Alternative Entry Into Networking

I've been looking around on some different tech forums and this one seems to be the most knowledgeable so I'll drop this here.
What are some different jobs to begin a career in networking. Is the A+, Network+, help desk combo the only way in?

I was considering something with a cable company or the such.

I have an interest in networking and I'm considering making a career change. I studied for the CCNA a decade ago when I was in high school, but I never followed through with that. I know that doesn't really mean anything now.

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Comments

bermovick

If you can find a NOC, you'll likely get more "networking" experience than at a help desk role.

My current NOC job is about 50/50 noc/help desk, but I get to work with carriers troubleshooting circuits, and I get the occasional chance to set up different things for customers (vpns, IP SLA, adjusting floating routes or routing protocols, etc) or troubleshoot things the higher-level engineers break (last 2 nights some work was done in one of our POP's core switches - the IP address was changed for a vlan SVI, causing some of the servers in that VLAN to become unreachable (default gateway))

Ismaeljrp

I would love to know the formula. Although in my case, I live in Puerto Rico and the job market here is awful. I'm just glad that when I graduate from college I'll be top 2 of my class. And hopefully a CCNA. Maybe that will give me the leg up, as for experience, I at least get a 2 month internship.

lantech

If you do go for a NOC job just make sure you get to do some troubleshooting instead of just escalating issues. Not all NOC jobs are the same. Some will just be monitoring and others might actually have you diagnosing some issues and maybe configurations.