Ccna 200-301 Exam Cost South Africa

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Beginninga journey in the field of networking is an exciting one for everyone. I'm sure you are interested in learning about the operations of a computer and especially how the internet, the largest network, functions and grows. Networking is an ever-demanding field in Information Technology (IT); each day, organizations from healthcare providers, educational institutions, government agencies, and other industries are continuously expanding and improving their network infrastructure to support newer services and network traffic. Almost everyone is connected to the internet. Educators and businesses are using various online collaboration platforms to extend their reach to students and potential customers in a global market. All these amazing technologies are made possible by computer networks.

The Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) 200-301 certification is designed to prepare you for associate-level networking roles in the IT industry. CCNA is one of the most popular certification requirements for almost every network engineering job, and there is a very good reason why. The CCNA certification is a foundational level certification with a lot of essential information; I know part of the name contains the word "associate", but that's just in the Cisco certification hierarchy structure since the next level is Cisco Certified Network Professional and so on. The CCNA is one of the most recommended certifications you can follow to begin your networking journey.

The CCNA will teach you how to design, implement, configure, and troubleshoot small- to medium-sized enterprise networks. You will learn to efficiently implement network access, IP connectivity, IP services, and security through an enterprise network. Additionally, gaining your CCNA certification will open up a whole new world of career opportunities as the certification itself is well-respected in the networking field.

Throughout this chapter, you will learn about the important history of how computer networks were developed and the era before the internet. Then, we will cover the early and current generation of the internet and explore how networking has become part of our daily lives. You will learn about communication technologies and networking protocols that are designed to help us connect with our loved ones, friends, and colleagues. You will also learn about the various sizes of networks and components such as routers and switches, which move messages from one device, across a network, to another person. Lastly, you'll learn about the various protocol suites that are built into each operating system and network device that sets the protocol for exchanging messages.

In the pre-internet age, scientists, institutions, and other experts were working to create a network that could allow them to connect computers on a worldwide scale. Computer scientists began working on a model; the initial prototype was known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).

ARPANET was developed in the 1960s. It was funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD) with the idea it would be used to connect universities and research centers. The network technology used on this prototype was packet switching. This allowed connected computers to send and receive data on a single network. However, ARPANET was not resilient enough to allow multiple channels of communication on the network.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) developed the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite, which was adopted by ARPANET in the early 1980s. The US DOD called it the official standard computer networking. With the adoption of TCP/IP, ARPANET began to evolve into much larger networks, allowing other organizations to be interconnected, and became what we commonly refer to as the internet today.

The internet is a worldwide collection of many interconnected networks, such as Wide Area Networks (WANs) and Local Area Networks (LANs). Each organization or person who connects a device to the internet simply extends the network (internet), so the internet is continuously growing as more devices are going online. Later in this chapter, we will take a deeper dive and discuss various types and sizes of network topologies.

The internet itself is not owned by any one person or organization in the world. However, there are many groups and organizations that help maintain the stability and set standards for intercommunicating on the internet and private networks.

Let's imagine we have a few devices that are all interconnected in a single network, sharing files between themselves without having the user (human) physically walk around with a portable storage device such as a flash drive to copy and paste files. Users access a centralized file server within the company's network from their local computer.

One day, ACME wants to open a new branch in another city to provide services to new and potential customers; however, there is a challenge. We shall refer to the new branch as BranchA. The new location, BranchA, is many miles away and the staff at BranchA need to access resources such as the application server, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, and other important resources that are located at the HQ location. One solution would be to create a clone of the servers from HQ to the new location, BranchA; however, this means each time new records and data is updated at the HQ location, it will take a long time to replicate the data on the servers at BranchA. This may create inconsistency issues when employees try to access the most up-to-date files and records at BranchA.

A better approach is to create a WAN. A WAN is used to simply extend a LAN over a large geographic distance. A company such as ACME would definitely benefit from using this technology within their organization. By implementing a WAN between their branches, HQ and BranchA, the servers and main resources can simply stay at HQ while employees are still able to access the resources, files, and records across the network at their BranchA location.

As a simple example, MetroE enables customers of a service provider to establish a WAN between branches, functioning like a very huge LAN within the service provider network. This means a company can interconnect multiple branches using a MetroE service within the service provider network. On the customer's end, the network functions as if it were on a large LAN.

Another type of WAN service is MPLS, which provides us with the functionality to extend an organization's network beyond the local service provider's network. Imagine having a WAN circuit starting from the HQ location and passing through multiple ISP networks until the connection is terminated at a remote branch in another country.

Thanks to various technology companies, we can break down communication barriers between people who speak different native languages. We can simply install an app on our smartphone such as Google Translate and translate a foreign language into our own and vice versa.

For a device to communicate with another on a network, it requires a set of protocols or a protocol suite. A protocol suite is a common format that devices can use by following a set of rules for exchanging messages with other devices on a network. A protocol suite enables devices to speak a common, universal language that allows all networking devices to understand each other.

Years ago, computer manufacturers made their own protocol suites, which, in most instances, allowed only same-vendor devices to communicate and exchange data on a network. Some of these protocol suites were AppleTalk and Novel Netware (IPX/SPX), which were proprietary to the vendor and not suitable for consumers on a large scale.

The OSI reference model is a seven (7) layer model that was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the 1970s. It was intended to be a fully operational protocol suite to allow all devices on a network to intercommunicate using a mutual language. However, it was never actually implemented in any systems.

You may be wondering, if it's not implemented in any operating systems and devices, why is it important we learn about the OSI reference model? Each layer of the OSI model has a unique functionality associated with a computer network. This allows network engineers to better understand what happens on each layer when performing troubleshooting tasks.

Why are there so many layers? Each layer of the OSI model has a particular responsibility for ensuring a device is able to successfully exchange messages with other devices on a network. In the following sections, we are going to learn the essentials of each layer and how they help us understand network operations. This enables us to better identify and troubleshoot network-related issues in the industry.

As an example, when a device such as a computer wants to send a message (data) to another device either on a local or remote network, the data has to flow downward in the OSI model, passing through each layer. During this process, a specific set of rules, encoding, and formatting is applied. This is known as encapsulation. Whenever a recipient is processing a message, it goes upward, passing each layer, and parts of the message are stripped away. This is known as de-encapsulation.

In the field of networking, a device such as a computer creates a Protocol Data Unit (PDU), sometimes referred to as a datagram. This is the raw data to be sent across a network to another device. At each layer of the OSI model, the PDU has a different name. These names are used to reference the characteristics of the PDU at a particular layer. In your exam, it's important to use this terminology. The following diagram shows a table containing the layers of the OSI model and the name of the PDU at each layer:

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