The redesign also enables the Associate-level Concentration
certifications (Design, Routing and Switching, Security, Service Provider
Operations, Voice, and Wireless) to better align with industry job roles.
What has changed?
1. CCNA has now been renamed to be 'CCNA Routing and
Switching'.
2. 'CCNA Routing and Switching' is no longer a prerequisite to move onto the
CCNA Concentrations.
3. All CCNA Concentrations require 2 exams to be passed for certification
status. If there are not 2 exams specific to the concentration then
ICND1 will be the first exam that students must pass (gaining themselves
CCENT certification status) and then the exam specific to the concentration
is the 2nd exam (gaining the CCNA Concentration certification
status). An example of this is CCNA Voice where the required exams are now
ICND1 and ICOMM. Please see the attached illustration from Cisco which shows
this.
CCNA Routing and Switching (CCNA R&S)
New exams for CCNA R&S have been released, the exam
numbers for these are:
The old CCNA exams are still available until 30th September
2013 to allow students who have already sat the 1.1 version courses to take
the exams aligned to that version of the course.
Course Differences
What can students expect from the new courses?
A greater focus on higher level subjects such as ipv6 routing. A greater
focus on lab work with exercises designed to facilitate maintenance of
current network implementations. Less time is devoted the basic principles
of networking such as the history and development. Students should find the
course much more applicable to their everyday networking challenges.
The new Version 2 courses allow for more labs and troubleshooting, giving a
better understanding of configuring and optimizing routers and switches.
What has improved in the version 2 releases?
The course makes better use of lab exercises by explaining the objectives
and conclusions in greater detail. The course is up to date and reflects the
common challenges faced by most technicians working in today's environment.
The course is better structured and has a better flow making the learning
process easier.
New features within the version 2 releases
Even more relevant lab exercises. Dropping of out of date subjects and focus
on newer more applicable subjects, IPv6, relevant WAN technologies, advanced
switching features, more in depth routing. There is much less focus on
sub-netting, reflecting the fact most technicians use sub-netting
calculators, for example.
New features include:
ICND1:
ICND2: