i had previously worked with the GNS3 and cisco packet tracer console as a part of college lab work. It involved setting up and simulating LAN and VLAN topologies.
Iv seen people in the CS dept , as part of their course , simulate various TCP/IP functions using C and other programming languages . I like coding , and had spent a considerable amount of time learning C , Java ,Databases and Embedded Stuff , So is there any career path i can take up in the networking domain which will also lead me to a work environment where i can extend the skills i have learnt in programming with the above languages?

ps : How much will a ccna help in all of this ?

pps : i have a probable job offer as a hardware support guy. And im thinking of joining it if it helps with what i have in mind.

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CCNA is geared more towards routing and switching, not programming. So if you want to develop/code network applications I would recommend learning python. It sounds like you don't want to be an infrastructure guy. As for your hardware support job offer I don't think that would really help you towards the network programming path, but it would be a great starting opportunity! It's always good to be versed in more than 1 area of IT.

Performance engineering. Add C++ to your skill set - consider Java as C++ with training wheels (like a kid's bike). I make a good 6 figure salary doing performance engineering for a world-wide networking operation. I use C++ w/ C to develop network and application performance monitoring and diagnostic tools. Why C++ and C? Because we want these tools to have minimal impact (memory and CPU) on the systems they run on, yet be as efficient (fast) as possible. In the past, our engineers used Java and scripting languages to perform these functions, but they are too heavyweight and slow to be sustainable. The tools I design and write have been shown to have negligible impact on the systems and networks they run on.

Another skill to gain these days is "big data" - Hadoop, HBase, OpenTSDB (time-series data), etc. And make sure your skills include Linux/Unix systems engineering. 90%+ of network servers running today are Linux systems.

commented: i was begining to lose hope , this was a great help. +4

Thanks to both of you for replying.
i tried asking a lot of people , but didnt get any answers.
@rubberman : i was really starting to think whatever programming iv done would go to waste. hope restored :)

@rubberman : I should have asked you back then , how does C# or python compare to C++ in terms of what you suggested? C# has the .net overhead i suppose which might not make it a suitable option i suppose ? Then what about python ? I read real good words about python everywhere i look.

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