Pursuing Certification

Remember the scene near the end of The Wizard of Oz when the Wizard grants the Scarecrow a diploma, the Cowardly Lion a medal, and the Tin Man a testimonial?

Network certifications are kind of like that. I can picture the scene now:

The Wizard: "And as for you, my network-burdened friend, any geek with thick glasses can administer a network. Back where I come from, there are people who do nothing but configure Cisco routers all day long. And they don't have any more brains than you do. But they have one thing you don't have: certification. And so, by the authority vested in me by the Universita Committeeatum E Pluribus Unum, I hereby confer upon you the coveted certification of CND."

You: "CND?"

The Wizard: "Yes, that's, uh, Certified Network Dummy."

You: "The Seven Layers of the OSI Reference Model are equal to the Sum of the Layers on the Opposite Side. Oh, rapture! I feel like a network administrator already!"

Certification doesn't guarantee that you really know how to administer a network. That ability comes from real-world experience-not from exam crams.

However, certification is important in today's competitive job market. So, you may want to pursue certification-not just to improve your skills but also to improve your résumé. Certification is an expensive proposition. Its tests can cost several hundred dollars each, and depending on your technical skills, you may need to buy books to study or enroll in training courses before you take the tests.

You can pursue two basic types of certification: vendor-specific and vendor-neutral. The major networking vendors (such as Microsoft, Novell, and Cisco) provide certification programs for their own equipment and software. CompTIA, a nonprofit industry trade association, provides the best-known vendor-neutral certification.