CCNA evening course at local college

Hi guys,

I'm looking to get some formal quals in a new area and wondered what your views are on this CCNA 9 week evening course 3 hours an evening at a college near me. Cost is £323 .
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"What will i study"
Modules 1 to 4 - Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). CCNA is the first step to a Cisco career certification path. Particular emphasis is given to using decision-making and problem-solving techniques, in the application of science, mathematics, communication and social studies concepts, to solve networking problems. Students will learn to install and configure Cisco switches and routers in multiprotocol networks using local and wide-area networks (LANs and WANs), provide troubleshooting service, and .improve network performance and security.You will need to do a lot of reading at home so that we can do the practical activities in College. Upon successful completion of this course, students will receive an official Cisco Networking Academy Certificate of Completion. This curriculum also prepares students for the CCNA and the CompTIA Network+ certification exams. The CCNA course will help prime students for career opportunities such as network administrator, systems analyst, testing engineer, information systems architect, and systems integrator. For HE bound students, this course will help ready them to enter an electrical engineering, a computer science or a management information systems degree programme.

What can i do next?
There are four levels associated with the CISCO networks course. As you complete each level you will be able to progress to the higher level course to further develop your skills in computer networks."
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From whati gather from the above, this course will give me the knowledge to sit the CCNA certification exams elsewhere.

Just after a few pointers regards to networking quals.

Cheers
MML

see here the training is free :-) https://www.cybrary.it/course/cisco-ccna/

I did all this 7 years ago and I'm now a senior engineer/transition manager/mid level architect

Well worth the hassle and sacrifice, the job has made me a more pragmatic, logical person plus I quite enjoy playing with ACS/WLC and IOS devices

I did not bother with comptia N+ and neither did anyone at my place, it is networking for server dummies

Just read as much as you can about the basics on TCP/IP UDP ARP OSI ref etc and then get on the practical stuff using packet tracer as this should be all u need for CCNA. I also used a great book similar but not exactly ccna for dummies

It's great to attend any courses you can but not for CCNA material, do this to get insights from real engineers about real things that happen (fuck up lol) in the real world. Classic fuck ups I see from newbs all the time:

Attaching a new switch before setting to VTP transparent
Adding VLAN to Trunk and removing all others in the process :)
Breaking AAA settings and losing line VTY's

9tut.com is the best place to go to actually pass the exam, they have all the lab sims in packet tracer format and all the drag and drop, grab the questions and answers somewhere, there is an exam feedback section where people suggest which questions they got against which Q&A they used, worth paying £25 for them as everyone does it and the high pass marks take this into account IMO

SO 7 years later I'm a CCN0, did not bother renewing a single exam after going to CCNP and now would never work for a company who demanded them as in the real world all they mean is you can pass the exam

Wrong section but of you want to buy my old lab I still have it 2 x 2950 + 2 x 3550 + 2 x 2600 1 of which is XM and can run CME pm me

Great info thanks MajorFU. Not sure about the kit yet but may be interested as i get into it.

also look up commsupport I did my training there

Joe regularly used to do free seminars and training in the eves and has some recorded....if theyre still around

He is really good, let me do some voluntary work and gave me a ref for my job as did someone else I worked for free cleaning and wiping config + upgrade IOS of used cisco kit.

I was a cleaner at Booker Wholesale while studying and volunteering so working for free was much easier then LOL and ur never too old, I did all this at 39