"Things to learn early on in career" - Network Engineering

 

If you on an early stage of your Network Engineering career, learning following things will immensely help You to get up to the speed with real world requirements/skills.

1. Learn about different optical fibers types and subtypes - Single Mode vs. Multi-mode, OS vs. OM specifications.

2. Learn about different Optical & Optical to Ethernet SFP types, Distance they cover, Speeds they offer, Connector types they got.

3. Learn the internal architecture of a Router at least at high level if not deep.  

4. Learn at least basics of ASICs and their high level differences among chip makers.

5. Pick early on "Overlay Protocols" such as - GRE, VxLAN & Geneve fundamentals as they seems to be all around in 2021.

6. Pick on fundamentals of "MPLS" - You will need that pretty much everywhere despite being in Enterprise or SP.

7. Learn about fundamental building blocks of Coding - Don't focus on Networking application of it to keep it clean at the beginning.

8. Learn & Practice "Kepner Tregoe problem solving technique"

HTH...

A Network Artist 🎨

Where & Why did We Lost SDN ?

 

In theory, the core objectives of Software Defined Networking (SDN) & Intent Based Networking (IBN) should have been (As an Integrated Package):

1. Introduce System Thinking

2. Simplified Life Cycle Mgmt.

3. Introduce New Abstraction Layers to Help Businesses People Have a Realtime/Historical View of Business Performance Metrics & Insights

4. Seamless Integration between Technology Metrics & Businesses Metrics to Fill the Gap between The Two

5. Reduced Complexity & Running Cost

6. Flexible Consumption Models

7. Embedded Security

8. Flexibility to Build Innovative Solutions on Top of Given Platform that Meets My Specific Environmental Needs

9. Gel Well with Existing & Legacy Environment and Tools

10. Allow Me to Run Dry Runs, Simulations and Offer Me Insights & Recommendation to Keep Improving + Troubleshooting

11. Reduce my Risk Profile (Technically & Financially)

But...What We Ended Up with:

0. Fancy GUIs Built Around Object Oriented Programmability Principles, You Just Need 10 Clicks to Create VLAN & Map it to a Port 😇

1. Separation of Control Plane & Data Plane

2. Network Virtualization

3. Network Function Virtualization & White Boxes

4. Human Driven Programmability & Automation

5. Controllers

6. Tons of Overlay Protocols

7. Proprietary Solutions

HTH...

A Network Artist 🎨

Why would I care " How does that God Damn Router Really Work ? "

 

    

Interesting enough, You could pass your favorite networking industry vendor's Expert level lab exam and through out the process, they never really tell You how does Router/Switch (or whatever fancy name they may have) really work behind the scenes.

On the flip side, at its core - IP Networking is all about moving packets:
1. From point A to point B
2. Switching packets between Input & Output interfaces

But still You can provide an expert opinion on Control Plane, Data Plane & Mgmt. Plane

Perhaps You believe too much into voodoo magic  😉

HTH...

A Network Artist 🎨

The Tale of Application Aware Networking

 

Almost a decade ago some Networking Industry vendor/people threw this idea of the holy " Application Aware Networking/Infrastructure " thingy and still today it seems of a popular school of thoughts among Network Engineers that follow the Flat Earth Theory.

What they often miss though is:

1. Business runs on top of business platforms, business processes and services as opposed to contrary belief on Applications.

2. Applications comes in different forms, shapes and Architectural choices - SOA, Microservices, Centralized, Distributed etc.

3. If you keep track of Applications or meta data, You must keep and maintain their state which means resources and state sync

4. You as networking engineer have never been taught about how to gather Application requirements

5. Your favorite OEM/Vendor doesn't provider you with any of good tools, procedures and methods to capture any of above information effectively.

6. Do you speak the language that Business folks understand ?

HTH...

A Network Artist 🎨

Da Vinci Code of IT & Network Engineering (Part 1 of 5) - A Road to Clarity ?

Now the reasons for writing this post were many. But let's list them down quickly and briefly before we move forward, since in the end of the day people who are reading this should have good clarity if this is of their interest or not without diving too deep. 

1. Lately I'll be completing 18 years into the current IT industry this month. While It may sound like a lot, but eventually I am still learning pretty much everyday. Some of those learnings comes from - Books, Blogs, Videos, Audios, Research Papers, Practice, Discussions etc., while others came and still are from - First hand experience, A continuous closed loop of -> Learning -> Practicing & Experimenting -> Build Mental Model -> Validating Hypothesis -> Improve & Optimize. 

Besides this I definitely met some great people. While many of those from same industry and profession that I admired (More on this in part 2 of series), in last couple of years I rather met many other people which were from different industry and gave my different and broader perspectives around things that I never thought much about myself early on in my career.

"The people who are very much like You (Same industry or profession), will help you become bigger version of yourself. But people who very different from You (different industry or profession), will help you become better version of yourself".

2. Lessons learned "The Hard Way"

3. There is a lot of non-sense that is going around in the IT and Networking Industry at the moment and lately tons of people keep reaching out to me to find about how they should sail throw this ocean of dilemma around - what to learn and what not to learn, since there are just too many things out there. So Yes, hopefully by the end of series you will come out of it clean & clear.  

4. Lately many people, colleagues & friends in IT and Network industry lost their job in this pandemic (#OpenToWork is pretty common on LinkedIn). So on my part I started an initiative to help those people as #OpenToHelp , So I am hoping they find this series useful.

5. It's my way of paying back to IT & Networking community.

So buckle up and hold on tight...

HTH...

A Network Artist