Who does networking for a living?

[RazorsEDGE]

Just curious who here does networking for a living? Maybe some pics or descriptions of what kind of equipment you deal with on a daily basis?

I have worked as the sole network engineer for a medium sized school district for the past 6 years. We have a city wide network that spans 22 campuses. We have almost 800 cameras in our district, although I typically do not deal with their installs and setups since we have a guy dedicated to surveillance and access control.

The equipment I deal with on a daily basis is 95% Cisco. 3750x's and 3850's for the access layer. 4500x's for the distribution layer. Nexus 9508 for the core.

I've always been interested in networking and like to see what others do as well.

 

[mycoma]

I work in a 24x7x365 Global Network Operation center on the Network Infrasturcture team. Its a very large network, 10Gig internet and 10gig ckts between 2 large datacenters. We have about 400 connected MPLS offices, small med and large ones. I also work with 3750x's and 3650's for the access layer. 4500x's for the distribution layer. Nexus 7000 and 9508 for the core. Also work with many network appliances such as F5 LTM, GTM, and APM, Infoblox DNS, Palo Alto FW, Sqid Proxies, support many security devices, Anue Switches and Giastor Network capture devices. We use Service now to keep track of Incidents, Changes and Problems.

 

[RazorsEDGE]

I work for a medium sized Wireless ISP. Sometimes I'm an engineer, sometimes a manager, sometimes a psychiatrist. We have nearly 100 towers using a mix of Ubiquiti, Cambium, and Mikrotik. I'm in charge of 83 of those sites. With miles and miles of cables going as high as 600' in some cases, the wind and lightning keep us very busy! Overall I love the job, but can be frantic and stressful some days.

Today we're dealing with a strange problem that we discovered. A certain brand of hardware was failing software updates and dieing. Turns out if you disable RSTP on the device it's plugged into the update goes as expected. Go figure that one.

I've always thought it would be pretty cool to work on those towers. I've never been one to shy away from heights. Looks fun haha.

I work in a 24x7x365 Global Network Operation center on the Network Infrasturcture team. Its a very large network, 10Gig internet and 10gig ckts between 2 large datacenters. We have about 400 connected MPLS offices, small med and large ones. I also work with 3750x's and 3650's for the access layer. 4500x's for the distribution layer. Nexus 7000 and 9508 for the core. Also work with many network appliances such as F5 LTM, GTM, and APM, Infoblox DNS, Palo Alto FW, Sqid Proxies, support many security devices, Anue Switches and Giastor Network capture devices. We use Service now to keep track of Incidents, Changes and Problems.

Aside from the sheer size it sounds like we have some similar equipment. We currently have dual 10g links from every IDF to MDF and dual 10g links from each site to our core. 1.5g to the internet. We actually demoed a palo alto over the summer but ended up choosing a Fortigate instead, palo alto seemed like a great firewall. I now have 2 5545x ASA's sitting on my desk looking sad haha.

Here is one of our IDFs that we just re-did, this one involved re-cabling the entire building with a new data room and all new equipment. I try to take as much pride as I can in keeping things looking clean. This one has Cisco 3850's

Another one with 3750x's, this one was a brand new building about 4 years ago.

 

[RazorsEDGE]

Is that ice or something? I'd say those were bad days for sure haha.

 

[RazorsEDGE]

That must've been some high quality cat6! We don't cold enough weather here to have ice like that haha, that's impressive.

We have a really good operations director that understands the importance of a quality network and the work it takes to install and maintain it. There's very little he will say no to when it comes to the upgrading our network.

 

[looney2ns]

Very nice work @RazorsEDGE
What system do you use to label/keep track of what goes where?

 

[RazorsEDGE]

Our cabling contractor does the cable labels. A label at the jack location is labeled idf.rack.patchpanel.port. So it would look like 2.1.5.44 or similar. It's a little more complicated going the other direction.

As far as switch port descriptions I put all cameras/access control/access points names on the description of the port they are plugged into. We also use yellow patch cables for cameras. The picture above with no yellow cables just hadn't gotten that far into the configuration yet.

 

[Q™]

I'm a small business owner, so I have do do networking for a living. I also have to shovel the snow and take out the trash. But although I have to do perform mundane workaday tasks, some of my technology work is quite sophisticated, innovative and -- dare I say -- groundbreaking...

 

[RazorsEDGE]

That's great haha. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes!