The Bryant Advantage Bulldog Blog

Password Recovery Procedures For 2500 Routers - And For The CCNA Exam And The Job! Performing password recovery on a Cisco router makes people nervous, especially if they haven’t done it before. That includes me! Since this is often a network engineer’s first time working with the configuration register, it's understandable to be a little nervous - but as always, prior preparation gets rid of those nerves. One myth about Cisco password recovery is that there’s one way to do it on all routers and switches. This simply is not the case. On the CCNA exam, you may see some questions referring to the 2500 series password recovery procedure, which we’ll be reviewing in just a moment. I want to share a very important Cisco website with you: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/474/ This webpage lists almost every router and switch Cisco’s ever made, and the links for each device goes to the password recovery procedure for each one. It’s a very handy list that I suggest you bookmark. This is a...

I'll be posting three new Cisco certification practice questions per day - one for the CCNA, BSCI, and BCMSN exams. Answers will be posted tomorrow, along with three new questions! Today's CCNA question: What term describes the amount of bandwidth that will be available to a frame relay provider's customer? A. BA B. DE C. DC D. CIR E. BE F. BC Today's BSCI question: Cisco OSPF design guidelines state that a router should be in no more than how many areas? A. Two B. Three C. Four D. Five Today's BCMSN Question: Which of the following switches will become the root bridge? A. Switch A, with a BID of 24768:aa-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa B. Switch B, with a BID of 24768:bb-bb-bb-bb-bb-bb C. Switch C, with a BID of 24768:cc-cc-cc-cc-cc-cc D. Switch D, with a BID of 32768:dd-dd-dd-dd-dd-dd Answers will be posted on Saturday, along with three new questions!

I always swore that when I got to the top of the Cisco Certification mountain, I'd never turn into one of those guys who act like they know everything and were born that way. Part of that promise to myself included remembering what it's like to see a technology for the first time, or to wonder "why would anyone use that?" I definitely remember thinking that the first time I learned about Trivial File Transfer Protocol, or TFTP. Sure, I memorized the port number in my Intro studies (as you probably did), but I didn't really understand why anyone would use it. Why would you ever use TFTP instead of FTP? As someone once said to me, "When I transfer files, there's nothing trivial about it!" Of course, the major drawback of TFTP is that is has no security features, and this includes a lack of password capabilities. Those of you who know your ISDN and have ever read one of my tutorials on that subject know that I warn you again using Password Authenticatio...

Cisco CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Configuring EIGRP Packet Authentication Configuring RIPv2 and EIGRP authentication with key chains can be tricky at first, and the syntax isn't exactly easy to remember. But for BSCI and CCNP exam success, we've got to be able to perform this task. In a previous tutorial, we saw how to configure RIPv2 packet authentication, with both clear-text and MD5 authentication schemes. EIGRP authentication is much the same, and has the text and MD5 authentication options as well. But EIGRP being EIGRP, the command just has to be a little more detailed! As with RIPv2, the authentication mode must be agreed upon by the EIGRP neighbors. If one router's interface is configured for MD5 authentication and the remote router's interface is configured for text authentication, the adjacency will fail even if the two interfaces in question are configured to use the same password. We'll now configure link authentication on the adjacency over an Ethernet ...

Welcome to The Bryant Advantage blog! I'll be posting my newest Cisco Certification tutorials and articles here on a daily basis, as well as certification program updates, IT news, and who knows what else! Enjoy!