What Is CCNA?

What Is CCNA?

The growth of Cisco Systems since its inception has been phenomenal and consistent. This

growth has occurred in part due to market dominance in their core product lines, as well as

through adding breadth of products through acquisition of other companies. The stock price

has grown to the point that many Cisco employees who get stock options as part of their

compensation packages cannot afford to leave Cisco and leave such a large sum of money

behind!

The Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification program was introduced in

1994 as the only Cisco certification. The entire breadth of the then-current product line was

allowed to be covered on the exam, and it was intended to be a truly difficult certification

to obtain. Certification required an exam (computer-based) and then a hands-on, two-day

lab. The failure rate on each portion was high.

NOTE

Cisco does not publish the success rate for passing the CCIE exam or lab. I did some

informal surveys, none of which I am allowed to quote. Consistently, the feedback was

more than a 50 percent failure rate on CCIE lab candidates, with about an 80 percent failure

rate for first-time candidates!

The breadth of Cisco’s product line has been growing and will continue to grow. Inside the

Cisco sales arena, Systems Engineers and Account Managers sometimes long for the days

of a one-volume, thin product manual. In those days, the entire product line could be

memorized. Today, the product line is too broad for any one person to remember and to

understand how all the products work.

So two problems evolved for Cisco relating to certification: one relating to the breadth of

topics, the other to the depth of knowledge required. The CCIE exam could no longer cover

the breadth of products. One solution was to create types of CCIE certifications, of which

there are now three:

• CCIE—Routing/Switching

• CCIE—ISP

• CCIE —WAN

This helped address the problems that the breadth of product line created for the CCIE

program.

The other solution was to create certifications in addition to the CCIE that did not require the

same depth of skills and knowledge. The Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA)

certification is the first and most basic of these certifications. (The rest of these new

certifications are described in the Introduction to this book.)

The CCNA exam is basic, but not necessarily easy. The purpose of the exam could be best

summarized as follows:

To prove the candidate has mastered the topics covered on the CCNA exam, to the

technical depth required for basic networks.

Of course, that objective is open to considerable interpretation. What is a basic network? What

breadth of topics are covered? Does basic mean small?

This chapter provides a complete interpretation of what the CCNA exam actually covers and

the depth of knowledge needed. It also compares these objectives with the typical training

you would have taken before attempting the exam. Cisco publishes a detailed list of CCNA

objectives; each will be described. Finally, a “game plan” of how to complete your preparations

with this study guide is included.