Cisco Cisco Cisco

[Rip the Jacker]

Cisco Cisco Cisco

Someone mind giving me a description of Cisco in their own words? And how beneficial (if at all) a CCNA/CCNP/CCIE is?

 

[Fallen Kell]

To be honest with you, there are so many paper certs out there that they really have degraded themselves since many of them did the "get certified in 3 days" type courses which really just teach the tests and not the actual information/knowledge. If you really want to learn it, then it will help you in your work if you use it everyday, otherwise, save the money...

 

[TheSophist]

CCIE is not a paper cert. It is highly respectable and only a handful of people actually pass it.




TheSophist

 

[Rip the Jacker]

Well, I'm more concerned about if it's worth trying to be a Network Administrator as opposed to someone else like a Web Designer, and if it's really worth it? Is anyone trying to be a network administrator? If so, are there any useful sites that have salaries earnings, etc? (I'm gonna go google some now, but you might have found a better site)

 

[spidey07]

people who work on networks can earn between 45 and 250K a year.

 

[Tarrant64]

Doesn't where you live greatly affect salaries as well?

 

[spidey07]

of course it does. assume medium cost of living area.

 

[petey117]

even the ccnp is a respectable enough cert ---nowhere near the level of a CCIE though
last i checked the percentage of people who took the ccie and passed was like 10%
anyone know what it is now?

as far as the OP question goes:
learn the technology, concern yourself with the cert later.
having the cert without the real life experience is useless. period. I gained all of my cisco knowledge in a production environment. later i took the ccna, just to have the cert on my resume. I learned more in one week of being immersed in cisco routers and switches, than i learned in the 3 weeks i studied for the CCNA.

but seriously, stick with cisco, and as the budget allows, but some low end equipment to play with and practice on. you will learn far more that way

good luck with whatever you do

 

[GT1999]

Experience is worth 10x more than a certification.

You're much more prone to holding that information in for a longer period of time, if not permanently.

Just my 2c on the CCNA.

 

[Atheus]

How difficult is it to learn IOS and the quirks of cisco hardware, assuming you already know a lot about networks.

 

[spidey07]

the hardest part of networking is really understanding what is going on at each of the layers and routing protocols.

learning IOS isn't that difficult if you have that stuff really nailed down. It can take a few years of working with network communications to reallly "get it"

 

[petey117]

i agree with spidey. the ios is not hard, it is the underlying theories of networking. but, part of that comes with playing with the routers.

 

[Rip the Jacker]

up

 

[sieistganzfett]

lol. about 3 yrs i graduated high school with a CCNA cert, A+ and net +, the only job i could get hired me at $7 an hour in newjersey, i made the same at taco bell then. true story. now its about 6 months away till my CCNA expires, and in order for me to program a cisco firewall or switch, i would look online and use the help command a lot. the cisco IOS is a nice place, much like dos, you can use help, /? and stuff to figure it out. though its so much better if you get to play in the stuff for work every day, i dont so i forgot it mostly.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: ItmPls
.....Is anyone trying to be a network administrator? )

I try every day. Some days, I succeed.

 

[Wyck]

In response to the income question, salary.com is a great place to find out the actual income that people in a given field are making in your area.

 

[ripn]

Having a Cisco cert is pretty beneficial, there is a lot of info out there on it.

CCIE is the most respected and valuable but does have a very high fail rate.

You can check Cisco.com, there is also another new site I seen that has some info
Cisco HQ

Monster.com has some salary info also, and TCPMag has some more salary stuff

 

[ForumMaster]

well i am learning CCNA1 now in highschool. we come out with CCNA4 i believe and it helps to have on the resume when i get out of highschool later. i will eventually get a job working with that i hope. i also hope that my combination of CISCO and computer programming classes i am taking will help me get a safe job in the Army (I live in israel were u have to go the the army). anyway, it helps to have experiance. although the amount of effort it took to set up my D-Link 604 router with my f*ucking isp gave me some. (my isp uses a vpn connection with very specific numbers). but do cisco, get the cert, and get the experiance. it's worth it.

 

[Blaiz06]

I took the CCNA course and learned a great deal. The CCNA and /or Network+ is a good beginning to a strong foundation.