Hey guys,
I recently graduated college with a BS in Information Technology and earned my A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications along the way. I was lucky enough to land a job that put me as their system administrator of a small amount of employees. They don't have any crazy regulations or necessity for a specific uptime so it allows me to play in the servers, networking devices, etc. They decided to revamp their entire network about a year ago so I was able to lead the entire project. I've built a new AD, GPO, DHCP, DNS, and Exchange from scratch as well as our networking gear which I implemented VLANs, QoS, and static routes. We have a remote office that I connected back to the main office using a VPN.
We are contractors for mainly phones like Shoretel and NEC which can be IP based. My company sends me out to install sites to work on the network with their IT department. I am seeing my fair share of strange issues and different network setups. I'm usually leading wireless deployments of Aruba wireless, sometimes IP security cameras, and sometimes just networking issues that the customer has.
I want to learn more about networking to be more of an asset to this company or possibly further my career at another point. If anyone has taken the CompTIA Network+, it is a great introduction to networking but it is pretty basic. Do you guys have any suggestions on certifications, books, or alternate learning avenues I could go to dive deeper into the more advanced protocols of routing, complex VLAN situations, and other networking experiences past what I am currently at? I know CCNA is a great networking cert but I would prefer not to force myself down one vendor but if it is what I have to do, I can. Also, I think it's important to actually show examples of how something is used rather just the definition of what BGP routing does.
Thank you for your input guys,
Matt