optical/transmission networking resources

pennywise · 20 Jan 2018 at 23:56

Looking for some resources/websites to begin with that give a good general overview of the fundamentals of transmission/carrier level and optical networks, maybe with a view to sitting some certs in the near future.

Nokia and Ciena have their own courses which would be along the lines of what I'm looking for other than they refer to their own equipment throughout - I'm looking for something a bit more general and non-vendor specific for now.

Been looking at the CONA certification but I'm not sure how relevant or respected this is - if there are any websites or resources anyone can recommend besides this (or even some non-vendor certifications that are well recognised in the industry to get me on the right path) I'd appreciate it.

Caged · 21 Jan 2018 at 13:53

Where are you coming at this from?

pennywise · 21 Jan 2018 at 14:05

My job is seeing me dealing with this sort of stuff more and more these days, I'm picking a lot of it up as I go along but it would be good to get a better idea of the fundamentals and how it all works at a high level so I can see exactly why and how things happen. If there were any certifications that fitted my description it would at least give me a syllabus or tick sheet to work from and would give me something tangible (read: CV worthy) to aim for. Hopefully I'm not being too vague here :S

Caged · 21 Jan 2018 at 14:29

I think if your work has you dealing with it more and more then you should look to them to provide you with the vendor-specific training and certs - as obviously that is going to help you with your job. The outcome of that is you're going to be in a much better position with regards to understanding what you want to focus on further.

I wouldn't disregard a Nokia course on optical network design just because it was Nokia that were putting it on, in the same way people don't write off Cisco certs as just being glorified sales training.

pennywise · 21 Jan 2018 at 15:00

Yeah that's a fair point and is something I'm looking into as well - this post was to try to find something asap that I can get my teeth into before that happens. It's taken about 18 months for them to start putting people through courses towards their CCNA so I don't really want to be waiting that long for what I need. Do you think one of the vendor courses, or at least picking and choosing bits and pieces of what they cover, would be a fair start then?

Caged · 21 Jan 2018 at 16:05

I don't really know enough about the field in all honesty, I just feel that a qualification in designing optical networks 'the Nokia way' and then having the real-world experience that comes with it being your job is probably more valuable than a generic overview from an industry body.

Regarding the industry value of the certs, chuck them into Indeed and see what sort of jobs come back - from a brief glance it seems like employers want vendor-specific stuff, and Nokia is far from a bad choice.