Allan Reid is the curriculum lead and a CCNA/CCNP instructor at the Centennial College CATC in Toronto, Canada. He is a professor in the Information and Communications Engineering Technology department and is an instructor and program supervisor for the School of Continuing Education at Centennial College. He has developed and taught networking courses for both private and public organizations and has been instrumental in developing and implementing numerous certificate, diploma, and degree programs in networking. Allan also is a curriculum developer for the Cisco Networking Academy. Outside his academic responsibilities, he has been active in the computer and networking fields for more than 25 years. Currently he is a principal in a company specializing in the design, management, and security of network solutions for small and medium-sized companies. Allan authored the first edition of WAN Technologies CCNA 4 Companion Guide(Cisco Press, ISBN 1-58713-172-2) and Using a Networker’s Journal, which is a supplement to A Networker’s Journal(Cisco Press, ISBN 1-58713-158-7). Most recently, he coauthored the CCNA Discoveryonline academy courses Networking for Home and Small Businessesand Introducing Routing and Switching in the Enterprisewith Jim Lorenz.
Jim Lorenz is an instructor and curriculum developer for the Cisco Networking Academy. He has coauthored several Cisco Press titles, including Fundamentals of UNIX Companion Guide, Second Edition (ISBN 1-58713-140-4), Fundamentals of UNIX Lab Companion, Second Edition (ISBN 1-58713-139-0), and the third editions of the CCNA Lab Companions. He has more than 20 years of experience in information systems, ranging from programming and database administration to network design and project management. Jim has developed and taught computer and networking courses for numerous public and private institutions. As the Cisco academy manager at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in Arizona, he was instrumental in starting the Information Technology Institute (ITI) and developed a number of certificates and degree programs. Most recently, Jim coauthored the CCNA Discoveryonline academy courses Networking for Home and Small Businessesand Introducing Routing and Switching in the Enterprisewith Allan Reid.
IntroductionIntroduction
The Cisco Networking Academy is a comprehensive e-learning program that delivers information technology skills to students around the world. The Cisco CCNA Discovery curriculum consists of four courses that provide a comprehensive overview of networking, from fundamentals to advanced applications and services. The curriculum emphasizes real-world practical application while providing opportunities for you to gain the skills and hands-on experience needed to design, install, operate, and maintain networks in small to medium-sized businesses, as well as enterprise and Internet service provider environments. The Working at a Small-to-Medium Business or ISP course is the second course in the curriculum.
This book is the official supplemental textbook for the second course in v4.1 of the CCNA Discovery online curriculum of the Networking Academy. 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 as well as bonus activities.
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 book's study tools to help solidify your understanding of all the topics. In addition, this book includes the following:
Expanded coverage of CCENT/CCNA exam material
Additional key glossary terms
Bonus labs
Additional Check Your Understanding and Challenge questions
Interactive activities and Packet Tracer activities on the CD-ROM
Goals of This Book
First and foremost, by providing a fresh, complementary perspective on the online content, this book helps you learn all the required materials of the second 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. Another secondary goal of this book is to serve as your offline study material to help prepare you for the CCENT and CCNA exams.
Audience for This Book
This book's main audience is anyone taking the second CCNA Discovery course of the Networking Academy curriculum. Many Networking Academies use this textbook as a required tool in the course. Other Networking Academies recommend the Learning Guides as an additional source of study and practice materials.
Book Features
This book's educational features 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. 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, this icon helps you easily find this feature as you skim through the book.
Notes, tips, cautions, and warnings: These are short sidebars that point out interesting facts, time-saving 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 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 it 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 260 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 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 answers for all the questions and explains each answer.
(New) Challenge questions and activities: Additional—and more challenging—review questions and activities are presented at the end of the 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 perform with the Cisco Packet Tracer tool. Packet Tracer allows you to create a network, 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 are available on this book's CD-ROM; the 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 plus additional labs for further practice. Part I includes references to the hands-on labs, as denoted by the lab icon, and Part II of the book contains each lab in full. You may perform each lab when you see its reference in the chapter, or you can wait until you have completed the chapter.
A Word About the 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. You can spend as much time as you like completing standard lab exercises using Packet Tracer, and you have the option to work from home. Although Packet Tracer is not a substitute for real equipment, it allows you 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 v4.x is available only to Cisco Networking Academies through the Academy Connection website. Ask your instructor for access to Packet Tracer.
A Word About the Discovery Server CD
The CCNA Discovery series of courses is designed to provide a hands-on learning approach to networking. Many of the CCNA Discovery labs are based on Internet services. Because it is not always possible to allow students to access these services on a live network, the Discovery Server has been developed to provide them.
The Discovery Server CD is a bootable CD that transforms a regular PC into a Linux server running several preconfigured services for use with CCNA Discovery labs. Your instructor can download the CD files, burn a CD, and show you how to use the server. Hands-on labs that make use of the Discovery server are identified within the labs themselves.
After it is booted, the server provides many services to clients:
Domain Name System
Web services
FTP
TFTP
Telnet
SSH
DHCP
Streaming video
How This Book Is Organized
This book covers the major topics in the same sequence as the online curriculum for the CCNA Discovery Working at a Small-to-Medium Business or ISP course. The online curriculum has nine chapters for this course, so this book has 10 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 a slightly different order under each major heading. Additionally, the book occasionally uses different examples than the course. As a result, you get more detailed explanations, a second set of examples, and different sequences of individual topics, all to aid the ...
