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Comment by rmdashrfstar | Hacker News Reader

Do you have any recommendations for where to learn more about network eng for us non-network-engs? My experience is in DevOps (on k8s, mostly) and systems/application programming, if that helps pinpoint any advice you could give. I’m trying to get the bigger picture like network engineers understand, as well as start to understand the layer 2 topology that you described.

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The traditional and hard way is to start as a first-tier NOC person for an ISP and work one's way up. Or to start as a field tech for an ISP and show skills worthy of getting promoted (perhaps into a NOC job or a manager-of-field-techs job). That method takes quite a while.

Medium to large sized ISPs have a very large amount of BSD/GPL/Apache/misc licensed software running to support back end monitoring and provisioning systems. They do occasionally hire software developers to customize things for their environments, so it certainly wouldn't hurt to reach out to the noteworthy ones in your region and try giving them your CV.

Read the Cisco CCNA1 certification book. It goes deep on the theory and levels of the OSI model like switching. From there it’s a lot easier to grok.

Yep, start there and then throw GNS3 on a fairly hefty VM and start labbing scenarios that relate to environments that are of interest to you.

You could build a playground internet with some VPN-connected boxes which talk BGP and route 10.0.0.0/8 between them. It's a lot of work, but a friend of mine started such a thing and I have learned _so much_ about networking on layers 2 and up from that.

Start by installing a BGP deamon on two boxes that share a network and see what you can do :)

Nanog.org tries to do some outreach. Might be worth checking out some of their intro sessions on the basics of routing, traceroute, etc.

Plenty of other resources like irc channels, too.

Ditto. Would love to figure out if there's a good way of mapping out layer 1/2 connectivity from a single computer as well. Would be really, really fascinating.

If you want layer 1 (physical location of dark fiber) you have to get the GIS dataset from the carriers. The data sets exist, but they're often protected as proprietary information or under NDA. I have a QGIS setup with a ton of stuff in it.

There are other ways of acquiring layer 1 data which are labor intensive and involve the equivalent of filing FOIAs for construction permits with local city and county agencies, etc.

Big facilities based ISPs that have a lot of fiber out there underground and aerial make extensive use of GIS software. Their construction groups will have their own full time GIS staff positions.

You'll have to follow the cable. Since this forwarding is entirely passive there's no way to know.

You could build a lab with older, yet relevant hardware from eBay, etc.

Actually, you don't want to do that. It costs money and you really should have a good door between you and the equipment or you will go nuts from the noise.

Most of the interesting stuff can be setup using Linux, OpenvSwitch, FRR/ BIRD, network namespaces/ VRF and more. It is all in FOS Software - so more or less zero cost. Of course, you will not learn how to configure a Catalyst Switch that way. For some stuff, there are virtual appliances that you can spin up with KVM/ QEMU but most of the enterprise stuff has to be bought. Again, at that time, you will have a solid understanding of what should be happening and will know what to look for in the documentation. The rest is field experience with firmware bugs, methods how to approach some problems and syntactic sugar of the particular equipment. At least that is my view.

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