If Cisco training is your aspiration, and you've no practical experience with routers or switches, initially you should go for the Cisco CCNA qualification. This educates you in knowledge and skills to work with routers. The world wide web is built up of many routers, and large companies with several locations also need routers to keep their networks in touch.

Achieving this qualification will mean it's likely you'll end up working for national or international companies that have several locations, but still need contact. Alternatively, you may find yourself employed by an internet service provider. Either way, you'll be in demand and can expect a high salary.

If you haven't yet had any experience of routers, then the CCNA course is definitely sufficient - you're not yet ready for your CCNP. Once you've worked for a few years, you'll know if CCNP is something you want to do.

Students often end up having issues because of one area of their training which doesn't even occur to them: The breakdown of the course materials before being sent out to you. Normally, you will purchase a course requiring 1-3 years study and get posted one section at a time - from one exam to the next. It seems to make sense on one level, but consider these issues: What if there are reasons why you can't finish every single section? And what if you find the order of the modules counter-intuitive? Without any fault on your part, you mightn't complete everything fast enough and not get all the study materials as a result.

To provide the maximum security and flexibility, it's normal for most trainees to have all their training materials (which they've now paid for) posted to them in one go, with nothing held back. You can then decide how fast or slow and in what order you want to finish things.

We need to make this very clear: It's essential to obtain proper 24x7 round-the-clock professional support from mentors and instructors. You'll definitely experience problems if you don't heed this. Locate training schools with proper support available at any time you choose (no matter if it's in the middle of the night on a weekend!) Make sure it's always direct access to tutors, and not a call-centre that will take messages so you're parked in a queue of others waiting to be called back during office hours.

World-class organisations offer an online access round-the-clock service pulling in several support offices over many time-zones. You're offered an environment that accesses the most appropriate office at any time of day or night: Support available as-and-when you want it. Unless you insist on online 24x7 support, you'll very quickly realise that you've made a mistake. You may not need it throughout the night, but what about weekends, early mornings or even late evenings at some point.

Looking around, we find an excess of employment in IT. Deciding which one could be right for yourself is generally problematic. Working through long lists of different and confusing job titles is a complete waste of time. Most of us don't really appreciate what our next-door neighbours do at work each day - so what chance do we have in understanding the ins and outs of a specific IT job. To get through to the essence of this, we need to discuss a number of different aspects:

* The kind of individual you think yourself to be - what kind of jobs you find interesting, and conversely - what you hate to do.

* Why it seems right getting involved with computing - maybe you want to triumph over a life-long goal like self-employment for example.

* The income needs that guide you?

* With everything that Information Technology encapsulates, it's obvious you'll need to be able to absorb the differences.

* You'll also need to think hard about the amount of time and effort you're going to give to your training.

In all honesty, it's obvious that the only real way to seek advice on these areas tends to be through a good talk with an experienced advisor who has experience of the IT industry (and chiefly it's commercial requirements.)

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