A CCNA lab portfolio where the day number is the index

The portfolio is the deliverable, not the badge

The framing is explicit. This is a hands-on networking journey documented while preparing for the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam, and one of the six stated objectives is building a professional networking portfolio. Another is sharing progress publicly while learning, which is the decision that turns a private study log into a public one.

The stated goal is to move beyond theory by building, documenting, and troubleshooting real-world networking scenarios, using Cisco Packet Tracer and other networking tools. The course that provides the spine is the Jeremy's IT Lab CCNA course, and the contribution on top of it is additional documentation, network diagrams, configuration examples, and lessons learned.

That last item is what distinguishes this from a course transcript. A transcript tells you what a topic is; a lesson learned records what broke while doing it. The rest of the objectives, practical skills through hands-on labs, strengthening enterprise networking knowledge, and documenting troubleshooting and design concepts, all describe the same habit from different angles.

Six topic buckets, and security arrives late

The concept coverage is organised into six groups. Network fundamentals covers routers, switches, firewalls, servers, endpoints, IPv4 and IPv6, network topologies, and wireless fundamentals. Network access adds VLANs, trunking, EtherChannel, spanning tree, and wireless LANs. IP connectivity covers static routing, OSPF, route selection, administrative distance, and routing tables. IP services lists DHCP, DNS, NAT, SSH, NTP, and syslog. Security fundamentals covers ACLs, port security, DHCP snooping, VPN fundamentals, AAA, and wireless security. Automation and programmability adds REST APIs, JSON, Cisco DNA Center concepts, and network automation fundamentals.

The buckets read like an exam outline, but the built sequence does not follow it. The visible days run through devices, DHCP packet analysis, device security, switching, IPv4 addressing, interface configuration, static routing, VLSM, VLANs, trunking, spanning tree, EtherChannel, and then a long run of OSPF and EIGRP labs. The security items from the last bucket, port security, DHCP snooping, and dynamic ARP inspection, appear much later, near days 49 to 51.

So the taxonomy is a map of the destination, while the day table is the actual route, and the two are not in the same order.

The day numbering skips, and that mirrors the course

Days are the index, and the sequence is not contiguous. The visible table opens with Day 01 through Day 03 at the repository root, then Day 04 through Day 09 under a Labs folder. Two rows are combined, Day 05/06 for Ethernet and LAN switching and Day 07/08 for IPv4 addressing, which suggests one lab file covering two course days.

Sub-numbering appears later, with Day 11.1 for configuring static routes and Day 11.2 for troubleshooting them as separate entries. After that the visible numbers jump, and there is no Day 10 and no Day 12, 13, or 14 before Day 15 on VLSM and static routing.

Two readings are possible and the repository does not settle it. Either the course skips those days, or the author skipped them, and only the course schedule or the author can say which. The table is also cut off partway through the Day 29 row, so the sequence beyond that point is not visible here and the total length of the path should not be assumed.

Day 29 points at the Day 27 file

One entry is a genuine defect rather than a stylistic choice. The Day 28 row links to a file about OSPF troubleshooting with serial links, neighbour failures, and missing routes. The next visible row, Day 29, is titled with OSPF reference bandwidth, hello protocol, and ASBR default route injection, and that is the same combination listed on the Day 27 row.

The link target confirms it: the Day 29 row points at a file whose name carries the Day 29 prefix with the rest of the name identical to Day 27's. A reader following the Day 29 link is sent to content that was already published one row earlier, which means one of the two days is undocumented and the progress table overstates coverage.

Small inconsistencies of this kind are worth looking for in a notebook like this, because the table is the only index. A mark of complete is only as good as the artefact behind it, and nothing in the repository cross-checks the two.

Typo filenames turn into bad links and bad searches

The file names carry the day, the lab, and the topic, and several of them are misspelled. Day 03 is filed as OSI Model DHCP and PacketAnalysis, with the words run together. Day 05 and 06 sit in a file named LANSwitching on the same pattern. Day 09 is Interface configuration and Device Managment, with the final word misspelled.

The names also contain characters that have to be escaped in a URL. The Day 11.2 troubleshooting file encodes a space and a dash, and topics with commas, colons, and ampersands appear percent-encoded in their links, for example the multilayer switching and VTP and trunking entries. Those links are not broken, but they are unreadable in a browser bar, which makes the index harder to skim than a topic list should be.

None of this prevents the repository from working as a study path. It does mean that searching for a lab by name is unreliable, and that a broken link here may be a naming mistake rather than a missing file.

Later labs are screenshots at the repository root

The top of the repository is where the documentation style changes. Early days are markdown write-ups, some at the root and some inside a Labs folder. Later days are image sequences sitting directly at the root, with names following a pattern of day, lab, topic, and an image index, such as Day-44 and Day-45 for static and dynamic NAT, Day 46 for voice VLANs, and Day 47 for QoS.

From there the run covers port security at Day 49, DHCP snooping at Day 50, dynamic ARP inspection at Day 51, spanning tree and HSRP synchronisation at Day 52, and GRE tunnels at Day 53, each with a base image plus numbered variants. That is dozens of screenshots with no accompanying markdown at the root.

Two things follow. The index has to carry the information that the earlier markdown carried, since a screenshot series documents what was built but not the reasoning. And the naming is inconsistent in the same way as the earlier files, including spaces and ampersands in some image names, which makes bulk handling awkward.

No license, no releases, and an open-ended sequence

The project is a personal portfolio rather than a packaged tool, and the repository metadata reflects that: no license is declared, there are no GitHub releases, and no primary language is recorded even though the content is markdown, images, and links. The default branch is main and the last push is dated 2026-08-19.

The stated basis for the work matters for anyone reusing it. The course is the Jeremy's IT Lab CCNA material, and the repository describes itself as working through that course while expanding on it, so the sequencing follows someone else's curriculum rather than a syllabus of its own design.

One gap is worth flagging for reproduction. The tools named are Cisco Packet Tracer and other networking tools, but the visible top-level listing is made of markdown files and PNG screenshots. Whether Packet Tracer project files are committed is not visible in that listing, and a notebook you cannot load into the tool is documentation rather than a lab.

Editorial conclusion

This repository suits someone who wants an ordered, public example of how a CCNA study path actually runs, including the unglamorous middle where routing labs give way to NAT and hardening. It does not suit someone looking for portable lab files, since the visible tree is markdown plus screenshots rather than Packet Tracer projects. Before copying the sequence, check the links, because a duplicated artifact and several typo filenames are already in the table, and confirm whether the day numbering matches the course you are following.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. README
3. TushanDorsey/Network-Engineering-Labs-CCNA-2026 on GitHub