Would you let a doctor who had only studied books, attended classes, and dissected cadavers operate on you? Of course not. "Theory and practice need to go side-by-side," said Bernd Grohmann, CTO for Alentis, an online business-to-business marketplace uniting ASP buyers with ASP sellers (http://www.alentis.com/). "In addition to a solid, up-to-date theoretical background, you expect hands-on experience, and a lot of practice. Ultimately you look for the same in a network professional."

In today's fast-paced IT world, though, there isn't enough time or staff to provide one-on-one mentoring. So to avoid risk to the production network, many companies have turned to simulation training. "If the subject is hardware related, I personally don't believe simulation is a good option," Grohmann continued. "It's better to work with the real hardware in a good simulated 'environment.'"

Today, real-time, hands-on training using real hardware and software in "live" network scenarios is available over the Internet. "Using this self-paced model, network professionals can experiment without the fear of crashing a production network," said Greg Long, founder and General Manager for Mentor Technologies (http://www.mentortech.com/), a company that provides $3 million worth of the latest Cisco routers, switches, voice networks, and servers for "students" to play with. "And if the system does crash, you can press the 'Reset' button and start over."

A Cisco partner, Mentor