How can you gain network administration experience?

In my Experience you need to get the dedicated time and effort in committing to learn and learn hard. You learn from many outlets and sources to enhance your ability and confidence you need

As a young Lad all you need is your hands-on-laps for your projects and assignments. This is the place to gain your confidence for the needed skillset. You need to play with everything in your virtual Labs to gain more grounds and knowledge of what you want to accomplish at the end of task at hand

Once you acquire the skills and knowledge by getting certified, you need to find opportunities where you can bring your skills and knowledge into practice by involving yourself into projects and gaining on-site work experience. It's fine, if you are a beginner and you are part of a project and you don't understand certain concepts / implementations. Keep the bigger picture (complete design) in your mind while breaking that into smaller parts / concepts while you are doing your implementation. Don't hesitate to seek out for support from seniors in the team. It's fine if you fail to implement something for the first time, keep trying you will eventually get it right.

You can also start working in the support role where your role is more focused on customer communication but also has some dependency on the engineering team who works on the network issues reported by the customers. You can voluntarily involved and discuss the networking technicalities with the engineering team to gain knowledge for different troubleshooting methodologies.

After you've gained the confident you can go for the real gigs. You need to start as an intern and probably volunteering on minor projects to enhance and shape your skills. But don't forget you need to keep learning and learning because there are new stuff each day. You need to stay on top of your game

To be a pro you can also join Communities on the same major because there are diverse topics that you shouldn't get yourself confused with. Stay focused and inline with what you actually wanna achieve

- Earn relevant certifications such as CompTIA Network+, Cisco CCNA, or Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator. - Participate in open-source projects related to networking. - Network with professionals in the field by attending industry events, conferences, and meetups. - Set up a home network to gain practical experience in configuring routers, switches, and other networking devices