My Future - Which Courses Etc. To Take?

[XtremeTweakR]

I am in senior high right now and I am in the middle of taking a Cisco Networking course, and then I can take the Cisco CCNA. What I was wondering is after I get my CCNA where should I go from there? Microsoft Certified courses? Any suggestions?

Also what kinda money is there out there for me involving networking? (I know its very unspecific, but I just need to know some ball park figures for different positions)

Thanks for your help 😀

 

[pcmark]

Since you're taking a Cisco course, I would assume you want to get into the bread and butter of networking:cabling,routers,WAN and LAN technologies. The CCNA is a great place to start. I'm studying for mine right now. After that, I would work on the CCNP. The Cisco certs hold a much higher regard in the industry than the MCSE. The Microsoft courses are sorely lacking in the basics of the OSI model and subnetting,to name a few.
As far as money goes,it all depends on the company. We just hired a guy who has NO networking experience(he currently does database management)for $38,000 a year. Not bad for an entry level salary. He'll be doing the same job as me:configuring business clients with T1 access and managing our colocation customers. Having the CCNA before you get the job will open up your options.

 

[Spiff]

Depends on what you want to do. A networking engineer is not the same a systems administrator (MCSE). One designs and supports networking infrastructures while the other primarily supports systems and spplications that use the network infrastructure which requires only a modicum of "networking" knowledge.

Go to Microsoft's and CISCO's web sites for more info on their programs. They are not all the same.