I have just finished the army here in my country, Greece. We are being drafted for military service when you are above the 18th year of age. I am now trying to figure out what to do as a profession and what I really liked and was good in my Comp Eng degree was hardware and specifically I was interested in networks from the hardware side. What I mean is that I was good in setting up a network using various routers, switched etc. Now that I am free to study again I wanted to ask you whether there is an engineer/hardware type of work in networks that doesnt rely to much on software. In other words I want to setup the physical side and let someone else worry about OS, software etc. In case there is what do I have to study further to achieve this position e.g. protocols, maybe programming languages? Since the army took a part of my life would it be safe to start reading on my own or maybe join a program like Cisco training in order to catch up? Please any advice would be helpful.