Whats a reasonable amount of time to get a CCNA?

[pcmark]

My boss recently set up a goal oriented bonus plan. If we achieve our goals in our set time we get a bonus. My goal is to get my CCNA. What time frame is reasonable? I think by the end of the year perhaps? Or is it much harder than that? I recently started working at an ISP and I get to play with Cisco routers everyday,so I figure that's almost as good as taking a class. And I've been reading the study guides,only 500 pages. Seems do-able.

 

[THELAIR]

CCNA isnt really that bad. As long as you have a decent understanding of the OSI model its not hard. Im in your same shoes, but ive allready got a wall full of certs so this is coming from a bit more experience perhaps.

The thick CCNA sybex guide is good, and if you got access to routers at your ISP thats even better. You can do your CCNA without a router, but its not really suggested, i believe there are 'some' software based emulators that will eumulate the cisco IOS on your windows platform for testing but im not sure.

My goal is to be CCNA by the end of the year. Im also looking at supplimenting my "carrer" by getting CNA (novel admin, entry level cert) and perhaps delve into the wide world of Citrix.

A+, Network+, I Net+ and a few MCP's short of an MCSE

 

[CTR]

At the company I used to work for, the senior tech (router guy) quit. I had worked with 1 Cisco 2500 router for about 4 months, so I inherited all the Cisco stuff. They sent me to Atlanta(against my will) to the Cisco intro to Routers and LAN switches class for 4 days. On the fifth day I took the CCNA test and did just great.

Of course, your results may vary. I had spent the previous 2 years working with Novell servers (and reading ~6000 pages of study guide!) and got my Netware5 CNE about 2 months before the CCNA. So the OSI was still pretty fresh in my brain.

The OSI stuff came in handy. The IOS experience from the 2500 came in handy. The class? Well it left something to be desired. But the instructor was the guy who used to run the CCIEprep website, so I would hit him hard with questions at the end of every class. That REALLY helped. So my advice to you is read your study book twice and post any questions you might have here to the networking forum. You will get a lot of good information from some very knowledgeable people here.

Good luck to you.

 

[jonnyfin]

Good luck with your studies, I took a course at a local community college, but when it came down to it I think I relied more heavily on using the Boson router tests, www.boson.com i think.. also check out this site, it's got plenty of good stuff!

http://users.50megs.com/ar032/cisco.htm

 

[certifyexpress]

It took me one and a half months to do it, thou its much more difficult than MCSE but it one of the best certs I've ever optain. For ther general stats most people do it in 2 - 3 months.

Hope this helps.

 

[MtnBkr]

I'm taking a 2-year Cisco Academy class, from the responses you've gotton so far, it seems like that is too long. but i'm only in high school...so i get the class for free, and it's only 55 minutes a day.... which means i can be cisco certified leaving high school (works for me)

 

[jmcoreymv]

Give yourself four days, if you have no experience, one day, if you have had experience. If you think Im joking, talk to my 946.