Best courses for career in Networking

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Hi guys,
I'm new in IT, 6 months ago started Comptia A+, hopefully will be finished by Christmas. Looking for a career in Networking but not sure which Certifications are best for it. As I,m doing A+ course with computeach, they offered me the following Networking career pat: A+,MCDST, MCSA, MCSE, ComptiaSecurity+.What are your thoughts about this path and should I stick with Computeach(must say I don't like them very much. Looking forward for your advice. Thanks

 

My advice for a career in networking is to find a company which does its whole IT in house, work hard, show willingness to learn and try your best to get involved in the networking side of things and "get in" with the network technicians, if its a smaller company its likely you will gain exposure to smaller networks, regardless of the role you are in.

The network+ and CCENT certfications will be good places to start, however the CCNA does demand some experience, im not saying dont learn the stuff, but maybe learn it, show some skills at work, build up the experience then do the test, hopefully this method will increase your responsibilities in this area and get you noticed and maybe taken under someones wing where you can learn.

Personally I dont think many people specialise just in networking alone, having a decent list of microsoft credentials helps as well, for example, at my work place we use IAS and certficate services to issue PC certificates, and based upon whether the certificate exists for that PC, then the computer is placed into a authenticated VLAN which has access to servers, so hoepfully from the example you may look to be more rounded and not just look at a small area.

I hate to say it but most certification companies will oversell the certifications you can do, and train you to pass certs as opposed to learning how to be a good technician.

If I had the little experience you had I would look at the following certifications in something like this order:

A+
Network+
MCDST
70-270 or 70-620 (which are the XP and vista client MCPs)
CCENT on the condition that you are working at a company which is willing to give you experience in Cisco networking gear or wouyld like you to learn more in depth the basics of networking.

The next stage would be by the time you have passed all these, say take 2 months each to properly learn, lab and apply these skills in your job role, you may be in a position to take on server work, and thus could look at MCSA or if your company is using it some of the 2008 server certifications.

Good luck and keep visiting the boards