Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Studio: IT Academy
• ASIN: 1584400013
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #511,271 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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The second in a series of four tapes, CCNA Video Training, from the IT Academy, is the next best thing to actually taking an ITA course--with all of the advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages are that an actual human will present the lecture and will provide you with visual clues, some personal experience, historical anecdotes, and well-placed warnings about what will and what probably won't appear on the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam. The main disadvantage, however, is the price.

If you're looking to save money on the $1,500-and-up IT Academy training courses by watching these four tapes, be warned that the tape requests that you have not one but two Cisco 2501 routers, two CSU/DSU connectors to simulate a WAN link, and some cable and connectors. (It's assumed you already own a PC, which is reasonable.) That's about a $900 investment if you buy via auction, in addition to the tape prices. If budget is your concern, this is not the set for you.

This volume is an introduction to physical Cisco routing setup and the simpler commands, with some TCP/IP coverage at the end. The tape opens by showing you static slides of the back of a Cisco router--the entire tape rotates between PowerPoint slides, screen shots of a Windows terminal session, and cutaways to Heather Osterloh's explanations, so production values are fairly minimal--and then goes on to show you which plugs you attach which cables to.

Live video as opposed to screen shots would have definitely been helpful here. If you follow the advice and get the routers, a beginner may have problems setting up the masses of cables initially, and a five-minute walk-through with a technician hooking things up would have been infinitely clearer. In addition, the tapes also assume you bought your routers new, since no coverage is given to flushing out old configuration setups, or, significantly, razing the router and creating new passwords from scratch. (In ITA's defense, the first tape will tell you that you can buy the complete routing hardware package at their Web site, which may come with more complete setup instructions--but a search for this offer on the site came up empty. Nor is the URL even referenced on the second tape. The URL should have been on every tape, and given in full as opposed to just the generic dot com address.)

The tapes do a good job of explaining the various router commands through a combination of telnet sessions and PowerPoint slides. Osterloh doesn't explain every last detail of the notoriously voluminous Show? command outputs the way that some books do, but one gets the feeling that she's only explaining what is necessary to know for the test. The PowerPoint slides show the main routing commands but are inconsistent in the way they present them--sometimes they show only the abbreviated command, sometimes they show the full command, and occasionally they show the full command with the abbreviated part underlined. The third option is, sadly, both the best method and the rarest shown.

The five types of user-level and admin-level prompts, a frequent confusion for Cisco beginners, is explained very clearly here--as is the help system, the editing commands, the password-setting system, the various types of routing modes, and segmentation models. You will have to take your own notes on the Cisco command lines, however, as none are provided with the tapes.

The explanations are clear and given specifically to help you pass the exam. Some parts cover fairly dense material and as such will almost certainly require numerous rewinds to get properly. However, the producers have thoughtfully put a subject letter in the upper-right-hand corner of every shot--so if you see "M" as you fast-forward through the tape, you know Osterloh is talking about "passwords."

In short, this is a decent (if pricey), no-frills introduction to Cisco routing. You may need a book in addition for a Cisco reference, but if you're looking for the next best thing to an instructor-led course, this is it. --William Steinmetz

Book Description

The CCNA Video Training - Volume 2 of 4 is a 90 Minute Videotape which will prepare you to take - and pass - your Cisco Certified Network Associate Exam # 640-407. Join Industry Leader Heather Osterloh as she takes you step by step through the following topics.

Network Congestion & Segmentation The Cisco Router Cisco Router Components Router Modes Help and Editing Commands Show Commands Router Passwords TCP/IP

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