Cisco DESGN Foundations Learning Guide Completed

Last week I've finished the CCDA FLG book for the DESGN exam. The last chapter discussed wireless design and architecture at a very high level. There were tons of things I picked up from this chapter that helped me understand my employers wireless environment immediately. Mainly the Mobility and RF Group sections. We have a wireless refresh project coming up shortly (with the help of a vendor) and this will help me immensely.


Now I'm hitting the DESGN Official Certification Guide book along with taking copious amount of notes, making flash cards, and hitting the multiple choice questions hard. I'm not exactly sure when I'll take this exam this year but it should be before the end of summer. As mentioned before, I'm not exactly in a rush right now coming off fresh from the CCNP about four months ago.

After the CCDA, next up is CCDP, and then maybe...just maybe a CCIE level certification. Experience trumps all though so after the CCDP I may wait until my knowledge is and skill set is at a point where a CCIE certification makes sense. SDN and programmable networks are very intriguing to me but my gut keeps telling me that I need a really strong foundation before diving in to that.

Cisco SAFE

Security is my biggest weak point period. I'm currently reading through the CCDA security chapters in the FLG book. I'm also downloading and book marking all of the references and white papers from these chapters I can get my hands on!

I probably have 100 of pages of reading to do on the Cisco SAFE (SCF) security framework a head of me. But I need to have a better holistic view of network security. I get asked network security questions quite often in my job role. Even today my employers CIO had a security question that I foolishly couldn't answer because I'm not well versed with the firewall policies in our environment. I will be changing this,

Enterprise Internet Edge Design

As I finish chapter 5 (Designing Remote Connectivity) in the Cisco CCDA FLG book, it provided a list of great references to gain additional understanding. I read through Cisco's Ethernet MAN and WAN design guide. Now I'm going through Cisco's guide on enterprise internet edge design.

For the most part the guide focuses on securing the edge within the 5 different modules shown above. This may be overkill for the CCDA but my intent is to take in the material slowly and thoroughly.