A+ or Network+??

well jhun, I thought the 2 A+ examines would be the hardest and the Net+ exam would be a little easier. It worked out opposite for me. If you have a good grasp on basic hardware and their function, and know the same with OSs', the A+ exams cover most of that. The Net+ exam was very hard for me, a lot of abbreivations to remember. As for self study, that would not work for me but everyone is different. The course I took was an excelerated learning format. You had 10-12 hours a day of lecture and lab, then 5-10 chapters of reading @ night. No time for anything else and no distractions. It worked for me. I got the certs and obtained lots of knowledge. The study guides I like the most was the "Mike Meyers' Passport" books. They seems to really keep your interest and covered most of what was on the tests. Don't take to much time on the practice test as for some of the questions are incorrectly answered, the only thing they do is get you in the mode for testing. Good luck and let me know if I can help answer any more questions.

glacier

hi

thanks glacier for the tips. i hope i could also pass the exam like you. probably i'll take the A+ exam first since as you said it may be the most easy of the two.
the reason i asked if self study was enough is that i currently have a job and can no longer find time to enroll myself into taking up courses.
well thanks again...have a nice day....

Glacier, congrats on the tests, always nice to have some more credentials isn't it ?

Since you're trying to decide what certs to look at next, if you're into networking, then you can try for the CCNA, I know its vendor specific, but once you've gone through all its topics you've covered a lot of ground that is generic to all networking. Plus it gives you very strong fundamentals in core networking, addressing and internetworking.

Otherwise look at an application style cert.. like if you administer Windows boxen then the MCSE or MCSA, RHCE for Redhat boxes etc etc..

You can also look at the security+ cert from CompTIA if you want to add something on those lines (always useful, though most people think sec+ is a useless cert knowledgewise).

The best way to decide would be to look at what you're currently doing in your job, or what you're planning to be doing in a few months / a year, and choose a cert based on that.

Having a vendor cert is nice, and you can usually get your company to pay for it (and maybe even training), if you convince them that it will help you handle the product better.

This has been pretty well covered, but the A+ and Network+ are your basic get you started subjects. I agree that it would be good to take the A+ and then the Network+ plus (as a matter a fact they require that at some of the Cisco Colleges). Kind of like taking calculus before taking algebra.

One of the things I ran into was that the network+ subject used packets and frames interchangeably, if I remember correctly. And CCNA was very specific about them.

CCNA is vendor specific, but also much more detailed in the networking arena. It talks about RIP, which all the routers use as well as EIGRP, which only Cisco uses. You get a real understanding of the subject that easily carries over to other vendors - you just have to learn their syntax.

Thats very wrong of them.. the difference between a packet and a frame is a full layer ! In fact most purists don't even like it when you refer to something as a 'TCP packet', its technically a TCP segment...

Though nowadays it all gets blurred because TCP only ever seems to run on IP, and IP only ever seems to run on ethernet

But still.. a frame contains the whole data-link header.. its horribly inaccurate for them to refer to it as a packet.

where did that come from sahirh??