If the Goal Is Knowledge Not Certification Which Networking Learning Path To Take?
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My personal focus and job is information security centric, but both personally and career wise, I want to up my Networking knowledge and get some more hands on experience with all things networking as this will only help me with my cybersecurity skills.
From what I'm seeing, ACI has 3 main options
- Networking Fundamentals
- CompTIA Network+ (N10-008) (summary should state this is prep for the cert exam)
- Cisco CCNA (200-301)
If my ultimate end goal in the far future is PURPLE tEAM, with a slant towards pentesting, which NETWORKING course would ACI recommend I start out with? Again, not interested in the certifications, just the knowledge.
please advise
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So it's a combination of courses rather than just a single course. But for security focus and networking this one, you may want to dive old school into our
legacy
category and look for the old CCNA Security course. I say this because the more security webinars I watch, I see more and more of those red teamers have that certification. Now since that certification doesn't exist anymore, the knowledge may give you the base you seek. But the above you mention will also be helpful. From that point on, I would also add in CompTIA CySA+ and CompTIA PenTest+. -
can you give a brief overview on the labs for Network+ v/s the labs for CCNA?
I think that will be my deciding factor on whether I start with the Network+ course or the CCNA one.
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Each of the Labs we have for both of those are centered around helping you achieve the certification and based on the exam certification objectives to develop those labs in that product. The Network+ is more generalized and vendor neutral. This also covers the range of different topics that a networking professional should have. The Cisco CCNA is a certification that is 100% covering the things needed by a networking professional to work on Cisco router and switches, specifically using Cisco IOS based devices. This is very specific knowledge. Theoretically, they should cover about the same ground of material just from different perspectives. The issue differences with Cisco is that it assumes the candidate has the base knowledge and tests on Cisco specific views on Cisco IOS devices.
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^^ mark as answered, exactly what I was looking for. Now to decide if I start with Network+ course or jump ahead to the CCNA course.. I will sleep on it I guess, see if clarity finds me in the 'morrow.