Do you folks have recommendations about where I should go to learn more about networking? I feel like I have a decent grasp of the basics, but there's a ton of stuff I still need to know. To apply a college metaphor to it, I feel like I have a 200-level understanding that covers me for pretty much any residential network, and most very small businesses, but from time to time I butt against the edges of that knowledge.

Here's an example. In the other thread I started recently I talked about a church that I do work for. I'm able to handle the day to day activities of the staff that works there most of the week. They have very basic needs that don't require a server or anything too fancy. However, I have no idea how to handle a full sanctuary, mostly from a DHCP standpoint. I don't know much about subnets and how to physically or programmatically set them up to support a large number of people.

That's the kind of knowledge I'm looking for, and I'm not sure where to find it.

Find a certification that represents the skills you want to shore up. At a quick glance, Network+ from ComTIA might be a good one: http://certification.comptia.org/certifications/network

Then look into the training materials for such a certification even if your not planning on getting the certificate. Cisco training materials for some of their certifications include equipment, may be places near you to rent from to have hands on experience at home.

Another possibility is the numerous free college courses via services like iTunes U, or the paid services like Lynda.com (free for any Seattle Library Card holder, worth seeing if similar is available from your library).

Thanks, Tom. Good ideas!

No problem. The certifications route in particular is one I took while still in the IT only part of my career. Lynda.com resources have been useful recently for shoring up some other skills.

Amusingly shortly after this post, my ISP suffered their first major outage I've seen with them in 2 years. Some sort of peering failure knocked their entire service area in the Seattle region offline. Was fun to troubleshoot even though it wasn't my issue to solve. Reminds me of an old coworker who would still see and poke at network routing issues he spotted at his former employers. Response time from the ISP was about 30 minutes on fixing it up, which for this type of outage was impressive to see.

My own networking skills are what I'd rate intermediate. I usually know when to go engage the CCNA or other appropriate network specialist after doing basic diagnostics on the situation. It was nice working in environments that combined a lot of good specialists into a cohesive team, picked up so much from those situations.