A Cisco course, "Interconnecting Cisco Network Devices".
The ICND teaches the basics of setting up, operating, and troubleshooting smaller Cisco switches and routers. It takes one week to complete and is consisted of some twenty or thrity labs performed hands-on with real Cisco equipment. This is the class you take when you want a CCNA certification. The gear you will work with are a Cisco 1900 switch and Cisco 2600 router.

This was a fun class. I was able to talk my company into sending me to it. The class was somewhat new back then, it wasn't held often and was only attended by a companies most dedicated IS personnel. The price tag was around $2300 back then. Our equipment was housed in an awesome travel enclosure the size of a refidgerator, with serial and network connections spanning to every students workstation. The enclosure consisted of a dozen 2600's and a dozen 1900's, which were all connected by a few huge routers, switches, and DSU. The teacher controlled the 'huge' equipment, and would load up specific configurations for each lab.My teacher said they used to set the router and switch at the students desk, but the expensive equipment was often damaged.

Now, some two years later, an associate of mine is attending it. The ICND seems to be more common now. My class books (which I managed to keep after quitting that company) were spiral bound, with several key errors and additions, while the new ones are hardcover editions from none other then Cisco Press. The students in my class were top professionals seeking knowledge for immediate application, while modern ICND students can apparently afford to go to lunch and not come back, or not come in at all. And the huge travel box of equipment is gone, everyone gets Cisco gear on they're desk.

If you're taking this class for your CCNA, don't let the instructor skip labs!!! We skipped lots of things, like Novell stuff and Appletalk mostly for time reasons. I didn't care then anyway, I just wanted to learn frame relay. But that came back to haunt me when I started studying for the CCNA test. Make sure you learn all that stuff, even the things you don't care about.

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