So glancing through various social media a few weeks ago an industry friend posted this:
After asking he was okay with me kind of stealing this topic to make this post. Of course please follow Rowell. He’s a great asset to the community, always sharing topics and advice to everyone and overall just a nice dude. https://rowelldionicio.com/
I’m going to take a step back from his post for a minute. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where my father spent his entire career working for the telephone company. That kind of gave me a head start. We were early adopters of computing and due to his employment at the telco we had early access to dial-up internet. Also, albeit just fun and games when we’d go out on a fishing trip we’d often stop at the central office’s as he knew of issues and while he fixed them gave me wire and a punch down tool with an empty block to play around with. Kind of gave me a spark later on.
So it became time to graduate high school and go to my local community college. Plenty of degree options but they had one they called “Network Administration”. However, as you looked at the outline of courses involved it was more basic computers and networks. Which in hindsight I’m happy about.
Of course during college I had all the odd jobs: construction/roofing/lumberjack/sandwich shop/etc but they way the degree was structured was this. Microsoft computing foundations, courses build around CompTIA A+, and courses built around CompTIA Network+. Aside from MS foundations it wasn’t really built around any vendors. It was build around the ideas and concepts of computer and networking technology to lay out the fundamentals.
This was great. As a natural progression of those courses I of course took up studying for those exams which helped build study strategies for learning and ultimately obtaining certifications to try and help spark my career.
So where does that actually take me. Well, after building up from those courses and studying those basics for the CompTIA exams it eventually got me into an EasyTech roll at Staples. Eventually I moved away from my parents house and over time got a help desk roll at a healthcare company. It was a small team of 2 helpdesk/deskside support people (one of them me), 1 guy that ran the network, and a couple app analysts for the EMR apps. Slowly I started to get involved into the networking and eventually was able to get sent to a CCNA class. Let me tell you sideways to none knowing networking basics from the Network+ studying/coursework/exam made learning the Cisco way so much easier.
Overtime I ended up working for VAR’s/Consulting and began to learn more and more vendor deployments. To Rowell’s point in his post. Knowing the networking basics made learning that so much easier. While they all might do things a little different the base of technology follows protocols and concepts.
Overall a route is a route, an IP Address is an IP Address, a VLAN is a VLAN. Sure every vendor might call it something different or have some fancy marketing name for it but if you get the concept the only hard part about moving on is memorizing the nuance marketing. Hello in English is different then hello in German but if you understand a hello you can get going.
I learned a lot about this at one VAR I worked at when SD-WAN was a big push. Some customers wanted vendor A, others wanted to use vendor B. So I had to read up and understand them. When it boiled down to it the basic concepts were the same and you know what never truly changed other than implementation? The basic networking concept of routing.
I’m following the same logic as I choose to chase Microsoft Azure Networking AZ-700 but thought to myself, start with a foundation first. So the first thing I did was study the Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 and take that exam. Glad I did. The Fundamentals outlined Microsoft’s Azure VNets which are literally a huge foundational concept as part of all of the Azure Networking. As I study I learn how these basics are key. Funny enough, general networking basics play a huge role as networks/routing/subnetting/IP addresses are all pivotal to know and understand.
Understanding the basics helps you in troubleshooting issues as well. As networking folk we often get pulled into trouble situations. Knowing how to diagnose the core concepts of networking is important in helping rule out network issues vs client/server and application issues. I’ve used those basics all the time to verify end to end connectivity so we could collectively as a team lean on the app or server or workstation to figure out what was causing the issue.
People do it, just go head first into things like CCNA/CCNP and other vendors exams, but in the long run. Understanding the basics aids you first in troubleshooting and verifying, but as to Rowell’s point, makes learning a new technology easier since they are built on those foundations.
