CCNA - Books or Classes, what's best?

If the college you got that price from is a Cisco Networking Academy you won't need books, all the required material will be made a available to you online.

Being an Academy Instructor and re-certified CCNA last month I can tell you that the online curriculum and associated in-class labs more than prepare you for the cert exam - if fact I was irked by the feeling that the exam seemed to only test about 30% of what I had crammed!

In my experience the "books-only private study approach" really only works for those already working in networking in some way and are looking for the CCNA cert as an extension of their existing qualifications and/or knowledge.

My advice would be if you are a networking novice to attend classes - the issue (other than cost) is the time factor - how quickly do you want to become certified?

Another post made the comment: " My opinion is that classes will mostly involve reading books anyway and that I see no necessity to pay for some well-qualified professional to paraphrase the content to me." which indicates a pretty sad learning experience in my view. Of course the instructor will paraphrase the content, but hopefully they will also explain, and re-iterate the tricky and important things, and demonstrate, and use a range of examples, and answer your questions - all things books can't directly do. And the classes will not involve much reading of books, they should involve doing lots of labs which will develop your practical networking configuration and troubleshooting skills.

If you post the name of the institute you got that price from I can tell you if it is a Cisco Networking Academy or not.

I have no idea of the cost structures there in Scotland, but maybe that's the price of the CCNA only training. Perhaps if you can enroll in a diploma or similar course in IT or Computer Systems that incorporates the CCNA in it, the cost of that component may be cheaper. In our college our part-time evening students do that - only 10% actually complete the full diploma, the other 90% just do the CCNA modules and that's all. Cheaper for them that way and we still get the student hours we need to employ us.

All the best

Aubrey

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Aubrey Adams
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It turns out the college course is 2 nights a week, not 4, and runs over

2 years, not 1. This means I'll be able to meet the fees a lot more comfortably, and have more free nights to absorb the information.

Hopefully will sign up next week, I did worry initially about it taking

2 years, but I could always do the second year of the course myself whilst I attend the first year - if I feel I can handle the extra work, and really feel I need to get the qualification quickly. As long as I'm still in a job, I'll probably prefer the more sedate option!

Thanks for everyone's input.

Reply to
aleX

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