darlodge

Is Cisco and Novell certification worth progressing, or is it becoming as useless as MCSE's?

I just attended a Novell course (5.1 Administration) and have been given the option to continue to achieve the certification (either CNA or CNE). I also started dabbling with Cisco routing today and I have been told that if I want, I can attend some Cisco courses to take some of the pressure off our only Network Analyst.

Darren

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Novell, 'shudder' I became a CNA back in 98 and found it to be of no use whatsoever. Lucky for me, I naver liked Novell and we swapped to nt-based systems for our clients the following year. Have to still support a few old 4 servers.

I would say imo that the cisco is far more relevant, but it entirely depends on what your employer needs/want really.

Cheers,

Nick

Alfie

MCSE not worth it? Hope not I've just passed my forst MCP

P1Fanatic

To make it worthwhile u need to get to CCNP level. Every man and their dog is a CCNA these days which just means youve done enough reading to pass one exam. The CCNP takes it to the next level and means youve actually got off your **** and done some serious revision over several topics. They have made the exams harder over the last year as well.

Simon.

roadrunner

Agree with P1Fanatic

The top cisco cert - CCIE is a lot more harder to pass but its value is lower than what it used to be!

IMO the value of networking certifications are lowering each year. This is like with anything. The more popular it becomes the lower the value/price it is!

darlodge

Thanks, I'll have a think.

I would much rather take the Cisco route than the Novell route as it is far more changling and intresting.

Darren

Mark Kwiatkowski

I'm thinking of doing the Cisco CCNA course and the progressing on to doing the CCNP. It seems that most of the jobs i see ask for at least CCNA. Being from a telecomms background makes it tough to get a job in data networks (i'm from a voice background, with a year's worth of VoIP but nothing too in-depth on the data side)

Seeing as there is almost a non-existant demand for a qualified telecomms engineer at the moment i thought that i would go down the 'data' route and get certified.

At least this way i will have a mix of both 'voice' and 'data' skills.

One question to those out there who have done the CCNA course, can any of you recommend a good complete course kit for the 640-607 CCNA exam? Nothing too expensive as this is going to be self funded
and i thought that i could spend part of my redundancy on something that might help me get another job.

Cheers,

Mark

P1Fanatic

Nothing is a substitute for experience. Ive been doing Cisco stuff for the last 3 years and still havent bothered doing any quals cos Im a lazy git. I see several CCNP's in my company who still have problems knowing what extended ping options do, the correct subnet mask/cisco bit mask for a /24 network etc - that really does make me wonder!

My housemate works for same company and is CCNP, CCDP and has passed the CCIE written at the first attempt. The CCIE lab is a bitch and pretty much everyone fails it the first time. Luckily hes got the chance to play with top end cisco kit here.

Simon.

[Edited by P1Fanatic - 11/15/2002 5:52:15 PM]

P1Fanatic

Mark - try looking on various cisco training newsgroups - they are loads of resident CCIE's who will answer any questions you have and other people who have done their CCNA will point you to the most uptodate training sites and notes.

Simon.

Mark Kwiatkowski

Thanks Simon i'll check them out.