Wouldn't recommend this route anymore, the days of the IT professional are numbered. Read the book "Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google" if you want a glimpse on what the future holds. In-house networks, storage, and computing will soon become a utility for purchase, just like electricity. Companies simply won't need to have their own infrastructure anymore, when they can just cheaply buy computing power as a service. This is what happened during the industrial revolution with electricity, and it is happening with computing now. Google has their business model deep into this "cloud-computing" technology, and they will make it happen.

To answer your original question though, there are plenty of books and online courses to pursue these routes. I hold my Novell CNA&CNE (now pretty much defunct), Microsoft MCSE, and a Cisco CCNA, which I took courses for mostly at night thru the local colleges. I did the Cisco CCNA on home study, Cisco publishes their own training books available online or at most bookstores. I will say this, without a lab to work on the equipment while you train, the certificate you get will be pretty much in just theory, and for the most part worthless.