CCNA Lab Kit

The CCNA was the certification I wanted the most, and the one that made me work the hardest: one year of preparation next to a full-time job, a first attempt failed at around 75%, and a complete rebuild of my study method to pass the second one.

The core of that rebuild is what I call my lab kit. Exam-style exercises with a small topology, a list of tasks written in English, and no command given, exactly like the real simulations. I generated them with AI, solved them on Cisco Packet Tracer, then asked for a detailed correction of everything I had missed. Repeated every evening, for months, until the commands became reflexes.

The kit covers the core of the exam: device configuration and SSH hardening, static routing with a floating backup route, VLANs and router-on-a-stick, DHCP server and relay, single-area OSPFv2, ACLs, NAT, and STP with EtherChannel. Most labs also come with a dual-stack IPv6 add-on, and a full lab is dedicated to IPv6 subnetting, EUI-64, SLAAC and static routing, because IPv6 is the topic candidates skip the most. All nine labs are published in the article below, free to reuse for your own preparation.

Full write-up: CCNA: One Year to Understand What Is Behind “It Just Works”