CCNA Certification - bliss or bane!

It is known to everyone in the industry these days that after the economic disturbances, IT hiring managers are extensively looking for the right skills along with industry experience. The meaning of right skills here is that they are especially looking for the hands-on experience along with the IT certification. As the hiring market has opened after a long slumber the competition has become even fiercer and to keep your edge definitely require IT certifications.

In this competitive market of IT networking, staying competitive is a real challenge, as employers trying to get more skills of every resource that they would like to hire, the IT professionals are also looking forward to seek CCNA training programs. Owing to the increased demands of this course various CCNA training methodologies has cropped up, like- CCNA classroom training, CCNA online training, CCNA bootcamp trainings and many more. Attaining this certification means validating ones skills in the desktop, server and networking domains; it enhances their resume and increases their demand.

Cisco Systems is among many top flight vendors and the certifications that Cisco provides have high level of credibility in the IT industry. The ground reality is that attaining an IT certification, like CCNA acts as a benchmark for both the interview process and for the advancement into higher level job profiles. It can also be said that whatever one learns while pursuing CCNA is fundamental networking knowledge and can be easily used and applied in any networking environment.

Networking being one of the most competitive domains of IT, let us have a closer look at the secrets of being successful with CCNA certification exam.

The path of CISCO certifications

In pursuit of Cisco career, the first step is encountering the first level of the Cisco certification i.e. CCNA certification. This certification is designed to validate a basic and apt foundation of networking skills, including:

• Basic knowledge of the OSI reference model,
• Networking protocols,
• Layer 2 switching concepts and protocols,
• Routing concepts and protocols, and
• Wide-area networking (WAN) connectivity.

Anyone who clears CCNA certification should have the expertise necessary to provide basic network installations and level one troubleshooting skills. The course curriculum covers all the topics that are the building blocks of networking technologies and protocols. So any professional who require making career in networking and particularly in Cisco technologies, need to have a firm grasp of these skills, then only one may get a better understanding of complex technologies later.

Preparing for CCNA exam

The right approach to prepare for CCNA certification exam is not memorizing terms, instead learning the processes involved in passing traffic through Layer 2 switches and routers and its services.

As this certification generally revolves around switching and routing and hence, the correct way to seek knowledge is to look at networking from the perspective of each device and identify an Ethernet Frame or IP packet and to understand the work of each of these devices to move the packet to the next device or the network path.

Two mandatory things are essential to clear the CCNA certification exam:

• A complete understanding of networking fundamentals
• The ability to configure & troubleshoot Cisco networking devices to operate in a network

These things make this certification popular among the employees. As many networks use Cisco products so being fluent with the Cisco systems give them added edge. In IT domains it is known that if someone knows enough networking to clear a Cisco certification exam then the person only learn different vendor’s operating system and products to perform the same tasks. Hence, these factors contribute in making employers in determining which candidates are considered for hiring or promotion.