This is the embarrassing part. I'm actually two months into my first junior level position at a colo, and I administer a group of my own servers behind a CARP'd redundant firewall that I set up. I even have access to an old Catalyst that's just sitting around. I know how to set up servers no problem, but what I don't know how to do is make a complicated cluster of machines work together. I sometimes write down hypothetical networking requests to figure out, but I haven't started building out any of those with the spare machines we have around.
I don't feel inept at my job. I don't even feel like I'm useless. But what I do feel is a vast chasm of knowledge and experience between me and my superiors. Knowledge so vast that it seems unobtainable to me. My own skills and knowledge have increased dramatically, and my appetite for learning daily is, honestly, voracious. I just can't shake the feeling that I'll never be as good, with them all coming from academic backgrounds that focused on computing.
For IP networking, I can specific recommend the following books as "force multipliers" of knowledge:
- Routing TCP/IP (Cisco Press)
- Network Warrior (O'Reilly, Cisco-centric, but good, easy to digest intermediate knowledge of layer 2 and 3)
- TCP/Illustrated (A deep dive into TCP/IP. RFC-level depth but easier to conceptualize)
If you're looking for recommendations for other specific areas, let me know and I can probably point you in the right direction.
(found a cheap copy of TCP/Illustrated 2nd ed. on Abe Books. I do so love that site.)