One of the coolest outcomes of our shift away from the industrial-based economy is the renewed focus on learning. People and companies are finally realizing the importance of lifelong learning.

As important as learning is for everyone, it is more crucial for network administrators to continue learning and growing their skills. After all, they are at the very core of what runs just about every company--the network and the servers. Sure, programmers need to keep up with changes in coding practices, and database administrators have to understand how they can store, retrieve, and format data in new and useful ways. But the network administrator also must understand everything from the lowest levels of infrastructure plumbing to the upper layers of intranet applications.

The good news is that network administrators will find a huge amount of training aids. Available coursework and tutorial material has grown tremendously in availability over just a couple of years. The difficulty regarding learning comes with time--or lack thereof. Many network administrators are terribly pressed for time. Making time to learn is tricky, but it is now more possible than ever. Regardless of your server platform and operating system, there are multiple learning options. The hard part is locating the best route to learning given your individual scenario.

The hunt to learn

Let's assume for a moment that you are Roberta, the network administrator at a medi...

Click here to read the rest of this article from Computer User