IT internship, part 1

Taking a cue from the other intern who's posting, I'm going to give all my posts the same title with different parts, so it's easier to follow.

Okay, so I have really been slacking in the posting department, and that's because I've been studying for my CCNA exam. If you don't know, that's Cisco Certified Network Associate, and it's a really good cert to have if you're going into the networking field. I enrolled in the Cisco Networking Academy last year and after that just studied for a good month and a half. Even at work, because they are awesome enough to understand that this cert would be beneficial to both me and them. My test was on the 18th and all spare time (well, most) was spent studying, thus I really didn't get to update much. But it paid off! I passed! I'm a CCNA!

Anyway.

The company is possibly the most laidback company I've ever worked for. Not in terms of getting things done, because everyone gets their work done, but dresscode wise (most of my coworkers wear jeans), and stuff like that. I have a very hands off manager, and in fact most of my work comes from the guys I work with. And there is no shortage of it, which I definitely enjoy. Recently I upgraded a Sniffer Infinistream, which was a more lengthy process than I expected. Sniffers analyze packets that go through a router and are invaluable in figuring out an outage or a problem. I can also generate router configs, which was actually very good practice for the CCNA because they use cisco routers. I've troubleshooted, installed hardware, done work orders, configured things, and basically, finally in a position where I understand what's going on and I can apply what I learned in class, and learn some more. I know a lot more about cellular traffic than I did when I first came in, and how things connect and how packets travel.

The other thing is that everyone is awesome. My group jokes around with each other a lot, but we all get everything done and in on time. I really actually hope that I can extend this to the fall or actually work there permanently.

I promise to update regularly now, probably once a week or so :)