From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

The sysadmin's role in networking

From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

The sysadmin's role in networking

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- You may be a sysadmin who is responsible for networking at your job, or networking may be the majority of your role. In either case there are multiple technologies for which you need to be familiar. If you are applying for jobs, then you should consider earning the Network+ Certification from CompTIA. An even an even deeper knowledge certification would be the Cisco CCNA or CCNP. There are other certifications available but these are the two most popular and recognized, not only by industry, but also by governments when considering hiring for networking. You'll need to become familiar with routers, switches, and firewalls as the locations where data travels from one device to another, the common ports or doorways used for various types of applications, such as SMTP email over port 25 or secure web traffic over port 443. The seven layers of the OSI model are also important. These are the layers that travel from one device to another. At the top, you have the application layer where applications such as web browsers or Outlook email is found. At the bottom is the physical layer where cabling and network cards live. IP addressing is important. We still mostly use IPv4 but you should also understand IPv6 as it will eventually replace the older version. Within IPv4, you should understand the role of network address translation, subnetting, dynamic IP addressing, and most importantly DNS or Domain Name Services. This translates names to IP addresses among other things. Directory services like Active Directory cannot function without it. Internet providers have lots of different products available nowadays. There's wireless, Layer 2 connections between remote offices, MPLS and SD-WAN, for replacing traditional site to site VPN tunnels, ethernet cable types, and many others. As far as virtual private networks go, you'll need to learn how to set up both a client to site and a site to site tunnel for secure communication outside your LAN. There are many different ways to do this, but you'll need to balance higher security versus usability when confronted. There are certain standards for network security that may apply to you based on your market. If you are in the US in finance, you'll need to understand Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI compliance. If in healthcare, then you'll need to know HIPAA compliance. There are actually dozens of various different compliance requirements based on the industry in which you work and the country in which you live. So be sure to look that up with your government. Some compliances are just best practice like the ITIL exam. While others are laws you need to follow. When it comes to cabling, you may be tempted to run complex cables yourself, but this can be a bad idea. There are laws about types of cables and who can run cables. There are also cabling types besides the traditional ethernet cable, such as fiber. Many servers and storage devices now use fiber and you'll need to be familiar with how to use them to connect devices together. Wireless networking is all about speed and security. Learn the latest secure technologies so you can be sure you're not putting your company at risk. At some point, it's likely that outside the server room, all devices will be wireless in the future. Networking has many types of media and ways to connect. Get educated as much as you can on the current standards and look for future changes to come quickly.

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