MCP or CCNA

Okason

Hi everyone and hope we all had a happy Holiday.
Am currently studing for my Network+ and that has been coming along fine, I will be taking the exam in about 3 weeks and I hope for success.

I am just thinking ahead after that. My modest IT knowledge has been from self study and job experience. I have not had a fromal IT trainning in a school. In my home country Nigeria I have what could be equivalent to to an Associate degree in Mech Engineering here in US, and I hope to begin a degree program late next year.

In the interim my question is can I get a CCNA by sef study or do I need to go to Cisco Academy, if yes what is Cisco Academy and how does it work, how long does it last and any idea about the cost.

Or will Microsoft certs absolutely required for me, and can study for say MCSA or MCSE by self study.

I am interested in Network Administration wishing to advance to System/Network Engineer. Presently I work as Level 1 Tech Support for Dlink Network Devices.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

kortie1

You can definately do self study and pass the CCNA. But I'll advice that if you do not currently work with routers and switches, try and buy you some cheap ones. I'm currently studying for the exam also and have just purchase my device. I have no ideal about Cisco training but you can also contact Cisco directly to get some information about that. Good luck.

pizzafart

Yes you can self-study for the CCNA. It would be helpful to have 3 routers (minimum 2500 series) and two switches (minimum 2900/2950 series). Or, you could purchase the Boson netsim (I passed using only the netsim and the Cisco Press books).

I'd say that Cisco certs are the most respected... though, having Microsoft certs doesn't hurt either. "System engineer" can mean a lot of things. Here are the basic jobs:

Server/Systems specialist: Unix admin/Novell admin/ MS Windows server admin/etc...

Network engineer: Switches/Routers/Unix/Monitoring tools

Specialty admin: Email/Database

Network administrator: Jock of all trades, usually at a smaller/mid-sized company.

I think that all these jobs have applicable certifications. Also, there are a lot of other IT jobs out there. I think each job is about equal in difficulty except for top level network engineers, in which the exams will eventually be the most difficult (e.g. CCNP and the dreaded CCIE exams).

Bottom line though, having Microsoft and Cisco certs is always a good idea from what I've seen on monster.com and such.

Though, there's a lot out there. Do some of your own research too.

fondue

If you really live in San Diego, you happen to be in a very good location for CCNA training, Cisco Academy is FREE! As a matter of fact they offer a bunch of free classes. Some instructors are better then others, but hey it's free. The Cisco classes are pretty solid with plenty of gear for labs.

http://www.sdce.edu/classes/fall/bit-north-cc/c4.php

The only problem is you're out of cycle with the Cisco classes and they usually won't let you start in the middle. I think the first class starts in August or September.