The Student Room Group
Don't bother. If you are going into networking, you are much much better off by getting a real industry qualification like CCNA/P. Computing Networking at degree level has hardly any hands on, and without hands on experience, then you'd be wasting your money. Type in 'CCNA' on a job seekers website and I guarantee there will be tons of opportunities.
Reply 2
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/current_exams/640-801.html

is this the CCNA you are talking about? 1exam.

just wondering mate, what degree did you do?

Im still at College but I doubt that CCNA is worth more then a degree, its only one exam (if that is the right thing im looking at). That seems to concentrate more on LAN and WAN stuff more than anything else.

The link I gave you too my course is much more widespread and can offer me a lot of oppountities.

My friend said that the CCNA exams are only about £80, so I could do one after my degree, if I really needed it.


Thanks for your help so far though mate.
Job opportunity wise, CCNA is much more relevant. The reason it is worth more is because Cisco CCNA was made by the industry to suit the industry's needs. Degrees are not the same throughout all universities, and this makes it very difficult for an employer to distinguish what you actually know. CCNA is different though, it is the same globally and only includes what the industry actually wants from a network engineer without the superfluous material which you will probably never need. Looking through that course, I would say that 90% of the relevant content can be learned from CCNA within a year. Chances are, you will even learn important stuff that you wouldn't get from a degree. After CCNA, you can go onto CCNP which is the more advanced award, and if you have a CCNP, then the job opportunities available to you are limitless. Seriously though, a CCNA has a much high employability than a broad degree in networking, and if you look through some good networking job places, you will find that a lot of them require CCNA as a minimum to get an interview.

The CCNA consists of 4 semesters, each will require you to take both a Practical Skills examination and a theory test.
I'd agree with that if thats definitely what you want to do and besides you'd get bored very quickly with all the theory. Can't imagine the uni exams would be to pleasant either with all packet formats and protocols to learn.
Hold up.

Have a look around and see what sort of courses and content the various uni degrees involve. You'll find (as I saw when flicking through dozens of courses) that some are Cisco certified and some modules are run by Cisco themselves, so will incorporate the relevent information you may need, whilst adding it to your CV is a bonus.

I know that this year one of the extra modules we can pick from was Cisco run (which, although I declined didn't take it, was very intense and those that passed get the certificate for it - NOTE: the boundaries were higher than average to pass)

I'm not saying Uni IS better, infact my Dad went on a BIG Cisco course (stupidly expensive - but paid for by the company) to land him a decent network analyst job... and as far as i'm aware that was the icing on the cake, as previous experience was a must. But Cisco is looked at pretty highly (also note, i believe in order for you to retain certain Cisco status you have to re-take various courses every few years... although don't quote me on that, I heard that in passing a long time ago).

As for experience, have you looked at the Uni's and whether or not Sandwich courses are for you? Some universities have better placement schemes than others, so research is vital.

And finally.... i'm sure there's nothing wrong with Uni first and then doing extra qualifications if you aren't all that technically inclined at the moment.

- Chris