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Learning it vs. doing it OR apple vs. orange

binarysoulbinarysoul Member Posts: 993
They say orange and apple are different, but now I have a feeling learning it and doing it different too.

Over the past several years, I learned a lot about networking and security and liked both areas a lot. I have studied for CCNA and got my advanced diploma in networking and learned Unix, NT and worked on few routers and swittches, but not a whole a lot. I don't have experience in security, but understand theories, e.g. threats, NAT, IDS's, probes.

Now that I'm seeing things in practice, sometimes I find it hard to apply what I know and what I've learned. For example, I know what NAT is, but I find it hard to wrap my head around it when I work with the firewall itself, e.g. CheckPoint. Also, I know the concept of subnets and internetworking, but once I look at the firewall network setup, I get lost. It seems everything I learned is put in one spot and it's overwhelming. In other words, I must wrap my head around many things simultenously. What should I do?

The good news is that my annual review came up and I got a perfect score :) So, I'm not lazy or a slack and probably know some of the stuff, but I find it hard to know complex issues.

How do you deal with complex issues? How should I train my mind to quickly analyze complex issues. Am I expecting too much too quick?

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    networker050184networker050184 Mod Posts: 11,962 Mod
    Am I expecting too much too quick?

    You probably are. It is hard when you first go into a live set up. In the books and labs its just the simple things on the device needed for the lesson. When you get to the real deal it has everything from all those lessons. And all that stuff probably only makes up about 10% to 15% of what is on the machine. You will get the hang of it. You obviously are doing better than you realize if you got a perfect report. Things will come with time. Some people need to read this thread to realize why employers always ask for experience.
    An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made.
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