On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Keegan Holley <keegan.holley@sungard.com> wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said:
I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data. ... I'd say
2011/11/21 <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> their ultimate goal is to touch a little as possible which is usually as unglamorous as it sounds. Also, alot of things are scripted so much of what you touch may not be as fun.
Tyler, this is absolutely key, and absolutely true; if you really, really want to get a jump in the industry, don't worry about learning active directory or exchange (unless it's a particular hobby interest of yours); instead, learn a good scripting language; PERL is the canonical example, but python or tcl are equally fine candidates these days. Most of the really big networks, whether access ISPs, content providers, or tier 1 transit networks try to automate as much of the work as possible; it's the only way to stay ahead of the demand curve. If you want to be a hot property in networking, you should have a good blend of network skills, scripting/development skills, and ideally enough system administration background to know how to make the boxes running those tools happy as well. Being able to understand the packet flow from the application, down through the OS, and onto the wire, and then back up again at the far end is going to make you much more useful than an engineer that just knows how to get bits from point A to point Z, but that's it. Being able to turn up a 100GE link by hand is useful; but being able to write a script to turn up dozens at a time--that's what networks will fight over to get. (Also...echoing an undercurrent from several of the other voices...set up an account on tunnelbroker.net, get a v6 tunnel going to your house, set up a linux box with your favorite flavour of DNS server on it; start learning how to handle v6 DNS zones, the odd and occasional challenges involved with dual-stacked hosts and different DNS entries. And then start experimenting and breaking things--some of your best understanding is going to come from breaking your setup when experimenting, and then figuring out why it broke, and how to get it working again in the way you want. Debugging dual-stack networks is going to be required knowledge by the time you hit the industry; no reason not to start learning and using the information today, to really get comfortable with it.) You'll find that many of us are happy to answer intelligent, well-thought-through questions; what we don't tend to like are answering questions that are easily found through quick search engine queries. If you've done your own exploration first, and come up empty, chances are it'll be an interesting enough question someone out here will be willing to give a shot at answering it for you. But if you ask questions that would be just as easily answered through spending 5 minutes with a search engine, you'll find even the best mentors will start to give you the cold shoulder. ^_^; And finally...don't get discouraged; if you're pretty sure this is what you want to do with your life, stick with it. There can be some big ups and downs in this industry, but the chance to build something really big that touches millions of lives every day brings with it that huge sense of accomplishment that only comes with achieving something on a truly global scale. Best of luck! Matt