CPUG
The Check Point User Group

A Resource For The Check Point Community.  Fast.  Useful.  Independent.

Students' Required Preparations

Part I: Required Skills and Experience:

A. Basic Skills and Experience: TCP/IP Networking:

The most important skill and experience to have before taking this course is solid TCP/IP networking experience. The prospective student should be able to do the following:

  • ___Diagram and explain the OSI Seven Layer network model.
  • ___Compare and contrast TCP, UDP and ICMP.
  • ___Explain what a subnet mask is, and how it is used.
  • ___Explain and demonstrate how to use these Windows 2000 commands: ping, tracert, ipconfig.
  • ___Explain what DNS is and how it is used.
  • ___Describe the hosts file and how it is used.
  • ___Describe half a dozen TCP/IP services and their port numbers.
  • ___Configure a workstation or server to be a part of a network.
  • ___Debug TCP/IP connectivity and routing issues.
  • ___Compare and contrast Ethernet and IP packets.
  • ___Configure a simple router.

Earning the Network+ or CCNA certificates might be reasonable measures of these abilities.  Any student who doesn’t have these basic skills and experience before the course begins will find them self feeling behind in the course from the start and will have trouble catching up.

B. Basic Skills and Experience: Windows 2000:

  • ___Experience with basic Windows 2000 networking (our classroom systems).

C. Optional Moderately Advanced Skills and Experience:

  • ___Have experience configuring and debugging a firewall.

D. Optional Advanced Skills and Experience:

  • ___Have experience configuring and debugging Check Point Firewall-1.

Part II: Specific Course Preparations:

Section A: Reading in the Text:  Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1 by Stephens, Stiefel, et al

  • ___Read and understand; highlight, mark up.

Section B: Exploring Your Evaluation Copy of Check Point Firewall-1: Evaluation Copy of Check Point Firewall-1 NGX:

  • ___Install Firewall-1 NGX R60 on a test machine with at least two NIC’s. Become familiar with the components of the GUI interface. It can take a little getting used to because it’s not a “standard” Windows interface.