I would say that there are very biased instructors within the academic world. I, for one, teach the Linux courses at GateWay Community College and place a strong emphasis on what it is that they are learning and showing them that they will see open source in a multitude of areas - even areas they imagined it to be non-existent. I've had plenty of debates with my colleagues (in academia and IT) regarding open source and utilizations of Linux distros. Really, I feel it boils down to what you are doing and the familiarity of the staff. I would never say that open source and Linux are a waste of time... Then again, I suppose you are right when you mention that you are preaching to the choir. To further my statements, I would like to encourage you to look at what you have brought up and relate it to individuals, academic freedom in instruction, and not correlate it with the entire institution's constitution. If someone did that based on my classes and GWCC, they may go back to say, "GateWay is anti-Microsoft." This would be overall an inaccurate statement. Not that I am "anti-Microsoft," but I could see a student getting that as a takeaway - due to my strong passion for open source technologies and Linux. 

To address the CompTIA certs: I also encourage my students to go get the CompTIA certs, if they can. One really cool thing about CompTIA's Linux+ cert is that it is a 3-for-1 cert. If you pass CompTIA's tests, you get the CompTIA Linux+, SUSE CLA, and the LPIC-1 certs. I personally feel that there is a lot of value in that for students just entering the field. I do agree that CompTIA certs are low-hanging fruit, but they also give that extra support to get you in the door (if you lack the documented experience). It's great to go further, and I also encourage that - but I would never call the CompTIA certs worthless to those that are entering the field in question.

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:
Comptia certs are pretty useless, unless your company pays you a bonus for every cert you get.  Then they're great as a shill for you exploiting your management's obvious lack clue that they *are* worth anything, and lack of better ways to incent you to learn something vs. gaming the system for more cash.  They've always been the low-hanging fruit.

Anymore, not knowing linux is a death knell to a career in networking, it immediately limits your ability to automate and troubleshoot, well anything.

Every Cisco, Arista, Juniper, whatever really box you'll see in a data center runs linux or like (juniper still loves bsd) underneath, although they don't of course market this any more than Google does for Android being linux underneath. Troubleshooting a nasty Cisco Nexus 7000 switch bug, they're likely to give you a "root patch" and ask you do do some stuff at a bash prompt (what linux?!).  Arista and some others don't hide bash from you, even (gasp!) documenting internal api's to replace/augment their software.

Although the hardware does a lot of the heavy lifting, all the control-plane  of the devices are done from a linux userlands in almost every network platform now.  Especially since most companies like Cisco and Arista don't even make their own chips anymore, rather just buying them from Broadcom now that again is highly invested in linux as the control-plane of their SoC's. Switch vendors really do nothing more than write an api layer for users to configure features now.

Furthermore, the "buzz" in networking is now about SDN, Software Defined Networking, which is something borne almost entirely of linux roots of some flavor, and you simply need to be able to manage or at least navigate under linux.  Linux kernel, advance ip routing features, namespace separation (ala routing vrf's), etc make that possible, regardless if Cisco, Oracle, or whoever puts a branded software layer over it and a pretty web or thick client (hopefully not java, eww).

As stated by James, there is always bias for what you know, especially what pays your bills.  If they're teaching windoze technologies, of course their rhetoric against linux will pervade every bit of training that sense of "value" in buying/learning their closed software with micro$ofts puppet hand in their back doing the real talking.  Same of Cisco telling you how much better they are than Juniper or Arista, thought they all use the same hardware now, really comes down to features and who is less buggy (read: they all suck now).

How often do you see a network class that *isn't* cisco-based? Not often, and if there were, I'd doubt it's value as you need something describing appliances or hardware use cases that come with having a cisco switch or other.  Having no love of Cisco these days myself, it's still the best documented, supported, and accepted (ie. respected) training avenues out there, buying a few $40 dollar switches on ebay/craigslist, and a library book to learn on can go a long way toward a career.

Better yet, if you want to learn networking, just use GNS3 software these days.  Not a perfect replacement for hardware, but it can teach you the hard things like bgp easily enough, and there are many pre-built labs out there to download and toy with.

-mb



On 05/24/2015 04:23 PM, parabellum7@yahoo.com wrote:
Yesterday, I met an individual going to ITT. We discussed our respective areas of study and goals. Personally, I have a strong interest in Open Source and Wireless. I'm also doing a CompTIA Network+ prep course through the Maricopa County Library. It's free if you have a library card and a wealth of info regardless if you're going to get that cert or not. He claims his instructors say any of the CompTIA certs are worthless. He also says he actually 'hates open source' and his instructors are telling him it's a 'dead-ender'. That pretty much left me speechless.


I know I'm preaching to the choir on this part, but much of the web and cloud runs on 'nix and it seems to be the preferred services offered. I've read multiple articles that many big outfits are migrating to Open Source. Major manufacturers are selling machines with 'nix as an option and guess what Google uses in their data centers? Even consumer grade routers say 'Open Source Ready' on the box and the fine print says they're compatible with DD-WRT. Oh, and then there's that whole Android thing.


Are they really teaching those attitudes? Or maybe this individual is confused. Is it even possible to get into the big-leagues of networking without needing to know Open Source OS & apps?



-K

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