This is entirely an opinion answer but I would have to say go with the CCNA. It can be a stepping stone to other Cisco certs. I've completed the courses and it is quite indepth. It covers cisco products, obviously, but it also covers all networking aspects. Right now @ college they're forcing me to redo the Cisco course as well as do a Nortel course. I'm not bothering to reread for the cisco course (the material only changes slightly) and I decided not to read for Nortel and just go based on what cisco had taught me. I've been pulling off 90s and both curriculumns stuff. Networking is networking. The first time I took the CCNA the rumour as that if you take the CCNA then you can also walk in and right the Network+ course. I almost went to a private college to become a network engineer (price got in my way) but they taught the CCNA and Network+ courses and they said students usually skipped whichever course happened to be covered second because the material was so repetitive. Also CCNA comes with a nice salary if you listen to rumours. When I finished the course the rumoured salary out of HS with no college training was like $30,000USD.