Courses

trebor28

not sure if this is the right place to be asking this so if you want to move it go ahead mods.
i am thinking of doing a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Discovery course in a local college.
it cost just under 1k last 20 weeks and is part time evenings.

i have some background and grounding in the area, wiring and physically setting up the network. but i dont have any qualifications in it.

anybody any ideas?
is this course a good road to go down?
what are the job prospects like?

is there a more worthwhile course out there i should do?

p.s. thanks in advance.

dub7_2010

Hi trebor28

I completed the first 2 semesters in WIT a few years ago. New course at the time so they didnt do semesters 3 and 4 and we only discovered this near the end of the course. You cannot finish it at a different college so it was a total waste of time for me.

CCNA is great to have on a CV and at the time job prospects were very good......but now who knows. About 80-90% of the world network is made of Cisco products so its a minimum to have if you want to get into networking. Many follow-on couse's can be done also.

Its an online course and can be done at your own pace, if your college allows, so can be completed a lot quicker. Id recccomend you get the latest edition CCNA book at amazon, got mine for €20 when costs 5 times that at local bookstore.

Best of luck

trebor28

thanks for the reply dub 7.

i heard from another person that it is a very specialised cisco course and wouldnt be much good in the wider scheme of things.

i am looking for a course that would be a bit more generalised to the whole networking area rather that one specific company!

Shamo

As Dub7 said, Cisco have the major market share in networking products, which means you aren't alienating yourself to a small market. As well as that Cisco course should give you all the networking knowledge you need. You can't configure something properly on a Cisco device without understanding the concept behind it.
You can do a network+ course but it's more basic and wouldn't hold much weight on a CV.

I know a few people who have said after doing Cisco, configuring a 3com switch/router wasn't that much different.
I'm sounding very biased, and that's because i am... but take a look at the networking jobs on the web, see how many mention Cisco. You can do something broad based but I really doubt it'll land you any jobs.

After you get your CCNA, you could take a look at doing Voice, Security or advance your routing/switching. Cisco Voice knowledge is very sought after at the moment.

dub7_2010

trebor28 wrote: »

thanks for the reply dub 7.

i heard from another person that it is a very specialised cisco course and wouldnt be much good in the wider scheme of things.

i am looking for a course that would be a bit more generalised to the whole networking area rather that one specific company!

CCNA covers everything about networking and not just Cisco networks.
I know people that have studied Microsoft network courses after Cisco and they say the Micosoft courses are very basic compared to CCNA. A Cisco qualification is better than any other.