O’Reilly Online Learning – also known as Safari – offers a subscription service. The service includes access to IT books (Cisco Press included), videos, and for the last few years, live training. I’ve been teaching there since 2018, and I started this new CCNA Deep Dive series in early 2020, right about the time Cisco released all their new exams.
The CCNA Deep Dive series, called CCNA 200-301 Deep Dive, exists as a series of lecture-lab courses that last four hours each. When creating the courses, I designed the content to move quickly to lab, with this strategy:
- Teach enough about the topic so the student knows enough to begin lab.
- Teach as much as possible through the lab exercises.
The reviews have confirmed that the lab-oriented approach has worked well – I hope you will enjoy that format, too. The graphic outlines the courses and dates in the current plan:
The series begins with a course for Cisco IOS CLI beginners, with two goals in mind: to help you learn the CLI, while also helping you learn how to use Cisco Packet Tracer (PT). The entire CCNA Deep Dive series uses PT for the lab exercises, so this first course helps you learn plenty about PT, and to master the basics of IOS CLI so that you can do the labs in the rest of the courses.
The next two Deep Dive courses use the two-day format. The first covers many of the more important LAN switching topics in CCNA, including how LAN switches work, VLANs and VLAN trunking, as well as STP/RSTP. A little later, CCNA Deep Dive returns in mid-June with a two-day course about implementing IPv4 on routers, including IPv4 addressing, static routes, and OSPF.
Note: Although not part of the CCNA Deep Dive series, you can also take the “IP Subnetting: From Beginning to Mastery” Live course at O’Reilly Online the week before the CCNA Deep Dive course about IPv4 routing.
The schedule closes with three one-day courses. One examines LAN switching security topics like DHCP Snooping and DAI, with some foundational DHCP thrown in for context. The next examines IP services, particularly NAT/PAT and NTP. The final course discusses controller-based networking, with labs about understanding JSON data formats and REST APIs.
When I opened “CCNA Deep Dive Test.pkt” I got a text file with jibberish. I notice that this file wasn’t up on your site as a zip file. I have had luck downloading .pkt files for CNNA Vol 1, Chapter 25. These were zip files and I was able to extract them. Thanks
Hi Linda,
First off – thanks for doing the test to ensure it works before class!
I think you’re first clicking to the page that tells you how to install/test Packet Tracer 7.3, right? Then at step 3, clicking the button to download a .pkt file. I think your browser, when you click that button, is trying to display the contents of the .pkt file in your browser window. Instead, right-click that button and choose an option to download the file. Then you can open the file in Packet Tracer to complete the test.
Let me know if that doesn’t connect the dots.
Thanks,
Wendell
Hi
for the Deep Dive: OSPF Concepts and Configuration course session on O’Rielly, I am watching the recording but I cannot access the labs materials in the links posted in the group chat. Please advise on how to access those labs.
Thannks,
Hakim
Hi Hakim,
Normally the labs are available for 1 month after the event, and that time has passed. I’ve reset to the passwords back for the OSPF labs for a week to give you a chance to work through them. Thanks for taking the class!
Wendell
Hi,
I tried to find the login info for routers and switchs, i did not find that, is it possible to have that? to check the config….
Kam,
For the labs in the course, all the router/switch passwords are all lowercase “cisco”.
Wendell