Cisco CCNA Certification

The Cisco Certified Network Associate is Cisco’s associate level certification concentrating in the fundamentals of network engineering as well as configuring Cisco devices. The CCNA is primarily focused on the configuration of routers and switches, as well as containing material on the configuration of wireless networks and using DevOps tooling such as Ansible to automate network configuration at scale.

Although the CCNA is focused on configuring Cisco devices, most other vendors have a CLI interface for their equipment that is conceptually similar to Cisco’s. Learning to build networks with Cisco hardware gives a strong understanding of networking fundamentals, and teaches skills that are broadly transferrable to other vendors and common open-source solutions.

In studying for my CCNA, I relied on numerous course materials including David Bombal’s excellent CCNA course and Odin’s underrated subnetting course available on Udemy. I also completed numerous practical simulations in Cisco Packet Tracer and EVE-NG .

I found studying for the CCNA extremely valuable. Computer networking forms the foundation for many of the fields I have worked in including systems administration, DevOps, IoT, and cloud. A solid understanding of the fundamentals helps with troubleshooting and understanding the limits of what is possible at higher levels of the stack. Knowledge of networking is also critical when building client/server applications, APIs, and distributed applications. As I have continued to dabble in these subjects, I have appreciated the strong foundation in networking I received from the CCNA.

Check out my continued studies in engineering here and my ongoing side projects here .