| aadami1 2001-09-07, 12:52 pm |
| Hello Every1,
I am a Network Analyst who has been made redundant in the last few weeks due to the downturn in the economy. I passed my CCNA last Sept 2000 and have 6 months good comercial experience. I did my CCDA back in March 2001. I have (in my last job) used Cisco routers from 1600 -->7*** series.
Also Nortel passport , Lucent + Ascend RAS POPs . Securid + Radius.
I have applied for several jobs but most people that I compete with have 2-3 years experience and will take a cut in status/salary just to get work and it leaves us poor people without any opportunity.
Therefore I have decided to specialise and get into a niche market - Is this god or bad ?
I want to move into network security. My question is what are the tools needed for me to get my foot in the door?
1 >Should I carry on with my CCNP - self study and do all 4 exams without hands-on experience @ home.
2 >Shall I do the MCSE 2000 to get a broader insite of LAN/WAN issues and look at IPSEC etc..from MS prospective.
3 >Do I gain experience with some **nix flavors. - I only have one computer a pII 450 mhz, 700 MB HD, and I need that for email, web access, MS Word etc... I am a bit scared o put Linux over it.
Please note that I do not have much money bcoz I have lost my job. So don't tell me to go out to ebay and buy a few routers and switches to play around on . Those are toys for rich boyz.
Any advice/input/encouragement will be appreciated. |