Keeping Current as a Network Engineer & Working your way to becoming a Network Architect

Keeping Current:
It’s crucial to always stay current in any industry that you work in. You want to be the one bringing new ideas to the table and possibly have new solutions to common problems that companies face. Some of the following websites I follow to keep myself current in the Network Industry along with the Data Center Industry are below.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/
 
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/lan-wan.html

Certifications are also a great way to keep current and enhance your skill sets.

Working your way to becoming a Network Architect:
My long term goal is to become a Network Architect and I have found that reading a ton of White Papers along with test results from third party vendors is going to greatly help me achieve this goal. Cisco puts out some great white papers on proven design guides that I highly recommend for anyone to read. The following link is a perfect example and yes I read the entire white paper along with others.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Campus/HA_campus_DG/hacampusdg.html

This has helped me tremendously in being able to design a better network and with my CCNP studies. Cisco also has another great resource, it’s called Cisco Validated Design Program. Check out the following link, its design guides for pretty much every type of network. These are proven and tried design guides from true industry experts.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns741/networking_solutions_program_home.html

Reading benchmark or test results is another great way to get a key understanding on how to evaluate a product before you buy it and what to look for in new hardware.  I follow this website and a majority of Vendors put third party evaluation results on their own website.

http://www.networktest.com/