We have two very different types of students that come to attend our CCNA courses.

We have a lot of guys coming onto our CCNA courses who really want to break into networking but have little experience within this area and might be finding it a challenge to understand the various complex topics in this field simply from self study and therefore rather than spend many months trying to make the wood for the trees they come onto our CCNA courses so that we can help make it easier for them to make sense of what is going on, and what they learn on the course gives them the motivation to complete their studies without having to struggle to understand all of the theory that would have taken them months to figure out by themselves without really knowing if they are doing something the right or wrong way, plus when they are confident they always come back on the free retrain which we offer to consolidate their knowledge and hone their skills prior to taking the CCNA exam.

We also have guys that come onto our CCNA courses who have considerable knowledge and experience that use the course to consolidate their knowledge and prepare for the exam along with learning a few new tricks along the way.

Both types of students are also looking to gain practical experience which we offer in abundance on the course, almost half of the 60 hours they spend with us is spent working on the equipment in the classroom, valuable practical hand-ons on which is backed up with theory, demonstrations, and our famous and grueling break-fix sessions pioneered in the industry by us along with thorough explanations at the end of every lab session.

So are you ready for the course, You are if you approach the course with an idea what you want to gain, then we would say yes.

Yes, we would expect you to already know the OSI and TCP/IP models. For example we would expect you know what MAC address is, know what an IP address is, (Maybe not subnetting but at least know what an IP address looks like and what it does), along with knowing what the difference between TCP and UDP is etc. We would also expect you to have at least basic computer skills, such as knowing how to load a software program and how to load a driver

The 6 day CCNA course is intensive and if you are a beginner you will get left behind - very quickly, so we would expect you to be on form, to pay attention and to ask questions, we are there to assist you in your studies

If you are a absolute complete beginner to networking we would steer you well clear of the 6 day course and advise that you consider the Network+ course instead.

If you don't know the OSI or TCP/IP models then come on the "free one day courses" we run as we do cover these concepts, you'll leave that day having a good grounding to study OSI and TCP/IP models before you hit the 6 day course?

Yes, We would also expect you to have at least basic computer skills, such as knowing how to load a software program, other than that come as you are, the course has been designed to take you from zero to CCNA level without any prior knowledge or experience.

On the course we teach everything from making cables, patching, OSI and TCP/IP, wireless, LAN and WAN protocols

The courses start at 8:30am on the nose and finish no later than 6:30pm from the first day to the last. We don't try to appeal to your ego by finishing late into the night when you are tired. We find that we the correct instruction we normally finish around 6pm (The last day we have been known to finish around 5:00pm )

Is that not the same question we used to ask when the low cost airlines started to fly, then suddenly it dawned on us all that the incumbent airlines had been over charging us for years? So why should it be any more than what we charge?

Come to our "Free one day training sessions" so you can try us out before you pay, see the real classes in action

If the likes of Ryanair and EasyJet can make a £30 million pound aircraft pay its way for a tenner a flight why can't we offer a course at the prices we do?

Ultimately cost of the course is an issue for everyone, but remember that a price is soon forgotten when your network is down and you don't know how to fix it or applying for a networking job and you can't answer the interviewers questions. Our low cost is only one great thing about us, we are also probably one of the best Cisco training schools in the country, why?, well just read on!!

The simple fact that the instructors for Commsupport are all full time network engineers during the week when we are not teaching.

We have been teaching for many years whilst being network engineers. we are not like other training companies that only have in-house instructors, at best these instructors can only claim to consult, but that is not enough, the only way to learn about networking is by real hands on from people who work with this stuff every day, not just consulting.
In the classroom each student has double the amount of cisco equipment to work with than any other training company in the world, a bold statement but true, no student shares in our class and each student gets in every CCNA and CCNP course 4/5 pieces of Cisco kit, look at the Cisco course content to find out more

We of all people know that sometimes despite best endevours it is not always possible to absorb every piece of information that we cover in the classroom, we also understand that work and family life can get in the way of study time and that one thing can lead to another, that is why we have the unlimited free course retake policy.
Once you do the complete CCNA or any of the CCNP courses with us you can come back onto the same course for free, there is no time limit.*

We do not expect you to have attempted the exam within set period of time after the course, we do not impose any time limits. If you want to come in to the classroom to recap on a particular lecture you can, or if you want to do the whole course again including all the labs and break/fixesTM you can.

The complete course retake has only a few conditions (No small print here)...

1. That you attend the entirety of the original course without missing any days.

2. If you want to attend the entire course from start to finish including the lectures, labs and break/fixTM you will need to book your course date 3 days before the start of the course you wish to attend

3. If you just want to attend the lectures you must meet condition 1 above and that you call us prior to coming in, this can be booked at short notice practically on the day, we only need to make a seat available for you so it is easier for us to do

*The unlimited free retake is for courses that contain the same content, if the official CCNA course syllabus is changed by Cisco Systems we would also change the the course content to reflect the new content, this change would constitute a course change.

We don't, simply because we can't and nor can anyone else, if you are good at networking you will get a job in networking on your own, if you are not good at networking you won't it is as simple as that, no company can make that sweeping statement, networking requires the right aptitude, either you have it or you don't. We give the real knowledge to take to an interview and really impress.

But we can offer you the chance to work within Commsupport as a classroom assistant when you pass your CCNA to gain that valuable experience, become a LABRAT, contact us to find out how.

On these courses we really do put our students through their paces, there is a lot of emphasis on break/fixTM, once our students complete each lab we come along and introduce faults into the equipment and it is up to the student to fix the labs, break/fixTM is from day 1 to day 6, all good fun (For the instructor), this way our students learn more than they ever thought possible.

After much, much pain, research and long, long hours of testing with various lab setups for the CCNA class going through all of the possible permutations using 1 router 2 switches, 2 routers 1 Switch etc, we settled on 3 routers and 4 Switches per student lab. We found during testing with our students on live courses that this is the right balance of equipment, less kit and the student learns little, more kit than 3 routers and 4 switches and the student gets bogged down with the array of kit.

More kit than 3 Routers and 4 Switches per student is like like asking a learner driver to lap the Nürburgring in a Micra in less than 7 minutes.

Yes we do.

If you want bring their own laptop so you can load up all the materials and software that we provide and use during the course please feel free

Firstly this course will teach you the stuff that sitting in front of a pile of unfamiliar kit will never teach you. Kit is always good to have to help you when you know your way around the kit, not before. Many of the people that have contacted me have bought over priced labs from ebay then let them gather dust for many months not knowing where to start and then run the risk of having to sell the pile of kit at a loss when they lose interest.

Secondly people have chosen to come to us for their training because we are network engineers and not just trainers and not just consultants, we teach you about networking in ways that an ordinary trainer or consultant never could simply because we physically work with the kit every day, we don’t waffle and we don’t abandon you with manuals and expect you to get on with it! we teach you what is really important for when you go to a real live network.

The CCNA was historically a 5 day course until a few years back when it was split into two courses, the Intro and the ICND, (Now to the ICND1 and ICND2), there is a lot of overlap between the two courses, so take out the overlap and you have a 6 day course.

We have been running the CCNA as a 6 day course now for many years and feel that it is about the right amount of time for this type of course, not too little and not too much, just right!


As for the Cisco Academy Course taking two years, we suspect the instructor (Presenter) may be reading from the book very slowly, it does not take two years to do this course, this field moves too quickly for you to be sat in a classroom once or twice a week, every week for two years. We have a lot of students that have done part or whole of the Cisco Academy program and they all say the same thing, and that is our course is more focused on teaching real skills and not just pointless ones that you will never use. Our opinion is that Cisco Academies are a waste of everyones time, we have too many ex-academy students coming to us for proper network training... the numbers speak for themselves.

A paper CCNA / CCNP is somebody that has passed the CCNA without ever touching a router or a switch and passed the CCNA without any hands-on experience, the problem is that when they go get a job and they are confronted with kit to configure as part of the interview (we do it at our day jobs when we interview new engineers) a paper CCNA / CCNP folds just like a piece of paper. All show no go!!! We make sure our students get real hands on with real break fix scenarios, this gives our students the skills to fault find / fix and understand networks.

Not to our knowledge, 6 days is about the right amount of time to cover all of the theory and practical tasks related to this qualification, over 6 days you get to ask all the questions you want, gain first hand knowledge from real network engineers, something you'll never get from on-line learning or DVD's alone, we are not suggesting that you do not use CBT's or going down the self study route, we suggest that you use all possible tools at your disposal. One thing that employers will look for is formal training if you have no experience, imagine rolling up to an airline asking to be a pilot and having only read from books or learnt from a computer flight sim, nuts!

On a course that is less than 6 days all that you do is go to be coached to remember the questions and answers to the CCNA exam, which is pointless and illegal or you will be placed in front of a pile of kit and told to get on with it with out any real instruction, guidance and certainly no break fix. Any thing less than 6 days is a waste of money and time

We believe our courses and in particular our CCNA course is designed to help you in many ways, you have to approach the courses with an objective in mind, are you there to consolidate your knowledge prior to the exam, are you there to get a foothold into the complex field of network or are you taking the course to complement your self study.

Now we have the Network+ course,
that we take you to CCNA level.

Our 6 day CCNA course is a very popular and comprehensive accelerated means of getting through all of the complex theory and practical's in the most convenient possible time scale.

We believe everything has a place, we would never recommend to anyone that they just take our course and read the manuals that we supply and leave it at that, we actively encourage people to learn from as many sources as possible, from other books, from Computer based training Videos, from colleagues at work.

We are one piece of a very complex puzzle. We are not arrogant to believe that we are going to be a "one stop shop" for your CCNA training but we will be a huge part of it. Can we recommend any CBT courses?, No we can't , they're mostly a few hours of rubbish, the Videos that we make are more comprehensive

You stand a better chance getting a job after having done our CCNA course. Why? Because we will teach you not just the topics you need to know for the exam but the additional subjects that you really need to know for when you are applying for a networking job, the knowledge that you gain on this course will help you pass the exam, get a job in networking and most importantly keep it! If you go for a job interview for a networking job, you will stand above the other candidates because of the additional topics that you learnt on our CCNA course. Click here to find out what additional subjects we teach on our CCNA course.

We have had students successfully apply for a job in networking before they even completed our course!

We do expect the students to have read up on the OSI and TCP/IP models, to the point that they be familiar with the terms and general concepts, we can send out the manuals prior to the course so that they can be read before the course.

We do expect you to put 100% effort into their studies and it is expected without question, just as an employer would expect you to put 100% into the work you are employed to do, no one is going to pay you the big bucks because you have a fancy haircut or have a mortgage to pay. 100% from this point onwards. No slacking!!!

We would say that the reading that you should do prior to the CCNA course OSI / TCP/IP


When you come on our CCNA course we help you to tie up everything and make absolute sense of everything. There is no such thing as a free lunch so expect to work hard.

Lots of things:

1. The cost of course is a determining factor, you never want to pay more than £1000 for a 6 day course no matter what the school is offering.

2. Don't get drawn into the the promises of jobs, no one can guarantee you a job, how do they know you are made of the right stuff to be a network engineer over the phone when you are booking the course and handing over your money.

Companies claiming "Job placements" are a con and no job ever exists and they will use every trick in the book to get out of any agreement, we have seen it too often, so avoid like the plague. They only way you are going to get a job in networking is like everyone else, send your C.V out there and lots of them and call around, you will get a job without those sharks!

3. If you have no previous experience in networking make sure you read up lots before you attend a course or your time and money will be wasted.

4. Ask for background experience of the instructor ask how long they have been teaching, how many years of real network engineering they have behind them and if they still go out on customer sites.

5. Avoid training companies that can't offer one CCNA LAB setup per student.