I second this. My local community college had a CCNA course (really 4 courses fit into two semesters) with a pretty awesome, knowledgeable instructor. I understand that not all teachers are good but the online coursework that the Cisco Network Academy is pretty thorough and Packet Tracer ( http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/netacad/course_catalog/PacketTracer.html ) helps tremendously (IOU, GNS3 aside). I would gobble that up if your local CC offers it. As far as equipment goes, Cisco is all I know and from hearing my network admin bitch about our HP switch infrastructure... standardize with Cisco. I can't speak for Juniper products.