Career Advice - CCNA anyone?

[PretoriaSillyperson]

I'm always in and out of here and now I need some advice for myself - for once.

I've a SA COM license but for many reasons I'm now back in the UK (family to follow shortly). I'm working as a systems trainer while I get my hours up. At the mo I'm training A+, N+ and a bit of XP (MCP). Thing is, I now have the opportunity to train (for free) to CCNA and thence to CCNP (my choice of modules). I'll then be training in this line. The other option I have is to get (another) MCSE (mine's in NT4) and then train others in that. As far as I can see, Cisco is the way forward as MCSEs are worthless in the real world - I think that's pretty much a priori.

Any advice from Cisco types very welcome - it's not often a UKP 5000 course comes up for free. I've even been given a 2500 Series router to play with.

Thanks,

PSP
London

[The Nr Fairy]

PSP:

Treat the CCNA as a starter for ten. Also, one C2500 won't be enough - try to blag time in a properly equipped lab, or fork out for Boson NetSim or something like that.

Depending on what you want to do, CCIE with supplementary practical experience and something else - for example security stuff - will be of use.

For what it's worth, I did my CCNA course a few years ago, still have the books, but fluffed the exam by 1 question each time ! I think it was because I was doing my CPL(H) exams simultaneously . . .

[PretoriaSillyperson]

Thanks for your reply, chief.

The 2500 is just for home - my employer is a Cisco partner and we have c. US160,000 worth of routers and switches in the toy shop - also unlimited access to books, Boson and CCNP classes. I think I've made the Cisco decision already, really although I didn't realise that the CCNA was so low level.

Richard R.