For those of you who are Network engineers

Seems to me that most enterprises and larger companies needed people with a wide array of skills; Jack of all trades. No need to have Network specialization because you set it and forget it, mostly, and minor changes don't require specialization. Large overhauls they'll bring in contractors.

If you want to specialize in route/switch, work for those contractors or for an ISP.

Just my opinion. I've been at the same ISP for nearly 10 years, starting in tech support and have climbed my way up, but I'm now a sales engineer so I get to see a lot of IT teams from other companies and most of them know enough about networks to get by but are more concerned with systems administration.

I went from zero IT experience to a System Engineer in less than two years.


I can say 100% getting CCNA was the biggest factor. My boss basically saw my drive, hustle from my resume, liked that I knew networking and figured I could figure out the server portion of my job.


Today I spent my time configuring a switched network at a plant that was a crossed up nightmare from end users flipping cables around. I then spent some time making sure my APs could reach the radius severs for 802.x authentication, which was the original issue before they crapped the bed trying to fix it themselves. I never felt more satisfied from a job than I did walking out of that plant with the issue fixed, and all the interfaces labeled/documented on the CLI to prevent that crap ever again. Took me from 8 or 9am til 1pm. I loved every second.


My job consists of being the only IT guy in my region. I’m responsible for the network, servers, etc. Both implementation of new systems, and also the day to day administration. By nature of being the only guy, I do some desktop support stuff. However it’s generally understood that most non emergency issues will take a few days before I tackle them.



Bottom line is. YES it’s worth it.

You can get your CCNA in under 3 months. If you bust your arse. 6-9 months if you slack. Don’t worry about SDN and programming for now. It’s going to be big, however you still need to know HOW things route and switch. That way, when shite is broken you know how things work.


Resources: CBT Nuggets, INE with Keith Bogart, Boson Exam Sim you can do all the Labs you need at the CCNA level for free on packer tracer minus a few tiny odd topics that don’t carry much exam weight.

Boson exam sim is crucial. They are WAY harder than the real deal. If you’re making in the 600s on those, you will pass the real thing most likely.

Final tips. Watch Network Chuck, David Bombal, and Duan Lightfoot on youtube for motivation.


You got this man.

I think the CCNA is a great place to start. It will help introduce you to a lot that you might not otherwise get much experience with.

When it comes to landing a job I can tell you that when I'm interviewing candidates it's more important to me that they have a core understanding of the principles and not necessarily the technical details. For instance, I'm not likely to ask someone to list the OSPF LSA types, rather I might ask about what a Totally Stubby area is vs a Not-so-stubby area (a good explanation probably mentions LSA types). Instead of asking the hello/hold timers of HSRP/VRRP I'd rather ask for a brief description of what a FHRP is, how it works, and where you'd use it.

My only point is while you have to memorize LSA types and timers for the test, ensure you also focus on establishing a core understanding of the technologies. That'll help more in the long run than memorizing details for an exam.

It's critical and you need to know how to do it, but you're not sitting there counting the bits and shite

Subnettibg is a piece of the puzzle that becomes something you don't even think about, you just memorize the number of IPs in a given subnet and when you need to make one you do it that way

And honestly, there's so much private IP space to use that you can be super liberal with your subnet sizes and never run out of IPs.

I agree with what previous poster said - it's something that you'll use, but eventually you'll just sorta memorize what size subnet = how many addresses. Depending on where you work the amount you utilize subnetting will vary. In my particular environment we utilize it a lot b/c of how we use public addressing for endpoints, but that's pretty uncommon. Environments that utilize RFC1918 address space for endpoints will typically subnet less.

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LSURep864

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Why can't you go to all of the plants before I get there? If something isn't working correctly, it immediately gets blamed on our equipment or setup, and since the IT guys are days away, I end up doing the fixing (not technically my scope or what we bill for). 99% of the time, it's some jackleg messing with stuff he shouldn't have had permissions to

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XanderCrews

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This guy NetAdmins

Sorry guys I hadn't been involved much in a thread I started. I was drunk on my back porch the other night when I started it. It's been a rough couple weeks. Anyway. Cisco is way different now, than what I remember when I was in netacademy in the early 2000's. I finished with all of the CCNA stuff, and then by 2003 I had taken an entire remote access unit of CCNP. Then stopped cold. Never took any tests, never pursued any netadmin work. Just desktop, and a paycheck. So while I remember some of theory, terms, config stuff, I have forgotten most of it. It comes back to me in patches. I use to be able to config labs in my sleep, but being off that horse for 15 years has pretty much put me back at square one. So I am reading some books, and watching some online video's from Udemy and howtonetwork.com and doing labs that I am getting from books, and a site associated with howtonetwork. So hopefully this all pays off. I will hopefully be ready to test somewhere around september. I am not moving at a pace that would test any earlier. I have plenty of time at work to listen, read, and lab in between my job duties/demand. I even talked our systems group into letting me have some routers, switches and firewalls to play with in a little rack I have. But it almost seems easier to use packet tracer sometimes instead of having to move console cables all over.

Anyway, I am just tired of what I am doing, ultimately I am tired of waiting on escalating tickets, or calling sytems guys to fix shite and wait on them. I have been watching them fix phone stuff for enough time, that I have talked them into giving us peasants access to call center so we can program phones for our locations. I just want to be able to figure out, or fix all of that shite on my own without asking for help. Unless I really really really need it. My ultimate goal would be to get into their group, and still work out of Lafayette. But I think they would want me in Houston since that is where everyone is. Who knows....I am going to try and do this. It's just hard. Thanks for all of the input gents...