CET1610 is the second course in Florida's networking sequence. The Statewide Course Numbering System titles it Routers and describes it as covering "beginning router configurations; routed and routing protocols; and an intro to LAN switching," noting that it is the "2nd course in a 4-part series to prepare students for Cisco Certified Networking Associate exam." Its statewide prerequisite is recorded simply as "part one" — that is, CET1600.
Where the first course establishes how a network is addressed and how a frame reaches the next device, this one is about getting traffic between networks and across a switched campus. It is the course where the command line stops being a novelty and becomes the working environment, and where most students first configure something that carries real traffic.
It is offered at five Florida public colleges — State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota, St. Petersburg College, Santa Fe College, Tallahassee State College and Hillsborough Community College — all at 3 credits. Four of the five now title it "Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials", which is the name of Cisco's current second academy course; Santa Fe College retains the older "Cisco Router Theory and Router Technologies". The retitling is worth noticing because it signals a real change in content — see the note on curriculum versions below.
show and debug output to isolate the fault.Cisco replaced its four-course CCNA curriculum with a three-course one. In the current structure this course is Switching, Routing and Wireless Essentials, which folds in switching and wireless material that the older "Routing and Switching Essentials" treated more lightly or deferred. Four of the five Florida colleges have retitled the course accordingly; Santa Fe College's "Cisco Router Theory and Router Technologies" retains the older name.
The practical consequence for a student: the amount of wireless and switching content varies, and a course that predates the consolidation is likely to be more purely routing-focused. The routing core — static routes, OSPF, the routing table, inter-VLAN routing — is common to every version and is what the transfer guarantee rests on. Check the syllabus if you intend to sit the CCNA examination soon after, because the examination follows the current curriculum.
All five institutions carrying CET1610 list it at 3 credits, and so do all six carrying the laboratory form CET1610C — there is no credit divergence anywhere in this course, unlike CET1600.
| Institution | Its title | Credits | Contact hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota | CCNA2 Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials | 3 | not published |
| St. Petersburg College | Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials | 3 | not published |
| Santa Fe College | Cisco Router Theory and Router Technologies (older curriculum title) | 3 | not published |
| Tallahassee State College | Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials | 3 | not published |
| Hillsborough Community College | Cisco Switching, Routing, and Wireless Essentials | 3 | not published |
All five are Florida College System institutions, so statewide numbering guarantees transfer of this course between them.
The laboratory form CET1610C is carried at 3 credits by Broward College, Northwest Florida State College, Polk State College, Valencia College, Florida Gateway College and Seminole State College of Florida.
⚠ The 45 contact hours at the top of this guide are derived — no institution publishes an hour figure — and follow Florida's standard allocation for a 3-credit lecture course. The C form typically runs 60 for the same 3 credits, so the same credit value buys materially different scheduled time depending on which id your college lists. Check the meeting pattern on your own schedule.
The statewide prerequisite is CET1600, and it is a real one rather than a formality. This course assumes IPv4 subnetting is automatic. A student who is still working subnets out slowly on paper will fall behind in the first fortnight, because addressing is now a step inside every exercise rather than the subject of the exercise. It is in turn the prerequisite for CET2615 and the rest of the sequence, and it is the point at which students who continue diverge from those who stop with a single networking course.
Statewide numbering guarantees transfer to any Florida public institution offering the same number. As with the rest of this sequence, it articulates cleanly into a B.A.S. in Information Technology, Network Systems or Cybersecurity, and usually transfers into a B.S. in Computer Science as elective credit only. Confirm with the receiving department rather than assuming.
Three credits, typically 45 contact hours, and the heaviest laboratory load in the lower-division sequence. Budget eight to ten hours a week outside class. The work is cumulative in an unforgiving way: a topology that will not pass traffic must be debugged before the next exercise can start, and the debugging is where the learning is. Students who copy a working configuration from a classmate to get past a lab reliably discover the gap at the practical examination.
This course covers a substantial portion of the CCNA 200-301 examination blueprint, but not all of it — the enterprise, security and automation topics in CET2615 complete the coverage. The examination is a separate cost and is not required to pass the course. Ask about voucher discounts through the Networking Academy; they are often significant.
This is the course where students most often start using AI assistants on real configuration work, and it deserves a direct warning.
Genuinely useful: explaining why a routing protocol chose one path over another; interpreting long show output; generating practice topologies and addressing schemes; explaining an unfamiliar command's purpose; drafting network documentation; and as a patient explainer of spanning-tree behaviour, which is conceptually slippery on first contact.
Where it goes wrong, specifically: generated configurations mix syntax between vendors and between software versions; they produce commands that do not exist but read plausibly; they confidently misstate default values — native VLAN, administrative distance, OSPF cost reference bandwidth, spanning-tree timers — and a wrong default produces a topology that mostly works, which is the hardest kind of fault to find. They also tend to offer a configuration without the verification step, which is the part that matters professionally.
The discipline this course exists to teach is the antidote. A configuration is a hypothesis until show output, a ping and a packet capture confirm it. Applying that to generated output costs a minute and is exactly what an employer expects of a network technician. Treat any suggested command as unverified, know what it is supposed to change, and check that it changed it.
Academic integrity: practical examinations in this course are usually timed, observed and on live equipment, which is a reliable test of whether a student can do the work unaided. Instructor policies on tool use vary; read the syllabus rather than assuming either permission or prohibition.
Generated September 12, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026