Career Goal    Make it happen    Learning Notes    Certification Track

What I am going to do and Why?  

I like to design and solve problems. I enjoy figuring out what network architecture, devices, software, system, and fault tolerance you might need. I also think being able to set that hardware up, establish that connectivity and maintain, troubleshoot it when it goes down is very challenging and going to be a very valuable skill. That is where I want to be. 

Having been witnessing dramatic growth of Information Technology industry, I convinced myself to pursue a career in this field. The vision is that non-stop, fault tolerant, redundant, secure and easy manageable networks will be critical to companies for their  " mission critical " usage of the Internet for their business. This guarantees two things: challenging career opportunity and value-added creativity. 
 
My long term goal is to be a very high end network consultant.  I still have a lot to learn before I reach my goal, particularly, very complex enterprise level internetworking design and implementation. 
 

During the past three years, I've been studying and practicing in computing field. I wrote programs for unix, pc and web, designed and prototyped microcontroller/FPGA based interface board, administered Unix/NT/Mac LANs. Recently I realized I should concentrate on direction to really accomplish something. It is about time. 

I started with building my pre-career track with Unix/NT system administration, from system level all the way up to the internetworking, from administering operation to designing architecture. After extensivly exposed myself to networking in LANs level, I decided to concentrate on layer 2-4 of OSI model in a enterprise network scale. I still have a lot to learn or practice to achieve that goal. Check out my recent learning project! 
 
 

Learning without thinking is perilous, especially in a situation with complex subject and vast of materials posted everywhere (Sneak a peek at Network Associate's Protocol Map here ). I have been collecting all of the insights I got after I finished reading or practicing and they really helped me a lot . Here are some of my randomly posted learning notes I would like to share with you. 
 

With two year's digging in networking theory and one year's practice in real world, I believe that learning fundamental principle of networking is the most critical. Comparing my experience of certification exams with what I've learned from my networking EECS122, EECS228, EECS268 classes,  I've come to believe most of the certification programs seem too product-oriented and geared toward system administrators. Individuals who achieve a level of certification from these programs may find difficult to map those skills to other products and often have to be substantially retrained in order to deal with new platforms or technologies. Most importantly, those exams appear to provide exam-takers very little vision regarding any of the topics, as well as the depth required for even moderately advanced network design or analysis and development requirements. 

Of course, I am 100% sure that eventually certification programs will address those issues and bring more breadth and depth. But before that happens, augmenting your skills covered in certification exams with solide knowledge on fundamental concepts and theories of networking is the best way to really stay competitive in this job market. 

Wana take a look at my certification track?