Cisco and Jobs

[Keefa]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if any of you know anything about CISCO, im doing the yr 12 CCNA portion next year, and i was wondering if you guys know if it would be worth going on to do my CCNE at tafe or something, ive asked my cisco teacher, but he always gives random answers

I want to do something like network engineering or system administration, but im not 100% sure yet.

Thanks

Keegan

[Jimma]

Well currently in Victoria I believe the first two of four parts to the CCNA count towards your ENTER - so are you going to be halfway to a CCNA, or all the way there? I heard that's one of the recent changes. The Cisco courses are very thorough, but are less useful if you're not working with Windows and Cisco hardware.

[Keefa]

yer, with the school ciriculum, the cisco course covers ccna 1 and 2 now, i am one of the first groups to start this new way, but i intend to finish it at tafe during yr 12 so i can get my accreditation.

[jeffxor]

Hi guys I actually currently have my CCNA completed it a few years ago. I did through a Cisco Academy while I was at uni.

I now have a few years experiece in the IT field in both programming, network admin. In my experience getting into the network engineering or system administration is quite difficult to get into as you will generally need expereince a few other areas plus not all hardware is Cisco based. While the CCNA through an academy does give some experence unfortunatly they are very Cisco focused.

There are many courses you can do on you own which would help you on the way, I resently completed my Linux certification (LPI). But realistically you can have all the qualifications you like but mostly people look at industry experience.

IMHO when looking at hiring I will always overlook someone who has certification to those that have a university degree or relative industry experience.

[Uther Pendragon]

I just wanted to add that I found This book (http://dymocks.com.au/ContentDynamic/Full_Details.asp?ISBN=0201702711) to be really useful when I was learning some of the background behind being a good systems admin.

I agree with the comment that industry experience always trumps certifications. But they aren't useless, I myself would stay away from most microsoft certifications as you will just be joining a very very very long list of people who already have one (mostly they still don't know what the hell they are talking about).

I am also a fan of brand neutral certifications, For that reason I would recommend LPI over RHCE. Although a lot of IT managers equate Linux == Redhat which always offends me



Best way to learn linux is by doing, go install as many distros as you can on an old box, especially ones that make you do complicated and convoluted installs like gentoo, or linux from scratch.

[Jimma]

And you may as well get to learn to use them if you want to be a computer nerd. NetBSD or something similar will be what you use when you're a big nerd making computer dollars.

[cyberwired]

its probably different in aussie etc, but in nz of what I've come across
cisco products we use quite often, namely the routers, and without any training and just learning through configs and trial and error we have them creating vpn connections to each other, vpn in, port forwarding and the usual stuff
but theres not much work in it, if someone were wanting to get into network admin work I'd point them to a microsoft course, doing the mcp msce qualifications etc
customers rarely have linux servers and what you dont spend in product licencing you spend on a tech setting up or fixing or modifying something
I would never recommend a linux server to a customer due to in my experience windows is far quicker and easier to diagnose problems and get a result for the customer
understandably you might be able to with knowing how to do linux really well etc, but nah, I never would
I'd compare learning cisco hard out to something like learning how to install and tune a turbo or something in a car, something that wouldn't be done that often, and learning the broarder areas first would get work far quicker for you and then once you have a foot in the door, learning a specialty which you can go into with the contacts you will get
but as I say, its prob different here, like you dont hear of cisco courses at all here

[Uther Pendragon]

cyberwired, I think it depends on the sort of industry you are in. You would be hard pressed to find a largish company that doesn't have an investment in Linux somewhere. Web servers, File servers, print servers, proxy caches, firewalls etc. Plus it's a hell of a lot cheaper to get your hands on a linux distro than it is to grab windows server 2003 and you may as well get used to doing things in shell terminals because heaps of networking gear needs you to be comfortable with it anyway.

It's a bit nasty but I actually mentally dock job applicants points if they only have lots of msce certifications, I would rather somebody have a broader range of skills willing to evaluate any tool that can get the job done.

Also don't get me started on the number of times I have seen windows servers collapse for apparently no reason and be magically fixed by a reboot. That sort of crap scares me when it comes to production environments for systems.

[Jimma]

its probably different in aussie etc, but in nz of what I've come across
cisco products we use quite often, namely the routers, and without any training and just learning through configs and trial and error we have them creating vpn connections to each other, vpn in, port forwarding and the usual stuff
but theres not much work in it, if someone were wanting to get into network admin work I'd point them to a microsoft course, doing the mcp msce qualifications etc
customers rarely have linux servers and what you dont spend in product licencing you spend on a tech setting up or fixing or modifying something
I would never recommend a linux server to a customer due to in my experience windows is far quicker and easier to diagnose problems and get a result for the customer
understandably you might be able to with knowing how to do linux really well etc, but nah, I never would
I'd compare learning cisco hard out to something like learning how to install and tune a turbo or something in a car, something that wouldn't be done that often, and learning the broarder areas first would get work far quicker for you and then once you have a foot in the door, learning a specialty which you can go into with the contacts you will get
but as I say, its prob different here, like you dont hear of cisco courses at all here
I'm not sure what industry you're in, but I don't know any company that would contract you if you use Windows alone and recommend Microsoft courses. As for Cisco routers, the Juniper ones are more common in larger scale operations.

[Conny!]

CISCO products are quite common. But i've run into all sorts of shit that the CCNA doesn't help with, like BR350 bridges, bah. I have only done the first semester of the CCNA, i got bored.

I don't do much networking stuff but i have worked with communication equipment and found the experience to be more helpful than the CCNA stuff. I gained this understanding not from myself but from my peers. Most of the guys i worked with hadn't done the CCNA, some had, but no one seemed to be superior to the other.

My 2 cents. But if you get the oppurtunity to do the CCNA before you finish school, go for it. It will get your foot in the door to that experience you need and show that you are motivated in that work area.

But take what you want from what i say. My experience with networking is fairly unique. We had to deal with the lower level stuff like PDH and SDH routing i guess you would call it. But more maniputlaion of time slots and features. They worked across microwave of various frequencys, fibre and some power line carrier.

[Uther Pendragon]

Agreed with St. Anger. Its probably worth doing something just so you understand the layers of the OSI stack and how things are physically punted around in ethernet frames and whatnot. The only word of warning I would give on any company backed training courses is this:

Take whatever they tell you with a large grain of salt, at the end of the day they are trying to sell you/your employer something. Just cause the course costs lots of money doesn't mean shit, they always have their companies best interests at heart.

For instance: I did the advanced plsql course from oracle, it was hilariously easy. Far too much so, I had come across far more difficult things in the real world, they were more interested in trying to sell me on the magic powers of oracle forms than actually teaching me anything truly crazy and whacky that might come in handy in real world applications.