picked up the CCNA courses (Cisco Networking Academy) mostly because the IT role kept surfacing networking questions I could answer with confidence but not really explain. I've finished all three now, from November 2025 to March 2026, and VLANs and STP make a lot more sense than they did before.
it's slower going than a course built for full-time students, an hour here and there around work, but I'd rather understand the why than pass a checklist.
the last one was the enterprise course: OSPF, ACLs and NAT, VPN and IPsec fundamentals, QoS and network automation. I'll probably write up the switch/router lab setup once I've got something worth screenshotting.