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Well, finally, 3 Ebay auctions, and one Amazon order later, I have everything together, the grand manifest is as follows :

• (1) Cisco 2514 Router 8mb/8mb, 2 10Mbit Ethernet (AUI) Interfaces, 2 Serial
• (2) Cisco 2503 Routers, 8mb/8mb, 2 Serial Interfaces, 1 ISDN BRI interface
• (1) Cisco 1912 Switch, 12 10Mbit ports
• (1) Cisco 2924-XL-EN Enterprise Switch, 24 10/100Mbit ports
• (4) AUI to RJ45 Ethernet Tranceivers
• (2) Cisco 9pin serial -> RJ45 Console cables
• (1) CCNA Study Guide 5th Edition - Todd Lammle
• (1) CCNA Official Exam Certification Library - Wendell Odom
• (1) CCNA Video Mentor - Wendell Odom
• (1) CCNA Portable Command Guide - Scott D. Empson
• (1) CCNA Practice Questions Exam Cram 2 (why not?)

Three routers, two switches and a bunch of books and references. Everything is in, and now it is time to decimate this test. I like to set myself up for success If this turns out to be overkill, at least it should help me for the CCDA in a few months time.

Well, a few days have gone by, and most of my gear is in, including an additional 2503 router. Still waiting for my 2924 switch, and a couple more AUI tranceivers (recent orders). I’m reading from a number of sources for my study prep, but I began with Todd Lammle’s book as it seemed highly recommended, and I’m going to reinforce that with the official Cisco Press books by Wendell Odom. This weekend I’m planning on dedicating a fair amount of my days to reading and review. I’ve got a good understanding of the classful subnetting, but I’d like to be able to do the VLSM in my sleep before I move on. Lammle seems to reinforce the idea that understanding things should be from the Cisco point of view, so I’m trying to forget some of the information I know and relearn it in a new context. This appears to be harder than learning stuff from scratch, dunno, guess its the recontextualizing.

I run Ubuntu on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite A100) and use a USB to serial connector (because most laptops don’t have serial connections nowadays) and use GTKTerm for my terminal software. So far works great and I’ve been able to poke around and reconfigure the routers. Don’t know what I’m doing yet, but practice makes perfect. So far the IOS seems pretty straightforward once you get used to the modes. I particularly like the help functions, and ? is a useful and intuitive key for this purpose.

This weekend will see a great deal of use with the 2514 as I work along with Lammle’s text. Hopefully the 2500’s will serve their purpose, although I’m seeing more and more WIC-less 2600’s showing up on eBay for reasonable prices.

Ebay can be a dangerous thing… Especially on the wallet.

Here’s a list of the Cisco goodness on its way to my abode as I type…

• (1) Cisco 2503 8MB/8MB router, with ISDN BRI port
• (1) Cisco 2514 8MB/8MB router, dual Ethernet ports
• (1) Cisco 1912 Switch, just a little 12 port 10Mbit
• (1) Cisco WS-C2924-XL-EN Switch, 24 port 10/100Mbit
• All adapters and power cords, software, etc.

It’s going to be time to get a rack soon  The memory limitations on the routers basically delegate them to study aids, but I’m looking at going pure Cisco for my gear in the future. At this point my dedicated Linux routers will have to suffice until I can afford the $1000 or so for a 2611XM. There’s a lot of older gear kicking around out there, so I guess it can only help to have experience with gear that is not, let’s say, cutting edge. My plan is to evolve this lab over time to provide a good testing environment for my CCNP, and hopefully, eventually, CCIE. One thing I learned quickly was that hands on at home is one of the quickest routes (har har) to fully grokking things. Worked with Linux, and I’m sure it’ll work with Cisco

So, while studying for the CCNA, and looking around at what’s expected in the IT world, I’m finding alot of certification requirements in the field - and I can’t really blame a prospective employer from expecting, certifications can be effective benchmarks for an individual’s skill level. I’m not saying everything has to rely on certifications, but, like a degree, it shows that the individual is at least capable of learning something at a certain level of difficulty. I’m trying to plan out a certification course of action, and it looks like this is going to be my timeline (subject to change of course….)

• CCNA - will have by end of February
• CCDA - aiming for May, 2007 - Design associate gets me on CCDP track
• Redhat RHCT/RHCE - Sometime in 2007, hopefully pick up between CCNA and CCDA (initial pre-lim test at Redhat’s site makes me confident that with a little review I could ace this, would be good to keep the studying/learning up, while still taking a bit of a break from the Cisco stuff)
• MCSA:Security - I’m still not sure if its worth it to go this route, but if I can package the CompTIA Security+ with this, I think it will give a bit more background information. Call my cynical, but in my experiences I’ve found that policy is one of the most important aspects of Security (reminiscent of Bruce Schneier’s quote “Security is a process, not a product”). I’ve seen technically sound setups absolutely crippled by poor adherence to written policy. There’s only so much you can do when some esoteric piece of essential 3rd-party software requires its users to have administrative access
• CCNP/CCDP/CCSP - The big one (for me at least). As of now, I’m looking more towards network design and deployment, so the CCDP looks attractive, at the same time it’s less flexible than the CCNP in some ways. If I put my paranoia to work for me, I think the security professional route will by a good fit; I can see myself doing pen-testing and helping secure other people’s networks. The MCSA:Security (with the CompTIA Security+ as a sub-requirement) should make me rather formidable. I like to learn on my own, but it’s nice to have some sort of established and proven framework to build upon. There are situations where you simply need to know exactly what to do in a crisis; prevention can’t save you all the time I’m hoping to have this sometime in 2008. I don’t know if CCIE is in the cards for me yet, it’s going to depend entirely on where I’m at, but I won’t lie.. there’s something alluring about the CCIE, and it would be a great personal and professional accomplishment….

Wow, that’s a big list. Looks like 2007 is shaping up to be quite the year. Now that the word’s out, I’m going to need to dig deep and focus on getting it done :)

A week ago, a friend informed me that Sun was shipping free OpenSolaris DVDs, so I hopped on over and filled out the form. I just remembered that they haven’t arrived yet, which spurred on this post.

I’ve got plenty of Linux experience, so I’m interested to see how familiar OpenSolaris will feel. It’s hard to get experience on things like AIX and Solaris without the hardware, which makes it cool that Sun is doing something like this to encourage testing and development.

I received my letter of confirmation from the Registrar’s office the other day signfying that I have completed all of my degree requirements and will be graduating in the June 2007 convocation with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

Since my return in the Fall of 2003, I have been chiselling away at the requirements part-time while working full time as a Network / Systems Administrator for a SMB. I do not think that I chose the easy path to completing this goal, but for me, I think I chose the correct path.

I am looking forward to focussing on my career and advancing my knowledge in new environments.

I finished my Computer Science degree at the end of 2006 and decided to challenge myself and continue the learning process. Since I want to get (further) into computer networking, I decided it was hard to go wrong with Cisco certifications and have begun studying to take my CCNA. I’m finding alot of the material to be review and elaboration on things I have already somewhat known but rarely applied, but find quite a bit of it to be interesting as it helps me further develop my understanding of essential things in my field.

I recently moved Greyhive.com to MediaTemple.net for hosting. I will be updating this blog occasionally, and using Greyhive.com as a homebase for my technical endeavours. Here’s hoping for a productive 2007.