How CCNA Changed My Life

I know a lot of people out there who desire to change their life; whether it be to get into IT or move up within their current job role. I have been recently asked numerous times by a lot of people about Cisco CCNA certification. To be absolutely honest, the CCNA changed my life. I was in the military for about six years. In that time, I had so much experience and had to work with top secret stuff.
You would think I got out of the military, had an awesome job, and just be doing whatever I wanted to do? But it did not turn out that way.

I headed up working for a local IT company with a global presence. And I worked there for six years, but I was on their helpdesk team. Have you ever spent six years on the helpdesk? It is hard to do, and then when you’re approaching thirty and beyond or whatever, you know, I was approaching dirty. And it just got harder and harder, but it came to a point where that job had to come to an end.

Tor Networks CCNA training is the best

It was about time that I had to make a change, and it was for the better. So being on the helpdesk for six years and not being able to troubleshoot any networks, not being able to do any servers stuff, and all the other stuff; I kind of fell behind. Well, I did a reboot and got in-touch with Tor Networks to complete a number of boot-camps.

Tor Networks were very experienced in the field and provided me with training on various technologies. They initially provided training on Microsoft 2008 server technology. Once I completed that, I started the CompTIA Network plus and Security plus training with them. And after that I began training for CCENT with ICND1 and finally moved onto CCNA with ICND2.

And for the first time I actually excelled and did very well. It kind of boosted my career and I am forever grateful to the trainers and the support given to me by Tor Networks. The training was held in very cordial environment in easy to understand language. The trainers helped me understand the concepts with practical and simple analogies and examples. I can’t thank these people enough that helped me out and provided excellent coaching and training. So it is a great place and you would enjoy training with them. Having said that it’s a great training place, I still had to put in work to be able to get where I am.

Self Control and Motivation

So what I am telling you is that if you really desire to get your CCNA, what you should do, and this is just from my own experience, is go to Cisco’s certification website, print down the exam topics and review what you know and what you don’t know. And if you feel like you don’t know enough start from there. Write it down on paper as to what you want to achieve. And then once you write it down on to the paper you have got the idea you put it out into the universe; believed in it and then just grow on it.

What CCNA books did I use

There are different books like for comprehensive topics with a lot of details go for the Cisco’s official study guides. For study of the CCNA exam topics review, there is book by Todd Lammle which is amazing. I would say, for someone who is trying to learn networking and knows nothing about networking, this book would be an absolute great tool. It even comes with a network simulator so you can do different labs. Now it’s not as in-depth as the Cisco press versions, but in lay man’s terms, this this explains it well enough to get us to grasp CCNA, and to the understand about networks.

Books, however, should not be the only tool you should use. You should use Cisco’s Packet Tracer and GNS3. If possible you should get a home lab. I have my own lab with several routers and several switches but I’ll discuss that in another post. You should watch training videos on YouTube or by other trainers. Do whatever works better for you, because some people learn by listening to others whereas others learn visually. And there are people who remember things by seeing others do it whilst listing to them at the same time.

Know your stuff

Remember on the Cisco exam you definitely have to know how to read and perform actions on the exam simulator. So you are going to have to get out of your comfort zone. It is going to take sacrifice and it is not easy. I mean if it was easy, everybody will have the CCNA. But I am going to tell you this much that the CCNA changed my life. And I’m going to tell you why. Before, even with my military experience, my longevity in IT, my conversation skills, my people skills, my understanding of service desk still wasn’t enough to get me beyond services desk, beyond desktop support and beyond helpdesk.

The moment you get your CCNA, you are now beyond level one. You may be level one network engineer or a network administrator or a network technician. But you are now in a new pay scale, to sum it up. Because a lot of people are in it for money. If you ask me, I cannot say that I am not in it for money. Money is definitely a tool that I utilise to provide for my family, but for me what drives me is just learning. I love connecting things, I mean bringing up a link, troubleshooting things, fixing them, resolving them, designing networks.

Even just networking with people and helping people become a better version of who they were yesterday, an hour ago, five minutes ago. That is what I love to do, to help as many people as I can. To learn as much as I can, and give back the knowledge that I’ve received about my career and just help someone else change their life. So if you decided to do the CCNA, set aside I don’t know five minutes a day, twenty minutes a day or an hour a day to just go through the material. Find a good CCNA training program such as that provided by Tor Networks, it can help you with getting CCNA certified. CCNA changed my life and it can change yours too.

What are the Lab options

Fundamentally, if you want to use a hardware lab, look on craigslist, Ebay or Amazon. Ask people at work if you are working in the IT field. There is plenty of people that you probably work with might have their own networking equipment they don’t need. So if you do decide to take that leap towards the CCNA, I am sure you can do it, you can attain it, you can achieve it. Set your mind to it, believe in it and don’t let nothing stop you, nothing.

As I said I should have had my CCNA 10 years ago, it was way easier back then, than it is now. Even the new version of the CCNA 200-125 has more CCNP stuff in it now, than when I took my CCNA exam. You know how technology just gets more advanced so the vendors have got to filter it down, if you get what I mean.

So to sum everything up thank you for reading my article and I want to wish you all the best! Keep doing what you’re doing, and if it is not enough go harder. Believe in yourself and don’t let nothing stop you.