Just recently, I was challenged to review and study networking academy with CISCO.
Just recently, I was challenged to review and study networking academy with CISCO. Well, this is not MLM, it is not a business, and perhaps, this challenge made me realized how ISPs managed to hide facts along to its subscribers.
Disclaimer: In any way, I am not affiliated with CISCO. I wish I could. Rather, I will be sharing kinds of stuff that you need to equip with your networking career. Soon, I will take the CCNA exam to further strengthen my network skills and thus will comment specifically on how ISP take part of their business to serve their customer technically.
For students especially IT, ComSci, and another related course with CISCO subject, they could access academy in Cisco Websites. However, there is a slight problem. Some students don't have an internet connection at their home and in most scenarios, the Internet is quite slow. Thus, offline Exploration is quite useful for this dilemma.
I noticed that CISCO hasn't yet updated its Exploration version and it is still 4.0 though.
There are two options: Offline and Online version
- Cisco Exploration Online Version
For some part, CISCO online academy is a demo version.
You can check it here: https://www.netacad.com/courses/networking/ccna-introduction-networks
- Cisco Exploration Offline Version
You can visit here: https://blog.catzie.net/ccna-exploration-4-0-curriculum-course-material-installers-for-offline-viewing/
What you will see:
- CCNA Exploration 1 (Network Fundamentals) Curriculum Installer (30287)
- CCNA 2: CCNA Exploration 2 (Routing Protocols and Concepts) Curriculum Installer (21912)
- CCNA 3: CCNA Exploration 3 (LAN Switching and Wireless) Curriculum Installer (19832)
- CCNA 4: CCNA Exploration 4 (Accessing the WAN) Curriculum Installer (19559)
Problem: CCNA Exploration could open to its first page, but it won't launch.
Solutions:
[1] Since this offline material uses flash content when viewed in a browser, it should install the Adobe flash player plugin.
Thus, one way to solve it is to install Adobe Flash Player.
- Adobe Flash Player: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
But to be sure, I also installed among its related components: Adobe Air and Shockwave player, which you could install here;
- Adobe Shockwave Player: https://get.adobe.com/shockwave/
- Adobe Air: https://get.adobe.com/air/
Then, if properly installed try to open CCNA Exploration in your favorite browser.
[2] On most applications, reinstalling applications will work 90%. Hence, try to uninstall the exploration and install it again. And see what happens.
After, reinstalling the CISCO Exploration. I have done few browsers too to test, and it works pretty amazingly.
- Opera - 100% working
- Firefox - 100% working
- IE (you need to allow ActiveX Control to run in the browser) - 100% working
- Chrome - this is quite complicated - 100% working if configured.
For Chrome to work 100%, you need to disable Chrome built-in Flash player. Two flash player plugin sometimes have a little bit problem
How to disable Chrome Built-in Flash Player
Step 1: go to chrome://plugins/
Step 2: click disable on the description shown
Name: Shockwave Flash
Description: Shockwave Flash 11.8 r800
Version: 11.8.800.97
Location: C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\28.0.1500.95\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll
Type: PPAPI (out-of-process)
 |
| The gray one is the disabled flash player |
Step3: Open it again, am pretty sure it will work :)
Conclusion
I hope you have a pretty damn good day now. While Cisco CCNA provides quality information, I would really like to recommend it to study and read. The fact that I am not in this field, but with some competition and academic experiences, I had this basic knowledge of the networking area of the subject.
If you still have the issue, feel free to comment here. Thank you :)
