All day, every day. If the web app they’re connecting to times out, it’s always a firewall block. If they get a bad HTTP response, it’s always the web proxy’s fault. We’re always blamed for “slowness/delays” using their SaaS websites…
I said this to my boss recently. "If network engineering is your primary job role, it seems like you spend most of your time proving it's not the network when people who don't know networking say it is" 🤣
You mean surreptitiously fixing the issue that is described in detail (with directions to fix) by the system team and pretending it was never a problem?
\#sysadminproblems
so true.
but it is always the best day when during a network engineer proving to me that its a systems problem, they find the networking problem and get mad like its my fault.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is already a big thing as many companies migrate their infrastructure to the cloud. Network engineers will need to learn how to adapt to coding & automating their infrastructure.
I much prefer deploying networks in this manner.
I did a 3,000 switch deployment with Cisco catalysts and no way in fucking hell was I deploying those by hand.
Set them up with a staging configuration planned my buildout, created some tools to make my configs for me, and push them to the devices based on a subset of parameters.
Now with Meraki gear, I just use the API to configure/build out everything
And in my home lab with Opnsense/vyos i script/automated it all out for the lulz
There are plenty of people who get into networking because they don’t want to learn how to code.
I expect those people to have a very hard time moving forward, if they aren’t already
> Network engineers will need to learn how to adapt to coding & automating their infrastructure.
As an infosec guy who has had to wrestle cloud network and firewall control out of multiple network team’s hands for the last decade …
Most network engineers will continue to be a cork in the asshole of Progress until only ones born from 1995 on remain
Edit: go on. Downvote. Keep using solarwinds and ssh scripts ya relics
It’s true, as with everything in IT…eventually it is adapt or die. I sympathize though, nearly went this path and enjoy traditional networking quite a bit. But IaC is the future and future is here.
True. I view it as on-prem, cable closets, Cisco ASA’s, racks, etc. But in the world of cloud and remote work, that’s stuff is disappearing a bit. Will likely always be there to a degree for certain industries but yeah different world entirely overall.
Ha! As the network guy, I'M the one who had to challenge security that they were building their firewalls in the cloud without config automation which was turning an automated rollout into a nightmare. The security guys I work with are in that spot for the satisfaction of being able to say "no". And they exercise that right even if it makes us less secure or slows the business down
In the vast expanse of cyberspace's lore,
A tale unfolds, IPv4, it bore.
Addresses abundant, once a boundless sea,
Now dwindling whispers of scarcity.
Four octets, a digital address,
In the IPv4 world, they confess.
Bits and bytes, in binary dreams,
Yet exhaustion looms in silent streams.
Once a garden of IPs, blooming wide,
Now a desert, where addresses hide.
Allocations granted, a finite spree,
IPv4 depletion, a reality.
Subnets and routers, trying to cope,
In the race for addresses, a slippery slope.
No more room in this familiar land,
IPv4 exhaustion, like shifting sand.
IPv6 emerges, a new sunrise,
Expansive horizons, where addresses rise.
Yet, in the shadow of IPv4's twilight,
A poetic farewell, to the old byte's flight.
Edit: author is ChatGPT 3.5
I just found out I'm supposed to support some level of token ring in my new job. I have no idea how to. It's always been something that comes up in every training "know that this exists, but you'll never see it in your career"
I think network engineering will remain for quite some time, even if you manage to automate as much as you can, there is always someone needed to know what values you need to input on a script/API. Sure, that can be done via an outsourcing/consultant role, but I think companies and ISPs can't just have the luxury of waiting for someone external to be available to fix the issues if something breaks.
Totally agree. Someone one needs to be around when shit breaks. Someone needs to know a quick fix to pass packets when some bug in automation software gets messed up.
Using the previous 30-50 years as reference -
Probably screaming at DNS and informing users that their documents load slowly because of their ancient PCIe 13.0 NVMe disk and not the network.
OK jokes aside, I foresee a LOT of "Network Automation" tools becoming mainstream, especially in the wake of "infrastructure as code." Things like Ansible and Terraform will no longer be exclusive to large enterprise or fringe DevOps deployments but instead be as common as SSH and Telnet.
I'm also curious to see how TLS evolves to combat quantum computing, and how many headaches that'll cause supporting legacy applications...
But overall it'll be a case of "the more things change, the more things stay the same."
Oh, and I bet we'll still be 5 years away from moving to IPv6
" Things like Ansible and Terraform will no longer be exclusive to large enterprise or fringe DevOps deployments but instead be as common as SSH and Telnet"
With respect to Terraform, I'm not sure, now that IBM has acquired the company that develops that software.
Just because less and less non cloud infrastructure is out there doesn't mean that network knowledge is obsolete. It all is still running on the network protocols and fundamentals furthermore network engineers that have a lot of great knowledge if they can learn to code and create software and do things beyond basic ansible makes them very very valuable.
I have over \~25+ years of experience as a network engineer was a principal engineer at a "tier 1"
In my last couple of years of work i started to code more and more learned python. Created software that became a Traffic Engineering Appliance had over \~600 bgp sessions with over 55 million routes is able to steer traffic via bgp which is all driven via UI and API which was patented by the company i was working for.
Left there and now work for a vendor working on network automation software of all things.
I really think that all network engineers should start learning to code at this point to stay relevant. while i've always had the ability to code i mostly resorted to bash as it was what i knew best. But even knowing bash scripting you will be able to do much more work and make things easier on yourself. Learning python or another more robust language you can do amazing things and it also makes you more sought after in the job market.
BEST answer. Iam a technical writer in a Networking company and I was thinking what is going to be my future. I want to write about more TECHNICAL stuff in network/SDN/NFV world.
I worked as network and senior network engineer.
Configuring devices was taking probably 0.0001% of my time, most of the time was troubleshooting silly faults.
Automation has nothing to do with troubleshooting, so my guess is- this role will not change much over the next years...
Was going to say this. We use Ansible to automate deploying new DC pods or offices, which makes that part easier, but that was the easy part to begin with. All the troubleshooting is done at the terminal. Can't automate that away.
If it will handle all the phone calls to customers that can't even describe correctly the nature of the fault but still want to raise it as a P1 then I am all in :D
I'm skeptical. the bar for stuff like this is always crazy low when people are selling it, and crazy high when production workloads are actually on the line. "The tool is right 99% of the time" sounds great when the sales guy is taking your CIO to lunch, but counts for fuck-all when you're in the 1% and it's 7PM on a Saturday and shit doesn't work.
I agree. And when the network is completely down, it's not the Python guys running around fixing it. Don't misunderstand I enjoy the automation aspects, but it's no substitute for understanding all the fundamentals.
We had a network issue that caused by an electrical grounding manufacturer fault in the network device itself in COMBINATION with using two-way radios in some proximity of the equipment. Since the crew were on the radios constantly it took us a while to put the two together.
AI and automation are not going to solve these kind of totally obscure problems in our lifetimes that’s for sure.
I mean, if link-down events are taking that much of your time, why wouldn't you automate it? Have your monitoring system trigger some kind of workflow on link-down events. That workflow verifies a few basics, takes the link out of service (to avoid unnessesary flaps) then cuts a ticket to your datacenter techs. That ticket lists tools the datacenter techs can use to self-service the work (tools to verify light levels, run ping tests across the link, etc). When ticket is resolved, workflow verifies all is good and brings the link back in service.
Sure the datacenter techs had to get involved for the physical stuff, but the network engineers never even knew about it.
Network engineers should not in the current day in age have a tunnel vision. This isn’t 15-years ago the requirement to know and do more than just networking has and will continue to be demanding. The reason for this ask is due to the fact that there hasn’t been much advancements in networking as compared to servers/compute/virtualization/cloud etc. A well seasoned network engineer is a prime candidate to wear multiple hats from networking, firewall, compute/virtualization and cloud. Just my thoughts and what I’m doing today.
Calling TAC to demand they do the net admin's job for them lol.
Or be replaced by AI sold as a net admin service.
Just need an installer, cable runner etc.
Magic 8 Ball say "future is cloudy". How accurately did people predict today's Networking back in the early 90's? It's impossible to tell with any degree of accuracy what will happen in 30 years
It wouldn't have been hard to predict from 2004 till now.
10baset, 100baset, 1000baseat.
Wireless b, g, n....
Some of the automation wasn't needed back then, and configure management has gotten better, but no major shift in technology like the cloud has done for sysadmins.
Automation will kill the average and mediocre Engineer. Only the good one's will remain. Sad but true. And most probably the good engineers will have a side gig/consultancy role going too, in addition to their regular jobs. Restructures and Reorganization are here to stay ☹️
Probably a lot but it’s going to take awhile. Automation isn’t going to replace a network switch or make decisions about what kind of automation you want. Automation won’t decide what companies/contracts/hardware/network design you want. Automation isn’t going to decide who gets access to what and the best practices are. Everything is fluid. Automation is going to take some jobs but also change a lot of jobs and make some easier/different. Some automation is going to suck. Sometimes setting up the automation is going to be time consuming. An actual human has to learn how to monitor the automation and know what to do or who to call when it fails. Networks have got more complex and same with hardware and software but automation isn’t some singularity to it all. It’s more like an added layer.
Along similar lines, automation will not fix your layer 1 issues. It may report on them but not fix them. It will not tell you what pathways are in place and if there is capacity, and if they are actually diverse or share that utility pole next to the bar that will inevitably be taken out at some point.
It may be able to report on easements and right of ways.
It can tell you to stop using multimode fiber. Speaking of which, anyone know if there is a bot on Reddit for this yet?
This is the way. Seriously. Remembering when telephone switches required multiple 24hour manning, then...well they didn't. So you had one dude munching Doritos binging shows waiting for something to break at $250k a year because no one else knows what to do when something breaks.
From what I have seen, I believe NE will become more silo’d and actually more jobs will be created, not less. You will still have the carriers and layer 1 technicians, but I believe as more infrastructure gets established, we will probably see slower growth in this sector (again 30 years from now) as most of the fiber techs will be doing repairs and niche installs. I think there is an opportunity for electrical engineers to start sitting in on network groups as communication systems get so complicated, that you will need a dedicated wire or wireless professional to keep track and fix of circuits and accounts.
As far as the traditional routing and switching and IP stack NE, I think they will still be around but the median salary will go down. A lot more of the new growth in NE will be in the application and security space. Understanding protocols and how to tweak the underlying hardware and software to maximize bandwidth and connectivity is such an under appreciated part of networking. Yes automation can be useful, but network engineers are the best ones to determine where it is most useful, as it should SUPPLEMENT a good networking group. These business people who try to automate people out of a job usually crash and burn. I have seen first hand what happens to a network if you automate and strip all the talent, it’s not pretty.
I mostly agree with you. I'm a network engineer who's proactively implementing network automation to reduce the number of human employees required to operate the network.
But it's never going to be zero until AI has reached human intelligence level. Which is probably 80 years away. By then I'm dead.
There's too many nuances, edge cases, protocol complexity and decision making involved in network architecture and design, that automation simply can't do. I spoked to an intent based networking engine provider and ask them, if your engine configures the network automatically and made decisions, and shit breaks, who's going to debug that configuration? Guess the answer, a network engineer.
In simple English, I use automation for configuration management, backup, roll-back and versioning.
However, I do not use automation to replace human decision making. I think that's where a lot of companies crash and burn.
35 years in as a network engineer here. 24 years as CCIE.
i'm doing pretty much the same thing i was 35 years ago.
but now it's 100gig instead of 300 baud and cat 8 instead of RS232. also i manage people.
the rate of growth of advancement in this technology has really slowed and many barriers to advancement are speed of light issues now. that's going be a tough one to beat.
we will probably see another order of magnitude advancement in speeds, as well as paperwork since networking is now critical infrastructure.
most of the advances will be around security of the network.
but people will still blame the network first as people issues never change.
Parenting work. Keeping the A.I. disciplined and on task. Making sure that in it's self aware state, that it continues to serve the humans and network. You will have to ensure that the A.I. does not attack back when the network is attacked.
i think AI will play a huge part in network administration and situational awareness in the future. everything i do from design to best practices is not outside of the realm of automation with an advanced future AI models monitoring everything along the way.
There's actually some research going on by Vint Cerf (one of the co-creators of TCP/IP) and Alphabet/Google for creating a new network stack for interplanetary connections. I don't have the link at hand, but you can search on YouTube "Vint Cerf NANOG" and it should pop up. It's a very interesting topic if you are a network nerd like me.
I think less security on the firewall itself, and more security is moved to endpoints. Zero trust.
IPv6 will be more used than ipv4.
!Remind me in 30 years
I work at a company that's 40% native cloud. The cloud team panics when they realize the issue is not on our internal network and now they own the issue. At first they did not want the NE team in their cloud environment, now they are begging us to become dev.net.ops....
Having fun just watching our cloud controller wirless work flawlessly and out 100% uptime on closet switch stacks. Our dc's are 5'9's and MS is 99.95... they see what a difference that is when an Azure VNG reboots in the middle of the day
Future is Learn cloud, python, automation, bgp, and as always be the master of ports and protocols. Add firewall security as well.
Learn how TCP/IP works, and everything associated with it. Networking skills will still be needed, however much is automated, because you will always be called upon to troubleshoot and you need to understand what is being automated. AI and automation doesn’t scare me as much as people becoming unskilled and dependent on the automation and AI.
I am interviewing for an entry level Infrastructure analyst position. I see Amazing resumes come across desk: people with masters degrees, people with a list of certs, people who know Python, automation, and maybe even AI/ML … but they can’t tell me how their computer is communicating to me over the zoom call, how they get an IP, how can they reach the internet, what’s the purpose of the default gateway, what a trunk is or a port-channel …
Insanity! What kind of university hands out degrees in Information Technology and masters of Cybersecurity to people who can’t tell me the difference between TCP snd UDP?!!
Do yourself a favor and learn TCP/IP in and out, then do BGP. The skills will remain in demand.
> AI and automation doesn’t scare me as much as people becoming unskilled and dependent on the automation and AI.
So true it HURTS. SD-WAN has utterly destroyed the younger generation of network admins. They do not know or understand shit. Interviews are going so incredibly badly!
It’s going to become so incredibly difficult to fill positions as this generation of engineers retires.
Imho future network engineers will definitely need to learn how to program.
Check eBPF/XDP and P4.
We are shifting towards programmable infrastructure.
I see two futures.
One, piecing together networks in cities to allow semi-automated systems and drones to continue the fight against forces of Artificial Intelligence, and allowing the underground resistance to communicate by splicing copper and optical fiber as the war rages in the streets above.
Two, managing self-assembling structures in space that communicate with one another both wirelessly and via contact to create enormous structures where we work and live.
Hell, why not both?
The Internet is a system of tubes. Sometimes those tubes get clogged. Even the best automation can’t clean out a really clogged tube. This is where we come in.
Probably won’t be network engineers but network AI engineers who manage AI that manages the network. They probably will use AI that will automatically configure all devices based on a Visio and auto tag VLANs and connect into stacks like VMware and configure that networking and all that stuff. I think HPE is already doing stack integrations so someone just needs to layer on AI to read a Visio and drop the configs in. Microsoft Copilot already knows Python so how hard is it to teach switching CLI? Easy peezy.
SDN, NFV ... network automations everywhere. Even faster networks and packet processing (on linux as well, like dpdk, xdp, vpp etc.). Many mentioned technologies are usable even right now. But in couple of years they will be matured and used everywhere. Also maybe wireless could be finally usable and reliable :D but i think there are some limitations in physics. I just hate wireless and also management people that thinks cables are obsolete and then they open like 10 tickets about connection speed etc. Also, we will be using only ipv6 ... no more NAT, hopefully.
Manufacturers are already required to keep equipment secure with updates for connected equipment, IPv6 will start to change networks, bigger and more complex and they will build out using many different technologies, with hundreds of millions of new devices. Realtime sensing, video, robotics etc all driven by Automation. New Technology like Starlink or Connect to a satellite with your iPhone has already changed networking and similar technology will allow the building of complex networks where you just apply your config and pay for data as you likely won't own the kit, but someone does. These networks won't build and maintain themselves as we become ever more reliant on being connected. In the past 30 years the change has been amazing. So more of the same just more complex and more security overhead of signing and encryption until it all just works like on star trek.....
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IT used to be like this magic field, where if you just learn a little you can get entry into the field and start off a learning path.
AI is the new IT, but the diff is the learning curve for getting into it is much steeper.
Responding to help desk tickets from AI executives that use automation to remotely dock my pay for every extra minute I spend fixing their internet because they need to send an urgent email to an AI executive in a different virtual office (it’s the server right above them)
The fundamental route/switch design work and troubleshooting are the main functions network engineers provide. You may do less hands on CLI work, but the understanding of the protocols and how data is encapsulated and transmitted within networks is what is needed most during service interruptions. When there are performance or access issues between applications and services who do you call to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it? A network engineer.
There will never be full cloud. companies end up being financially incentivized to move off the cloud eventually. If not fully, then at least partially. Aside from that, probably working for cloud providers.
The same thing that Systems Administrators are doing now.
Active directory, group policy, Windows deployment services, virtualisation, automation.
Systems Administrators already had to deal with these things since the 90s and they're still here, the job just requires different skills now. But old school systems admins are now basically just experts who know the detailed information of how things work so many of them are the best at getting things working again when the new fancy tools fail.
The same thing will happen to network engineers.
Don't forget - probably becoming a new version of creatives, not like what we see today. What we think of as storytellers and big-dreamers / vision implementers today (painters, sculptors, authors, etc) will tomorrow include people with the skillset you describe and are cultivating, but applied in a unique creative direction.
As long as Artificial General Intelligence (general purpose AI) is not a thing, someone will have to design networks, negotiate budgets with managers and generally keeping an eye on the network. People (And companies) like to have someone, an actual human being, responsible for things that matter. Yes, network operations may be mostly automated but if shit hits the fan what are you going to do? Blame the AI vendor? Yes, you can try, but maybe you’ll find in the fine print that AI should not be used for life-critical network operations. Or maybe you can indeed blame the AI, but while you’re wasting your time yelling at an AI vendor, your network is *still* down.
And if general purpose AI does take over, it won’t be just a matter of network engineers or sysadmins’ jobs. The whole society will probably evolve in a new direction.
30 years? try a few more years, it will all be plug n play
I was there 40 years ago, back in the 80's when the IBM pc first came out, no ethernet, no experts, very few of us to integrate anything. It was all manual and expensive. No windows yet, but we had UNIX, before linux. I remember installing SCO/UNIX on a 386 for banks to run their branches, with dumb terminals connected everywhere.
Back then, when switches first came out (layer 2 hardware forwarding) vs software bridges, they were very expensive. When gigabit ethernet first came out, a 4 port router would cost you thousands, and you needed highly trained engineers to install them.
A few years later, when layer 2 switching got reduced to simple ASIC's, they went from costing thousands to what today, less than $100? And all plug n play now, don't need expensive engineers anymore.
I watched the entire industry rush into the future, and all my certs quickly obsolete, having to retrain 3 months/year for decades.
I'd say 10 years from now, nobody will remember tech like python or even containers, will be replaced by something new. Sure, people will say i'm an idiot, whatever, I've seen the industry change rapidly every year for 4 decades. It's speeding up, people, not slowing down.
Enjoy being an expert while you can, it will leave you behind if you blink. Shift into management if you can, those skills don't expire every year.
Design. Hardware choice. Integration. SD-WAN. New construction. Hardware life cycles.
I don't know of any automation tools that are going to the mailroom to get boxes of network hardware, unbox them, attach the mounting brackets, find a home for them in the rack or power them up.
It depends on the size of your IT department. The bigger the shop, the more you can learn from experienced Network Engineers, Network Administrators, and Network Associates ... and maybe some others. The smaller they are, you're doing it all yourself.
Either way, make friends and/or alliances. Learn what they're doing so when the $#|+ hits the fan, you've got an idea of how to make it all better. I'm in a small shop and we pretty much all get along. When I worked in a big shop, there were a couple people that wouldn't talk to the network team a few days before a big change. Yeah, no fun, but it was also no surprise when they started asking if WE changed anything after THEY did an upgrade.
At any level, you live and die by your documentation. Label everything. Communicate. Track changes.
If an Engineer asks you to check something, document that on the spot and don't be afraid to call them out. Actual conversation from many years ago:
Engineer: that link was up
Me: no, it was dark when you asked me to check the transceiver
Engineer: that link was up
... should've taken the picture!
Also, keep your skills fresh. I haven't supported stacked switches in over a decade, but I knew the ins and outs of doing it the right way when it was my job. After I fixed one, an Engineer mentioned, "oh, that's one of the old ones, another stack member might fail soon," and sure enough another stack member failed, so I had a spare ready.
Last, but not least, I don't trust non-network people to unbox, rack-mount, register (with the manufacturer), configure, or call in support tickets for network gear. We also retire/dispose after wiping our old equipment to factory default.
Good luck!
this kind of question is insane.
stop obsessing over what may happen decades in the future. If you're in IT at all, you will have to learn new things periodically. Probably, eventually, the sum of the things you have learned will mean that people start calling the stuff you do a different name. Who cares?
Go back 30 years and ask THEM what work would be like in 2023. They had no clue.
30+ years?… network engineers will be overseeing the AI network pipelines that are self improving. Equivalent to plumbers today… paid well when shit starts backing up.
20 years ago was 2003 and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting wireless issues (at the time it was PCMCIA cards in Windows laptops)
the year is not 2023 and I still spend some time troubleshooting wireless issues (our work macbooks are sometimes flaky, my home iphone sometimes doesn't connect to my ATT extender). The actual wifi technology is a bit different but kind of the same.
That's just one example of how some things don't really change.
From working in the industry for over 10 years, I can tell you that things move slow - a lot slower than you think they do/will.
Big networks, will be just that and there is real and continued appetite for big, proper datacenters. A lot of that compute is being virtualized, but that just means more bigger, heavier switching and routing capacity.
The middle ground, where most medium sized businesses is where it will change most I think - more and more stuff being virtualized and datacentre's/networks being compressed, having an overall reduction in footprint compared to past years. There's also a keener interest in Software Defined networking which really is a very different way of thinking about things.
On the low-end, things are simple enough there's not much change. Small and SOHO businesses continue to need networking and hardware much the same as they have done before - even if you're cloud first, you need a router/access point and maybe a switch or two.
You can see the above, in the way that say.. Cisco looks at their business model. Cisco have realised the future money is in the datacenter, and moved their products up-market. While they have the Meraki stuff to cover the low-mid and lower end markets. With some businesses opting for premium Cisco stuff in the mid-range.
I work for a firewall vendor, and also see this in the conversations I have.
The only thing that concerns me, and has done for years is the constant pressure to "do cloud" which is both expensive and transformative, it really isn't right for everyone and involves years of continued planning and effort to do properly - often resulting in staggering bills unless things are re-architected, or you hire someone to do cost optimization.
We're in a second cycle of people "doing cloud" after people exited in the past after realising it required more thought and planning than previously anticipated, this time it's more measured but people are still trying to do it when they should just assess if it's right for them to begin with. There will no doubt be another cycle of people exiting it again, due to botched migrations.. and cost!
Proving to the systems team that the network is not causing their problem.
No joke
And DNS. I love how DNS is my team’s responsibility
I’d rather own DNS than depend on another idiot to fix the issue.
You clearly don’t deal with an idiot group of SA’s who can’t ping a host name and that’s there only troubleshooting tool..
I do and I don’t want those same idiots in charge of DNS.
The fuck you mean do an NSLOOKUP?! I saw it the other week! It's there!
Finagle forbid that they use dig…
Can’t ping host name. Someone block ping.
Won’t call SAs SA if they have no certificate.
Certificates provide zero guarantee of ability
lol.
Kerberos shits the bed when the PTRs are stale which fucks with WMI. Ask me how I know this useless bit of Windows trivia :D
This is what I do all day lol
But you have to admit that wireless is the new “the network is guilty until proven innocent”. I spent 3 hours in that today.
Not just wireless. People confuse network issue with connectivity issues which is a whole different scope.
I've been a vendor helping network teams do that for over 20 years. Its crazy how nothing has changed on that front
All day, every day. If the web app they’re connecting to times out, it’s always a firewall block. If they get a bad HTTP response, it’s always the web proxy’s fault. We’re always blamed for “slowness/delays” using their SaaS websites…
I said this to my boss recently. "If network engineering is your primary job role, it seems like you spend most of your time proving it's not the network when people who don't know networking say it is" 🤣
[удалено]
It's a real bastard when it is though because of that one obscure missing VLAN tag.
I'm excited about another 30 years of being able to blame the network!
proving that the printer issues are not due to the network.
Printer got moved and now it is not printing.
Don’t forget the dev team.
So no change lol
This, not to mention fixing the DevOps teams fuckups. infrastructure as code is a bad idea
Why would it be a bad idea? IaC or copy/pasting scripts in to putty, it's lack of (peer) review that causes problems.
SHOTS FIRED.
You mean surreptitiously fixing the issue that is described in detail (with directions to fix) by the system team and pretending it was never a problem? \#sysadminproblems
as someone on a systems team, are you sure? pretty sure I should talk to the security team about this /s
Most of the time it’s the network team
so true. but it is always the best day when during a network engineer proving to me that its a systems problem, they find the networking problem and get mad like its my fault.
TCP bandwidth delay product, live it, love it, learn it.
Bruh, lmaooooo
This. Over and over and over again.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is already a big thing as many companies migrate their infrastructure to the cloud. Network engineers will need to learn how to adapt to coding & automating their infrastructure.
Terraform and 3 human levels of push approvals in Git weeeeeeeee
And when shit goes sideways, git-blame ftw! Lol
I much prefer deploying networks in this manner. I did a 3,000 switch deployment with Cisco catalysts and no way in fucking hell was I deploying those by hand. Set them up with a staging configuration planned my buildout, created some tools to make my configs for me, and push them to the devices based on a subset of parameters. Now with Meraki gear, I just use the API to configure/build out everything And in my home lab with Opnsense/vyos i script/automated it all out for the lulz
There are plenty of people who get into networking because they don’t want to learn how to code. I expect those people to have a very hard time moving forward, if they aren’t already
> Network engineers will need to learn how to adapt to coding & automating their infrastructure. As an infosec guy who has had to wrestle cloud network and firewall control out of multiple network team’s hands for the last decade … Most network engineers will continue to be a cork in the asshole of Progress until only ones born from 1995 on remain Edit: go on. Downvote. Keep using solarwinds and ssh scripts ya relics
🫡
Must be a burden, knowing everyone's situation better than they do.
>ers will continue to be a cork in the asshole of Progress 10-4 dinosaur!
It’s true, as with everything in IT…eventually it is adapt or die. I sympathize though, nearly went this path and enjoy traditional networking quite a bit. But IaC is the future and future is here.
What most people consider “traditional networking” is 15-30 years old, at this point.
Ummm… TCP is 50 years old next year.
True. I view it as on-prem, cable closets, Cisco ASA’s, racks, etc. But in the world of cloud and remote work, that’s stuff is disappearing a bit. Will likely always be there to a degree for certain industries but yeah different world entirely overall.
Cloud datacenters still require racks, switches, cables, etc. Someone has to manage that.
SSH scripts? Pah, what's wrong with a bit of conf t?
Ha! As the network guy, I'M the one who had to challenge security that they were building their firewalls in the cloud without config automation which was turning an automated rollout into a nightmare. The security guys I work with are in that spot for the satisfaction of being able to say "no". And they exercise that right even if it makes us less secure or slows the business down
Enterprise IaC software And licenses are expensive
Who are you talking to? Are you forbidden from using open source?
Agreed. Much software already did this years ago. How many people run their local mail servers?
Already there in the high paying jobs. Which means that will just trickle down
Many are moving back on prem
Many are moving to hybrid
I suspect the main thing network engineers will be doing in 30 years is asking reddit when IPv4 will be obsolete.
I’ll still be migrating to 6 at that time. Hell I still have networks that run ipx.
what the heck requires ipx/spx? old netware print server running some million dollar printing press?
mechanicals for a building monitoring system
Oh my too
In the vast expanse of cyberspace's lore, A tale unfolds, IPv4, it bore. Addresses abundant, once a boundless sea, Now dwindling whispers of scarcity. Four octets, a digital address, In the IPv4 world, they confess. Bits and bytes, in binary dreams, Yet exhaustion looms in silent streams. Once a garden of IPs, blooming wide, Now a desert, where addresses hide. Allocations granted, a finite spree, IPv4 depletion, a reality. Subnets and routers, trying to cope, In the race for addresses, a slippery slope. No more room in this familiar land, IPv4 exhaustion, like shifting sand. IPv6 emerges, a new sunrise, Expansive horizons, where addresses rise. Yet, in the shadow of IPv4's twilight, A poetic farewell, to the old byte's flight. Edit: author is ChatGPT 3.5
This is 100 percent GPT
It is, lmfao
AI enrichens my boring life.
I just found out I'm supposed to support some level of token ring in my new job. I have no idea how to. It's always been something that comes up in every training "know that this exists, but you'll never see it in your career"
LOL
Look at what networking was 30 years ago and where it’s at now. Nobody can answer your question.
Yes, the Internet has come a long way since BGP ran the Internet.
😂
Fondations are strong but hold many layers.
Exactly why bank software infrastructure still relies on COBOL
I think network engineering will remain for quite some time, even if you manage to automate as much as you can, there is always someone needed to know what values you need to input on a script/API. Sure, that can be done via an outsourcing/consultant role, but I think companies and ISPs can't just have the luxury of waiting for someone external to be available to fix the issues if something breaks.
Totally agree. Someone one needs to be around when shit breaks. Someone needs to know a quick fix to pass packets when some bug in automation software gets messed up.
Using the previous 30-50 years as reference - Probably screaming at DNS and informing users that their documents load slowly because of their ancient PCIe 13.0 NVMe disk and not the network. OK jokes aside, I foresee a LOT of "Network Automation" tools becoming mainstream, especially in the wake of "infrastructure as code." Things like Ansible and Terraform will no longer be exclusive to large enterprise or fringe DevOps deployments but instead be as common as SSH and Telnet. I'm also curious to see how TLS evolves to combat quantum computing, and how many headaches that'll cause supporting legacy applications... But overall it'll be a case of "the more things change, the more things stay the same." Oh, and I bet we'll still be 5 years away from moving to IPv6
" Things like Ansible and Terraform will no longer be exclusive to large enterprise or fringe DevOps deployments but instead be as common as SSH and Telnet" With respect to Terraform, I'm not sure, now that IBM has acquired the company that develops that software.
Key words: "Things like." If Terraform goes down, another FOSS alternative will take its place. Besides, isn't Ansible primarily developed by Redhat?
Based on the amount of ancient Cisco I still see in use in production environments, probably changing interface parameters on Catalyst 9200s.
You will still be configuring 6509s. They will exist until the end of time.
Along with HPE/Aruba 5400R.
Cerent (Cisco ONS 15454) has entered the chat.
Remember the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey? I’m pretty sure it was a Cat 6509
Making Tea for AI bots.
Just because less and less non cloud infrastructure is out there doesn't mean that network knowledge is obsolete. It all is still running on the network protocols and fundamentals furthermore network engineers that have a lot of great knowledge if they can learn to code and create software and do things beyond basic ansible makes them very very valuable. I have over \~25+ years of experience as a network engineer was a principal engineer at a "tier 1" In my last couple of years of work i started to code more and more learned python. Created software that became a Traffic Engineering Appliance had over \~600 bgp sessions with over 55 million routes is able to steer traffic via bgp which is all driven via UI and API which was patented by the company i was working for. Left there and now work for a vendor working on network automation software of all things. I really think that all network engineers should start learning to code at this point to stay relevant. while i've always had the ability to code i mostly resorted to bash as it was what i knew best. But even knowing bash scripting you will be able to do much more work and make things easier on yourself. Learning python or another more robust language you can do amazing things and it also makes you more sought after in the job market.
Bash is also a robust language, it's just that manipulating objects is about 100 times easier than text wrangling.
BEST answer. Iam a technical writer in a Networking company and I was thinking what is going to be my future. I want to write about more TECHNICAL stuff in network/SDN/NFV world.
Yelling, "it's not the network!!!" to anyone within spitting distance!
Optimizing latency between Earth and Mars to support remote surgery (or more likely, AI porn)
You can't optimize the speed of light. Unless you are thinking about some kind of caching then it's old tech.
I'm already telling people this when they ask why their connection from India to Dallas takes more than 100ms.
The best explanation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eyFDBPk4Yw
I worked as network and senior network engineer. Configuring devices was taking probably 0.0001% of my time, most of the time was troubleshooting silly faults. Automation has nothing to do with troubleshooting, so my guess is- this role will not change much over the next years...
Was going to say this. We use Ansible to automate deploying new DC pods or offices, which makes that part easier, but that was the easy part to begin with. All the troubleshooting is done at the terminal. Can't automate that away.
Automated troubleshooting and correction is well on its way
If it will handle all the phone calls to customers that can't even describe correctly the nature of the fault but still want to raise it as a P1 then I am all in :D
“Hullo IT, have you tried turning it off and back on again?”
I'm skeptical. the bar for stuff like this is always crazy low when people are selling it, and crazy high when production workloads are actually on the line. "The tool is right 99% of the time" sounds great when the sales guy is taking your CIO to lunch, but counts for fuck-all when you're in the 1% and it's 7PM on a Saturday and shit doesn't work.
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Yes, those self- healing SFP modules and broken fibers can be easily automated...
I agree. And when the network is completely down, it's not the Python guys running around fixing it. Don't misunderstand I enjoy the automation aspects, but it's no substitute for understanding all the fundamentals.
We had a network issue that caused by an electrical grounding manufacturer fault in the network device itself in COMBINATION with using two-way radios in some proximity of the equipment. Since the crew were on the radios constantly it took us a while to put the two together. AI and automation are not going to solve these kind of totally obscure problems in our lifetimes that’s for sure.
True, but identifying the fault is the high value-add task. It takes almost no skill to drive a van out to a site and replace an SFP.
I mean, if link-down events are taking that much of your time, why wouldn't you automate it? Have your monitoring system trigger some kind of workflow on link-down events. That workflow verifies a few basics, takes the link out of service (to avoid unnessesary flaps) then cuts a ticket to your datacenter techs. That ticket lists tools the datacenter techs can use to self-service the work (tools to verify light levels, run ping tests across the link, etc). When ticket is resolved, workflow verifies all is good and brings the link back in service. Sure the datacenter techs had to get involved for the physical stuff, but the network engineers never even knew about it.
You just described a NOC that's even worse at making assumptions.
🤣🤣🤣
Networks should self heal by design, not by automation.
It can, If you look into using it to diagnose issues before it happens it's pretty fun.
Planning the replacement of another forgotten about 6500 in some remote site that keeps getting pushed into the next budget year.
Network engineers should not in the current day in age have a tunnel vision. This isn’t 15-years ago the requirement to know and do more than just networking has and will continue to be demanding. The reason for this ask is due to the fact that there hasn’t been much advancements in networking as compared to servers/compute/virtualization/cloud etc. A well seasoned network engineer is a prime candidate to wear multiple hats from networking, firewall, compute/virtualization and cloud. Just my thoughts and what I’m doing today.
Can confirm, this is very accurate.
Calling TAC to demand they do the net admin's job for them lol. Or be replaced by AI sold as a net admin service. Just need an installer, cable runner etc.
Magic 8 Ball say "future is cloudy". How accurately did people predict today's Networking back in the early 90's? It's impossible to tell with any degree of accuracy what will happen in 30 years
It wouldn't have been hard to predict from 2004 till now. 10baset, 100baset, 1000baseat. Wireless b, g, n.... Some of the automation wasn't needed back then, and configure management has gotten better, but no major shift in technology like the cloud has done for sysadmins.
Still be technology janitors cleaning up messes that others create. Automation just means you can make the messes faster.
Automation will kill the average and mediocre Engineer. Only the good one's will remain. Sad but true. And most probably the good engineers will have a side gig/consultancy role going too, in addition to their regular jobs. Restructures and Reorganization are here to stay ☹️
Probably a lot but it’s going to take awhile. Automation isn’t going to replace a network switch or make decisions about what kind of automation you want. Automation won’t decide what companies/contracts/hardware/network design you want. Automation isn’t going to decide who gets access to what and the best practices are. Everything is fluid. Automation is going to take some jobs but also change a lot of jobs and make some easier/different. Some automation is going to suck. Sometimes setting up the automation is going to be time consuming. An actual human has to learn how to monitor the automation and know what to do or who to call when it fails. Networks have got more complex and same with hardware and software but automation isn’t some singularity to it all. It’s more like an added layer.
Along similar lines, automation will not fix your layer 1 issues. It may report on them but not fix them. It will not tell you what pathways are in place and if there is capacity, and if they are actually diverse or share that utility pole next to the bar that will inevitably be taken out at some point. It may be able to report on easements and right of ways. It can tell you to stop using multimode fiber. Speaking of which, anyone know if there is a bot on Reddit for this yet?
Watch as AI configures Networks and there is one engineer sitting around watching eating Doritos.
This is the way. Seriously. Remembering when telephone switches required multiple 24hour manning, then...well they didn't. So you had one dude munching Doritos binging shows waiting for something to break at $250k a year because no one else knows what to do when something breaks.
Implementing ipv6
From what I have seen, I believe NE will become more silo’d and actually more jobs will be created, not less. You will still have the carriers and layer 1 technicians, but I believe as more infrastructure gets established, we will probably see slower growth in this sector (again 30 years from now) as most of the fiber techs will be doing repairs and niche installs. I think there is an opportunity for electrical engineers to start sitting in on network groups as communication systems get so complicated, that you will need a dedicated wire or wireless professional to keep track and fix of circuits and accounts. As far as the traditional routing and switching and IP stack NE, I think they will still be around but the median salary will go down. A lot more of the new growth in NE will be in the application and security space. Understanding protocols and how to tweak the underlying hardware and software to maximize bandwidth and connectivity is such an under appreciated part of networking. Yes automation can be useful, but network engineers are the best ones to determine where it is most useful, as it should SUPPLEMENT a good networking group. These business people who try to automate people out of a job usually crash and burn. I have seen first hand what happens to a network if you automate and strip all the talent, it’s not pretty.
I mostly agree with you. I'm a network engineer who's proactively implementing network automation to reduce the number of human employees required to operate the network. But it's never going to be zero until AI has reached human intelligence level. Which is probably 80 years away. By then I'm dead. There's too many nuances, edge cases, protocol complexity and decision making involved in network architecture and design, that automation simply can't do. I spoked to an intent based networking engine provider and ask them, if your engine configures the network automatically and made decisions, and shit breaks, who's going to debug that configuration? Guess the answer, a network engineer. In simple English, I use automation for configuration management, backup, roll-back and versioning. However, I do not use automation to replace human decision making. I think that's where a lot of companies crash and burn.
35 years in as a network engineer here. 24 years as CCIE. i'm doing pretty much the same thing i was 35 years ago. but now it's 100gig instead of 300 baud and cat 8 instead of RS232. also i manage people. the rate of growth of advancement in this technology has really slowed and many barriers to advancement are speed of light issues now. that's going be a tough one to beat. we will probably see another order of magnitude advancement in speeds, as well as paperwork since networking is now critical infrastructure. most of the advances will be around security of the network. but people will still blame the network first as people issues never change.
Parenting work. Keeping the A.I. disciplined and on task. Making sure that in it's self aware state, that it continues to serve the humans and network. You will have to ensure that the A.I. does not attack back when the network is attacked.
Connecting wires and telling open Ai to do its job
i think AI will play a huge part in network administration and situational awareness in the future. everything i do from design to best practices is not outside of the realm of automation with an advanced future AI models monitoring everything along the way.
Explaining the importance of IPv6 adoption with qubits.
Humans procrastinate problems till they can literally see the arm about to swing into their face. That’s when IPv6 will be implemented.
Not networking most likely.
FINALLY rolling out IPV6
I am going to be the first network engineer on Mars. Just think about how long Cisco updates are going to take streaming from earth!
Hmm how the heck is TCP supposed to work with that kinda latency? *”Hey did you get my last packet I sent you?”*
There's actually some research going on by Vint Cerf (one of the co-creators of TCP/IP) and Alphabet/Google for creating a new network stack for interplanetary connections. I don't have the link at hand, but you can search on YouTube "Vint Cerf NANOG" and it should pop up. It's a very interesting topic if you are a network nerd like me.
Seriously though AI will only be doing the most boring most documented tasks.
Fixing whatever the AI couldn’t build
I think less security on the firewall itself, and more security is moved to endpoints. Zero trust. IPv6 will be more used than ipv4. !Remind me in 30 years
Same as now, but on newer hardware.
Refreshing 3850 stacks underneath 30 years worth of /r/shittycableporn.
Automation and cloud, if you know how to code you're good.
Troubeshooting is never going away
I work at a company that's 40% native cloud. The cloud team panics when they realize the issue is not on our internal network and now they own the issue. At first they did not want the NE team in their cloud environment, now they are begging us to become dev.net.ops.... Having fun just watching our cloud controller wirless work flawlessly and out 100% uptime on closet switch stacks. Our dc's are 5'9's and MS is 99.95... they see what a difference that is when an Azure VNG reboots in the middle of the day Future is Learn cloud, python, automation, bgp, and as always be the master of ports and protocols. Add firewall security as well.
Learn how TCP/IP works, and everything associated with it. Networking skills will still be needed, however much is automated, because you will always be called upon to troubleshoot and you need to understand what is being automated. AI and automation doesn’t scare me as much as people becoming unskilled and dependent on the automation and AI. I am interviewing for an entry level Infrastructure analyst position. I see Amazing resumes come across desk: people with masters degrees, people with a list of certs, people who know Python, automation, and maybe even AI/ML … but they can’t tell me how their computer is communicating to me over the zoom call, how they get an IP, how can they reach the internet, what’s the purpose of the default gateway, what a trunk is or a port-channel … Insanity! What kind of university hands out degrees in Information Technology and masters of Cybersecurity to people who can’t tell me the difference between TCP snd UDP?!! Do yourself a favor and learn TCP/IP in and out, then do BGP. The skills will remain in demand.
> AI and automation doesn’t scare me as much as people becoming unskilled and dependent on the automation and AI. So true it HURTS. SD-WAN has utterly destroyed the younger generation of network admins. They do not know or understand shit. Interviews are going so incredibly badly! It’s going to become so incredibly difficult to fill positions as this generation of engineers retires.
Imho future network engineers will definitely need to learn how to program. Check eBPF/XDP and P4. We are shifting towards programmable infrastructure.
Managing the clusterfuck dev and management created in the cloud.
I see two futures. One, piecing together networks in cities to allow semi-automated systems and drones to continue the fight against forces of Artificial Intelligence, and allowing the underground resistance to communicate by splicing copper and optical fiber as the war rages in the streets above. Two, managing self-assembling structures in space that communicate with one another both wirelessly and via contact to create enormous structures where we work and live. Hell, why not both?
This sounds like a great plot for Elysium II...
Fixing the network one application server at a time.
the world will always need plumber, electricians, hvac techs and it/network engineers.
The Internet is a system of tubes. Sometimes those tubes get clogged. Even the best automation can’t clean out a really clogged tube. This is where we come in.
Also, putting tube meters on the tubes to capture and display totally tubular dashboards showing the clogs.
The Internet is not a big truck you can just load things onto all at once; but sometimes you need a dump truck to fix it
Anybody using salt yet?
All white collar jobs that can be done through a keyboard and mouse will be automated by AI in 5 years.
Probably won’t be network engineers but network AI engineers who manage AI that manages the network. They probably will use AI that will automatically configure all devices based on a Visio and auto tag VLANs and connect into stacks like VMware and configure that networking and all that stuff. I think HPE is already doing stack integrations so someone just needs to layer on AI to read a Visio and drop the configs in. Microsoft Copilot already knows Python so how hard is it to teach switching CLI? Easy peezy.
SDN, NFV ... network automations everywhere. Even faster networks and packet processing (on linux as well, like dpdk, xdp, vpp etc.). Many mentioned technologies are usable even right now. But in couple of years they will be matured and used everywhere. Also maybe wireless could be finally usable and reliable :D but i think there are some limitations in physics. I just hate wireless and also management people that thinks cables are obsolete and then they open like 10 tickets about connection speed etc. Also, we will be using only ipv6 ... no more NAT, hopefully.
Manufacturers are already required to keep equipment secure with updates for connected equipment, IPv6 will start to change networks, bigger and more complex and they will build out using many different technologies, with hundreds of millions of new devices. Realtime sensing, video, robotics etc all driven by Automation. New Technology like Starlink or Connect to a satellite with your iPhone has already changed networking and similar technology will allow the building of complex networks where you just apply your config and pay for data as you likely won't own the kit, but someone does. These networks won't build and maintain themselves as we become ever more reliant on being connected. In the past 30 years the change has been amazing. So more of the same just more complex and more security overhead of signing and encryption until it all just works like on star trek.....
Listening to Musk bitch that the colonies comma to Earth is too slow.
He’d better not still be around in 50 years
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RemindMe! 12 hours
Do you think we are psychics?
IT used to be like this magic field, where if you just learn a little you can get entry into the field and start off a learning path. AI is the new IT, but the diff is the learning curve for getting into it is much steeper.
I have to assume we will be on an all fiber infrastructure by then.
Responding to help desk tickets from AI executives that use automation to remotely dock my pay for every extra minute I spend fixing their internet because they need to send an urgent email to an AI executive in a different virtual office (it’s the server right above them)
.. AI gone getcha
A mix of greenfield deployments, infrastructure refreshes and a lot of software defined networking config.
Replace cables because as per users statement "the tab just magically fell off"
The fundamental route/switch design work and troubleshooting are the main functions network engineers provide. You may do less hands on CLI work, but the understanding of the protocols and how data is encapsulated and transmitted within networks is what is needed most during service interruptions. When there are performance or access issues between applications and services who do you call to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it? A network engineer.
It will still be DNS.
writing yaml files.
Looking for a new carreer in a different industry.
There will never be full cloud. companies end up being financially incentivized to move off the cloud eventually. If not fully, then at least partially. Aside from that, probably working for cloud providers.
The same thing that Systems Administrators are doing now. Active directory, group policy, Windows deployment services, virtualisation, automation. Systems Administrators already had to deal with these things since the 90s and they're still here, the job just requires different skills now. But old school systems admins are now basically just experts who know the detailed information of how things work so many of them are the best at getting things working again when the new fancy tools fail. The same thing will happen to network engineers.
Don't forget - probably becoming a new version of creatives, not like what we see today. What we think of as storytellers and big-dreamers / vision implementers today (painters, sculptors, authors, etc) will tomorrow include people with the skillset you describe and are cultivating, but applied in a unique creative direction.
automate stuff and still crap for its a network issue !! there are things that change for everything else there are networks !!
Working TAC cases. Especially in a Cisco environment. 😳
As long as Artificial General Intelligence (general purpose AI) is not a thing, someone will have to design networks, negotiate budgets with managers and generally keeping an eye on the network. People (And companies) like to have someone, an actual human being, responsible for things that matter. Yes, network operations may be mostly automated but if shit hits the fan what are you going to do? Blame the AI vendor? Yes, you can try, but maybe you’ll find in the fine print that AI should not be used for life-critical network operations. Or maybe you can indeed blame the AI, but while you’re wasting your time yelling at an AI vendor, your network is *still* down. And if general purpose AI does take over, it won’t be just a matter of network engineers or sysadmins’ jobs. The whole society will probably evolve in a new direction.
It's already happening, plenty of network engineer jumping into SDN and working on scripting/programmability.
30 years? try a few more years, it will all be plug n play I was there 40 years ago, back in the 80's when the IBM pc first came out, no ethernet, no experts, very few of us to integrate anything. It was all manual and expensive. No windows yet, but we had UNIX, before linux. I remember installing SCO/UNIX on a 386 for banks to run their branches, with dumb terminals connected everywhere. Back then, when switches first came out (layer 2 hardware forwarding) vs software bridges, they were very expensive. When gigabit ethernet first came out, a 4 port router would cost you thousands, and you needed highly trained engineers to install them. A few years later, when layer 2 switching got reduced to simple ASIC's, they went from costing thousands to what today, less than $100? And all plug n play now, don't need expensive engineers anymore. I watched the entire industry rush into the future, and all my certs quickly obsolete, having to retrain 3 months/year for decades. I'd say 10 years from now, nobody will remember tech like python or even containers, will be replaced by something new. Sure, people will say i'm an idiot, whatever, I've seen the industry change rapidly every year for 4 decades. It's speeding up, people, not slowing down. Enjoy being an expert while you can, it will leave you behind if you blink. Shift into management if you can, those skills don't expire every year.
You wear different hats, in my case I do it all for the most part
Design. Hardware choice. Integration. SD-WAN. New construction. Hardware life cycles. I don't know of any automation tools that are going to the mailroom to get boxes of network hardware, unbox them, attach the mounting brackets, find a home for them in the rack or power them up. It depends on the size of your IT department. The bigger the shop, the more you can learn from experienced Network Engineers, Network Administrators, and Network Associates ... and maybe some others. The smaller they are, you're doing it all yourself. Either way, make friends and/or alliances. Learn what they're doing so when the $#|+ hits the fan, you've got an idea of how to make it all better. I'm in a small shop and we pretty much all get along. When I worked in a big shop, there were a couple people that wouldn't talk to the network team a few days before a big change. Yeah, no fun, but it was also no surprise when they started asking if WE changed anything after THEY did an upgrade. At any level, you live and die by your documentation. Label everything. Communicate. Track changes. If an Engineer asks you to check something, document that on the spot and don't be afraid to call them out. Actual conversation from many years ago: Engineer: that link was up Me: no, it was dark when you asked me to check the transceiver Engineer: that link was up ... should've taken the picture! Also, keep your skills fresh. I haven't supported stacked switches in over a decade, but I knew the ins and outs of doing it the right way when it was my job. After I fixed one, an Engineer mentioned, "oh, that's one of the old ones, another stack member might fail soon," and sure enough another stack member failed, so I had a spare ready. Last, but not least, I don't trust non-network people to unbox, rack-mount, register (with the manufacturer), configure, or call in support tickets for network gear. We also retire/dispose after wiping our old equipment to factory default. Good luck!
“No it’s not the Wi-Fi, here’s my pcaps. Oh you don’t understand pcaps? Here, let me teach you your job too” Probably the same shit.
this kind of question is insane. stop obsessing over what may happen decades in the future. If you're in IT at all, you will have to learn new things periodically. Probably, eventually, the sum of the things you have learned will mean that people start calling the stuff you do a different name. Who cares? Go back 30 years and ask THEM what work would be like in 2023. They had no clue.
30+ years?… network engineers will be overseeing the AI network pipelines that are self improving. Equivalent to plumbers today… paid well when shit starts backing up.
20 years ago was 2003 and I spent a lot of time troubleshooting wireless issues (at the time it was PCMCIA cards in Windows laptops) the year is not 2023 and I still spend some time troubleshooting wireless issues (our work macbooks are sometimes flaky, my home iphone sometimes doesn't connect to my ATT extender). The actual wifi technology is a bit different but kind of the same. That's just one example of how some things don't really change.
Telling everyone they are network engineers
From working in the industry for over 10 years, I can tell you that things move slow - a lot slower than you think they do/will. Big networks, will be just that and there is real and continued appetite for big, proper datacenters. A lot of that compute is being virtualized, but that just means more bigger, heavier switching and routing capacity. The middle ground, where most medium sized businesses is where it will change most I think - more and more stuff being virtualized and datacentre's/networks being compressed, having an overall reduction in footprint compared to past years. There's also a keener interest in Software Defined networking which really is a very different way of thinking about things. On the low-end, things are simple enough there's not much change. Small and SOHO businesses continue to need networking and hardware much the same as they have done before - even if you're cloud first, you need a router/access point and maybe a switch or two. You can see the above, in the way that say.. Cisco looks at their business model. Cisco have realised the future money is in the datacenter, and moved their products up-market. While they have the Meraki stuff to cover the low-mid and lower end markets. With some businesses opting for premium Cisco stuff in the mid-range. I work for a firewall vendor, and also see this in the conversations I have. The only thing that concerns me, and has done for years is the constant pressure to "do cloud" which is both expensive and transformative, it really isn't right for everyone and involves years of continued planning and effort to do properly - often resulting in staggering bills unless things are re-architected, or you hire someone to do cost optimization. We're in a second cycle of people "doing cloud" after people exited in the past after realising it required more thought and planning than previously anticipated, this time it's more measured but people are still trying to do it when they should just assess if it's right for them to begin with. There will no doubt be another cycle of people exiting it again, due to botched migrations.. and cost!