Kenneth D. Stewart III teaches computer science and computer networking courses at Flour Bluff High School and Delmar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Kenneth has worked in the field for more than 17 years and has taught for the past 10 years. Before teaching, Kenneth was a nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare specialist in the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. He holds two degrees in computer science and is earning another in occupational career and technology development from Texas A&M, Corpus Christi.
Aubrey Adams is an electronic and computer system engineering lecturer and Cisco Networking Academy CCNA/IP Telephony instructor at Central College of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Perth, Western Australia. Coming from a background in telecommunications design, with qualifications in electronic engineering and management, and graduate diplomas in computing and education, he teaches across a broad range of related vocational education and training areas. In 2007, Aubrey took leave from Central TAFE to work as a member of the Networking Academy CCNA Exploration and Discovery course development teams. Since returning to teaching, he continues to contribute to Academy curriculum maintenance and development.
IntroductionIntroduction
The following Introduction pertains to the Learning Guide as a whole.
Cisco Networking Academy is a comprehensive e-learning program that delivers information technology skills to students around the world. The CCNA Discovery curriculum consists of four courses that provide a comprehensive overview of networking, from fundamentals to advanced applications and services. The goal of the Designing and Supporting Computer Networks course is to assist you in developing the skills necessary to design small enterprise LANs and WANs. The course provides an introduction to collecting customer requirements, translating those requirements into equipment and protocol needs, and creating a network topology that addresses the needs of the customer. It will also familiarize you with how to create and implement a design proposal for a customer. This course prepares you with the skills required for entry-level presales support and entry-level network design jobs.
Designing and Supporting Computer Networks, CCNA Discovery Learning Guide is the official supplemental textbook for the fourth course in v4.x of the Cisco Networking Academy CCNA Discovery online curriculum. As a textbook, this book provides a ready reference to explain the same networking concepts, technologies, protocols, and devices as the online curriculum. In addition, it contains all the interactive activities, Packet Tracer activities, and hands-on labs from the online curriculum.
This book emphasizes key topics, terms, and activities and provides many alternative explanations and examples as compared with the course. You can use the online curriculum as directed by your instructor and then also use this Learning Guide's study tools to help solidify your understanding of all the topics. In addition, the book includes the following:
Additional key Glossary terms
Additional Check Your Understanding and Challenge questions
Interactive activities and Packet Tracer activities (and all supplemental documents associated with them) on the CD-ROM
Goal of This Book
First and foremost, by providing a fresh, complementary perspective of the online content, this book helps you learn all the required materials of the fourth course in the Networking Academy CCNA Discovery curriculum. As a secondary goal, individuals who do not always have Internet access can use this text as a mobile replacement for the online curriculum. In those cases, you can read the appropriate sections of this book, as directed by your instructor, and learn the topics that appear in the online curriculum.
Audience for This Book
This book's main audience is anyone taking the fourth CCNA Discovery course of the Networking Academy curriculum. Many Networking Academies use this textbook as a required tool in the course, and other Networking Academies recommend the Learning Guides as an additional source of study and practice material.
Book Features
The educational features of this book focus on supporting topic coverage, readability, and practice of the course material to facilitate your full understanding of the course material.
Topic Coverage
The following features give you a thorough overview of the topics covered in each chapter so that you can make constructive use of your study time:
Objectives: Listed at the beginning of each chapter, the objectives reference the core concepts covered in the chapter. The objectives match the objectives stated in the corresponding chapters of the online curriculum; however, the question format in the Learning Guide encourages you to think about finding the answers as you read the chapter.
"How-to" feature: When this book covers a set of steps that you need to perform for certain tasks, the text lists the steps as a how-to list. When you are studying, the icon helps you easily refer to this feature as you skim through the book.
Notes, tips, cautions, and warnings: These are short sidebars that point out interesting facts, timesaving methods, and important safety issues.
Chapter summaries: At the end of each chapter is a summary of the chapter's key concepts. It provides a synopsis of the chapter and serves as a study aid.
Readability
The authors have compiled, edited, and in some cases rewritten the material so that it has a more conversational tone that follows a consistent and accessible reading level. In addition, the following features have been updated to assist your understanding of the networking vocabulary:
Key terms: Each chapter begins with a list of key terms, along with a page-number reference from inside the chapter. The terms are listed in the order in which they are explained in the chapter. This handy reference allows you to find a term, flip to the page where the term appears, and see the term used in context. The Glossary defines all the key terms.
Glossary: This book contains an all-new Glossary with more than 230 computer and networking terms.
Practice
Practice makes perfect. This new Learning Guide offers you ample opportunities to put what you learn into practice. You will find the following features valuable and effective in reinforcing the instruction that you receive:
Check Your Understanding questions and answer key: Updated review questions are presented at the end of each chapter as a self-assessment tool. These questions match the style of questions that you see in the online course. Appendix A, "Check Your Understanding and Challenge Questions Answer Key," provides an answer key to all the questions and includes an explanation of each answer.
(New) Challenge questions and activities: Additional, and more challenging, review questions and activities are presented at the end of chapters. These questions are purposefully designed to be similar to the more complex styles of questions you might see on the CCNA exam. This section might also include activities to help prepare you for the exams. Appendix A provides the answers.
Packet Tracer activities: Interspersed throughout the chapters, you'll find many activities to work with the Cisco Packet Tracer tool. Packet Tracer enables you to create networks, visualize how packets flow in the network, and use basic testing tools to determine whether the network would work. When you see this icon, you can use Packet Tracer with the listed file to perform a task suggested in this book. The activity files, and any files associated with the Packet Tracer activities, are available on this book's CD-ROM; Packet Tracer software, however, is available through the Academy Connection website. Ask your instructor for access to Packet Tracer.
Interactive activities: These activities provide an interactive learning experience to reinforce the material presented in the chapter.
Labs: This book contains all the hands-on labs from the curriculum. Part I includes references to the hands-on labs, as denoted by the lab icon, and Part II contains each lab in full. You may perform each lab as you see each lab referenced in the chapter or wait until you have completed the chapter.
A Word About Packet Tracer Software and Activities
Packet Tracer is a self-paced, visual, interactive teaching and learning tool developed by Cisco. Lab activities are an important part of networking education. However, lab equipment can be a scarce resource. Packet Tracer provides a visual simulation of equipment and network processes to offset the challenge of limited equipment. Students can spend as much time as they like completing standard lab exercises through Packet Tracer, and have the option to work from home. Although Packet Tracer is not a substitute for real equipment, it allows students to practice using a command-line interface. This "e-doing" capability is a fundamental component of learning how to configure routers and switches from the command line.
Packet Tracer 4.1 is available only to Cisco Networking Academies through the Academy Connection website. Ask your instructor for access to Packet Tracer.
How This Book Is Organized
This book covers the major topics in the same sequence as the online curriculum for the CCNA Discovery Designing and Supporting Computer Networks course. The online curriculum has ten chapters for this course, so this book has ten chapters with the same names and numbers as the online course chapters.
To make it easier to use this book as a companion to the course, the major topic headings in each chapter match, with just a few exceptions, the major sections of the online course chapters. However, the Learning Guide presents many topics in slightly different order inside each major heading where necessary. In addition, the book occasionally uses different examples than the course. As a result, students get more detailed explanations, a second set of examples, and different sequences of individual topics, all to aid the learning process. This new design, based on research into the needs of the Networking Academies, helps typical students lock in their understanding of all the course topics.
Chapters and Topics
Part I of this book has ten chapters, as follows:
Chapter 1, "Introducing Network Design Concepts," discusses how network designers ensure communications networks can adjust and scale to the demands for new services. Topics include a network design overview, the benefits of a hierarchical network design, and network design methodologies.
Chapter 2, "Gathering Network Requirements," introduces the StadiumCompany and FilmCompany case studies. The StadiumCompany design project is used in the main text, media, and P...
