Jake Van Buschbach 0:03
I think that looks good. Cool. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you're having a great day. My name is Jake from umbrella IT services and today we're going to be talking about network engineering with my good friend Reza, aka Vaughn. So if you could please leave a like on this video really helps resin eye out. If you want to see more videos like this, then please subscribe to the channel. If you have a suggestion for a future video or have a guest that you would like to promote, please leave a comment below or email us at Tech Tips at umbrella it services.ca. So now that that's out of the way, today, we're going to be talking about network engineering. So network engineering is a crucial part of every organization that's often overlooked without a solid network and none of the electronic devices that we use every day would be able to function. And we would not be able to communicate or transmit data the way that we're used to. Reza has nearly 15 years of experience working with networks and he's agreed to say take some time out of his very busy schedule today to help us break down some of the fundamentals of networking, how you can get started with network
Reza Akhavan 1:00
And what difference having a good network engineer means for your organization? So I'd like to give Reza big thank you for coming on and talking with us today about the following topics, such as, what is network engineering? How can a network engineer stay up to date with a constantly changing technology landscape, what effects COVID-19 will have on network engineers and networking in general. And we'll also review some fundamental tools that every network engineer should have in their tool belt. So now again, that's out of the way. Reza, thank you very much for coming on with us today. How are you? How's your day going? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. It's good. No worries. You have a busy day today or what's going on? Yeah, well, it's always crazy busy.
Unknown Speaker 1:39
always something new. Yeah. That's the name of the game. Absolutely. Um, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, just like why you got into the field? What is networking? What experience you have in it? Yeah, of course. Um, I started as tech support, which is, I guess a very familiar spot for people in the field. That's very good.
Unknown Speaker 2:00
You get your foot in the door you go in,
Unknown Speaker 2:04
you start doing some stuff hands on, and then you find what's the field that is exactly the type of work you like to do, or learn more about. So I started working as tech support for a hosting company. And obviously, a hosting company involves all kinda infrastructure that needs to be looked after starting from their servers that are hosting their websites, having get called or managing their own data center,
Unknown Speaker 2:34
the whole nine yards. So what I found interesting for myself was more networking. And that comes from, I guess, personal preference. I think networks are more predictable. And although I like surprises in life here and there, but I don't like surprises at work. They happen regardless. So network is more predictable than for me at least
Unknown Speaker 3:00
and managing several infrastructure. So that's how I got kind of gravitated towards learning about networks. Yeah, I can see behind you there, you've done a little bit of research.
Unknown Speaker 3:11
Exactly. So So what is network engineering? For people that don't know?
Unknown Speaker 3:16
Well, in order to say, What's network engineering, because this is a question I often get asked, even from people who work in the same company with me, yeah. But they're in a different department. They're like, Okay, what is it exactly that you do every day?
Unknown Speaker 3:31
In order to answer that question, we have to first establish what's a network. And a network is kind of separate from the nature you know, the same way of that you have a network of friends you have, we have a network of roads in our cities. So network when it comes to our profession, it's about all the connections between different service providers between different users from your own to your offices. So this network of cables, filler,
Unknown Speaker 4:00
across the city, they have to be managed, they have to be maintained, they have to be upgraded, you need to add to them. So this network with all the things that have to get added to it, both physically and logically, are more often than not done by large groups of people. network engineers are part of those teams involved with this. It makes sense. So when it comes down to what a network does exactly day to day for you, you're basically just connecting different devices and allowing them to talk to each other. Now, that's a fair point. It's all bought more. With my first part of answer, I touched the fact that how they're built.
Unknown Speaker 4:42
But also now you have to think about having them maintain if they're secure or not, if they're redundant or not, if you have enough options to service,
Unknown Speaker 4:53
X amount of data going across the line and these are all talking in bigger
Unknown Speaker 5:00
turns and from the icy perspective, but network, even if you look at your office, you want to have a firewall in your office that is capable of handling X number of VPN connections because you have X number of stuff. Yeah. So network engineering is basically
Unknown Speaker 5:16
the work of planning for all these during the implementation, and then looking after making sure it's working for everyone else. Yeah, that makes sense. So you're not only working on things like an internal Wi Fi and a business, making sure that people's laptops can connect to the server, making sure they can connect to the printer, you're also making things happen. Like when people are working from home, they need to be able to connect to the firewall, which then connects to the printer or connects to their desktop. So that makes a lot of sense.
Unknown Speaker 5:44
How do you keep up with all this stuff? So I know that obviously, 5g is a big topic everyone's talking about. I know Wi Fi six just came out recently. So how do you usually stay up to date with this kind of stuff?
Unknown Speaker 5:57
That's basically a part of our
Unknown Speaker 6:00
job if some people have this perspective that okay, I go to school and learn something and then I go start working experience I'm learning as I work is going to be enough. But there are many professions. Let's say dentists often have to go attend certain classes auto No, I'm not a dentist. Yeah, just making it out once every x amount of years that they have to go attend classes, learn new things that are in their industry, same stories true about network, or maybe even more, because these new technologies are just getting rolled out and they need people who understand them, they can deploy them properly, they can maintain them, so it never stops. Once you accept that this is your profession, you have to be prepared for dedicating time out of your
Unknown Speaker 6:52
free time to think that you think okay, I'm gonna enjoy myself. You have to have the passion and you have to enjoy learning about things that makes me happy.
Unknown Speaker 7:00
Everything. Hmm. So would you say that the certifications that you have are like, again, you have a large number behind you? Do you think those have been more beneficial? It's not my certifications. Pardon? These are the books. There you go. Yes. So do you think that the books have been more beneficial? Is that the real world experience? What do you think has been the number one contributor for helping you just stay up to date with this stuff? Hmm. That's a very good question. And also a hot topic. Many people debate about this. And there's no right or wrong. Many people say that certain incidents is not something that I care about. I don't like to keep renewing something. If I know something, I can show it to my employer or to my clients, and they will find the confidence out there, and they see how it works. And that is true, but one of the beauties of being certified and keeping them updated is the fact that for example, I've got my ccmp certification.
Unknown Speaker 8:00
And then it was the old model of Cisco. And the ccmp. Route two certification that I took was very heavy on Routing and Switching topics. But now they just rolled out. And by just I mean, last February, it came out and now the new CCNP route switch doesn't exist. It's called enterprise and it has a lot of software defined networking on it, it has a lot of automation. So it's actually a blessing in disguise. People might be bothered by the fact that they have to renew them or they have to study and renew them again. But that's exactly how you can then keep up with the market and you will learn Okay, now software defined networking is bigger than five years ago, I have to learn and renew I certainly and that's a very good way. Also, it will push you it will give you a goal. It will give you the discipline that you need to sit down. Although you had a long day at work, you're going to dedicate X amount of hours and not you
Unknown Speaker 9:00
What a week to study to learn something new. It's a great tool. I'm all for certification. I'm in that camp, some people are just against. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big self taught guy. So that's always been, I think a good reason why you and I get along so well, is because you have all the formal training and all the certifications. And I have these wacky ideas that I've kind of hacked together. So I know sometimes I'll say stuff. And you'll be like, what, what did this guy just say? That it works?
Unknown Speaker 9:26
It is. It's a double edged sword. You shouldn't always fall on something you really know. Yeah, sometimes the practical version is different. Sometimes you are supposed to think outside the box and be innovative and come up with something that you did. You couldn't find in any book. And people like yourself that been doing it for a long time, learn things, by experience, have their own advantages. Yeah, that's why teamwork is better than doing things on your own. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you've recently moved on. I know that full disclosure.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
We used to work together, I'll throw that on the table. And now you're you're more of a solo tech in a giant corporation. I know, obviously you have a team going on. But do you prefer the idea of just having a network engineer alone? Do you like having that managed services environment where there's more people to draw information from? Like, what do you what do you usually prefer? And because again, you've got about 15 years of experience. So what what has been your preference over the course of your career? I personally prefer working in a bigger team.
Unknown Speaker 10:29
The reason is, you can always bounce ideas off to other people who already in the situation, know the background, and they know where you're going, we are trying to get to so it's great to have a team of people and I think the last video there
Unknown Speaker 10:48
are
Unknown Speaker 10:52
so basically being in a team has a lot of benefits when you're working on your own.
Unknown Speaker 10:58
Even if you're second guessing.
Unknown Speaker 11:00
yourself, even if you're not sure if it's about
Unknown Speaker 11:04
a technology that is very new, it is kind of hard to pull the trigger or be 100%. Sure. So being Latino has definitely evolved. That makes sense, I think as well like another reason because a lot of people argue right? Like, oh, like you said, oh, I've got my CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, all these things. But then I see these guys, and I speak with some of them. And that's all they do. They're not on like, like on a big YouTube guy. So I like network chalk. I like going on Twitter, and I have my little forums and communities that I like to go on. And I follow these personalities. And they're always saying, like, oh, today, I learned this from Cisco, or today I was on the job and turns out that this sort of firewall solution really works well, whereas this one doesn't, whatever, right? And do you recommend that people do the iterative thing, which is kind of what I do where they're learning bit by bit? Or do you think it's better to just kind of jump from CCNA and CCNP my personal opinion would be that it really depends on your job.
Unknown Speaker 12:00
Like if you're someone and you're an independent engineer, or you're just working as one kind of gear in the cog of a business, it is better to go with the formal training because your job is to do one thing. You know what I mean? You're you have one organization, you're making sure works, you have a very limited stack of technology. And you should be learning as much as possible about that technology with a little bit of peripheral stuff, obviously. But you should be really focusing on if you're a Cisco stack, or if you're you ubiquity or unify stack, or a micro tech stack, whatever. You should be digging down to those certifications on those programs. But what do you think about that doing that's a, an environmental thing.
Unknown Speaker 12:44
It's, it's best to have good balance of good things. It's wrong always to shut the door and one option, be 100%. focus on one thing and then find out that Oh, that wasn't everything I needed. Yeah. So I think you're
Unknown Speaker 13:00
Have certifications from many vendors. And I'm not saying that they don't have value. But the thing is, when you are going to get certified, it is for a couple of reasons. First of all to
Unknown Speaker 13:17
learn something that he didn't know, yeah, that should be the main reason. You see many people get that wrong, they go after them for the wrong reason.
Unknown Speaker 13:27
Second reason for it should be to help you have a better job a better position professionally and snip yourself up for the coming years given what is the trend in the network, or servers or whatever it is environment you're working.
Unknown Speaker 13:47
Now, if you look at people going after random certifications, because it's happening at their company, that's completely justifiable. If you don't have any goal and you just want to
Unknown Speaker 14:00
Learn something you're always better off learning the fundamentals. Because once you learn the fundamentals of Routing and Switching, for example, it doesn't really matter if your switches Cisco, or if it's Aristo, or ubiquity, your HP switching is the same VLANs are the same, everything would be the same. It's just how you would implement it on that particular vendor.
Unknown Speaker 14:23
platform.
Unknown Speaker 14:25
It is very important to make those
Unknown Speaker 14:31
steps
Unknown Speaker 14:33
ahead of time, get a certification, absorb, absorb some information, feel comfortable with it, at least think that you're comfortable with it, and then try to have it in production network. And you try that and then you have to, not all people can afford Cisco. So you end up with people buying cheaper switches or dismond or badminton, and then you learn doing the same thing on those and that's what
Unknown Speaker 15:00
You could go and write exams,
Unknown Speaker 15:03
and have no job experience. And you might even pass, I think it's very unlikely, but you might even pass maybe your greatest study. But that will not translate into you being a successful network engineer at work. So it's great to take your time, learn things, study, try to implement them, try to expand your knowledge. Go dive a bit deeper than what you would find on a blueprint of a certification exam. And then once you're fully confident in things you've learned, you can move on, you can add things to it for the next level. That's how I've been approaching it, and it served me well. I think, I think that's a really good advice, especially for new network engineers or people that are kind of getting started with their careers. You mentioned that it's a good idea to go back and kind of just learned these things. iteratively. You know, I think it's really important that people kind of understand that
Unknown Speaker 16:00
When they pick something, have a goal in mind and work towards that goal. So if you're going to be trying to be a head engineer somewhere, you want to be a network engineer and an MSP, you just want to get a cushy consulting job. You know, there's a ton of there's a million different things you can do. And especially with all this COVID stuff going on, there's going to be, I think, a tremendous increase in, in work for network engineers specifically. But yeah, I think the good advice that you brought up for the new guys is learn the fundamentals. Because a lot of people I know a lot of people ask me all the time, Hey, man, I want to get into it. Like I've seen that you've gone from fixing phone screens in a bedroom closet to working with all these large companies, like, how did you do it? What's the secret, and then they do a little bit of googling. And, of course, Cisco is number one, because their marketing budget, and I tell them, you're not going to work in a lot of Cisco environments. When you're starting off, it's a lot better to just take a comp ti a plus take a network plus, learn the fundamentals, and then you're going to be able to apply those in a valuable way for your clients. So that's it
Unknown Speaker 17:00
matter if you're able to walk into any sort of business and they're only Cisco, you're going to be in trouble. If you're a unify or an HP or like you mentioned these other brands,
Unknown Speaker 17:09
it's really important. You can walk in there and you can go, oh, okay, your printer is not working because it's on a different VLAN behind a firewall, or you've got a firewall rule blocking it, or whatever the problem is, you're going to be able to go, Okay, I understand that the subnet that you're on is different than the subnet you're communicating with. And when I checked your firewall, it's actually blocking communication between those subnets let me fix that. It doesn't matter that you walk in there you go. Well, I've actually got this certification with hp. And I'm only actually able to work on this HP device. Sorry, I can't help you.
Unknown Speaker 17:40
Do you have any other advice for newbies just starting off in the field? A lot. Love a lot. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 17:48
That's Yeah, that's really good. Every minute that you spend at all you are comfortable, you know that things you're changing are not going to have impact on anyone's business. This is not going to put your
Unknown Speaker 18:00
Job underlining. And you will have the luxury of trying all kinds of features of particular technology that you wouldn't necessarily need it at work or for that particular client. So when you live at home and you used to be very hard, I remember I had to drive all the way to Seattle to pick up Cisco devices because I couldn't find that many of you make Hoover. It was a huge hassle for me to put together a very cheap home lock.
Unknown Speaker 18:35
But now it has changed a lot. Now you can actually have a virtualized environment and that environment will give you everything like a very good place for people to look at is even GE that's Evie dash pingy
Unknown Speaker 18:51
just google even g they have a free community version. You set that up and you have a lab when your computer you don't even need that much resources.
Unknown Speaker 19:00
Basically, if you're not aiming to run big labs, and when you start, you have no reason to run big labs. So try to set up a good home lab. And even in my work environment, you can use it as a proof of concept environment, you can use it as your sandbox environment. I always talk to people. And from their home lab, I can say how much they're actually interested in what they're doing. That makes sense. Um, what do you recommend people get started with the home lab, because what I usually end up doing is just I want to have just a wireless connectivity, like some sort of W LAN. I want to have a couple different VLANs running on a firewall or on a switch. But what would you say is a really good way to just kind of get started and start tinkering around because a lot of people like myself included when I was very first getting started. I didn't know what to do. And it's very similar. But you said like, I was looking online, I was dead broke, and I was like, I can't go by even though it's only 600 bucks. I can't go buy a $600 Dell server to host all this stuff. And I don't know I don't
Unknown Speaker 20:00
even know where to begin. So do you recommend any anywhere people can learn about setting up a lab? Do you have any recommendations on how to set up a lab? Absolutely, yep, there, there are very good options that are free. If you are going to study for your Cisco certification, you can just download this software called Packet Tracer.
Unknown Speaker 20:19
And Packet Tracer used to be something that you could only download from their student version account. But now they've made it available to everyone. You can just go on register, put your email address and information you can download. packet person is great if you want to learn working with Cisco devices. Now if you want to if you're interested in having a hybrid environment, which is more realistic. Again, as you said earlier, it is very unlikely for you to walk in and everything is Cisco. And even if that's the case, you're just going to be a one trick pony. And you want to avoid being so go either to
Unknown Speaker 21:00
Even G, or GS three, Genesis three has been around for a long time as well. And you can visualize any pretty much anyone there on it. It's not just Cisco, and setting up that knob and actually give you a very
Unknown Speaker 21:17
intense experience for the first time if you're not familiar with it. And it's great because it's a great experience. You'll learn how to set up a virtualized environment, post different
Unknown Speaker 21:29
vendor devices and upload images, create virtual machines. And once you do that, and have that environment ready, you can start with doing small things. As you said, let's set up LAN connection with couple of subnets. Start with one fun one v that you're comfortable with that get to to get to three. But before doing all that you have to learn the very fundamentals of network and for that any of the certifications network plus
Unknown Speaker 22:00
Or even CCNA, all these certifications versus start with vendor neutral information
Unknown Speaker 22:07
all about TCP IP stack. And when I say this, it's not even only about people who are new to this. Even if you are a seasoned engineer, your best tool is your knowledge of the TCP IP stack. And how you can understand where each of these technologies landing, it will help you to build better solutions. It will help you to troubleshoot when things go wrong. So just to spend time, it's probably the dryer part of your studying. But once you understand that,
Unknown Speaker 22:41
you would appreciate doing that for years to come. Yeah. And to be completely honest, as well. I think that you mentioned the the more experienced people. In my experience, personally, the only day and you and I kind of stumbled on this together at least, you helped me some along with us the main difference between a senior network engineer and a
Unknown Speaker 23:00
Junior is how they deal with the stress and how they deal with the pressure. because like you said, when you're first setting up that routing, in that virtualized environment, you're going to get that dread. And every engineer and every tech guy knows I'm talking about where that that, that just blanket of just comes over you. And you gotta be able to just go, you know what, fine, fuck it, I'll power through, you know, we'll figure this out, we'll make it work. And it's gonna be fine. Because, you know, like, like you said, You're not live on someone's business. You're not live in an environment where if they go down, you're gonna lose $250,000 an hour. You know, that's not the situation you're in, you're at home, you're messing around, maybe your girlfriend's gonna get pissed because the Wi Fi goes down if you don't set up a lab, but that's the worst case scenario, you know what I mean? So you're out some flowers, but whatever.
Unknown Speaker 23:47
So I think it's it's really important to focus on that for the new guys because I obviously being in an MSP space, we rub shoulders with a lot of the newer guys in the field and people that are five years in that kind of stuff, and I've had a couple folks that are only a couple years old
Unknown Speaker 24:00
They go, what's the like? What's the secret? Like, how do you know when you're really ready? And I go, Okay, what happens when you fuck something up? What happens when you break something? And you get that frozen thing or you go Okay, here we go again. And that's and I think that's the main difference.
Unknown Speaker 24:16
Yeah. What do you what are some common common challenges that you've been facing when you're studying? And when you're trying to advance in your career? Do you have any advice for anybody that's that's kind of hit a rut if they're just kind of getting their network plus, or if they're trying to get a CCNA? Or if they're trying to get a CCIE or CCNP. Do you have any advice for those people if they're struggling, or just getting started with these things? Absolutely. I would actually relate a lot to that. Because studying these technologies, they have all kinds of details. When you're learning about something, let's say,
Unknown Speaker 24:52
a routing protocol. You can just learn how to set it up. There are a few commands, you can copy base that off of any form
Unknown Speaker 25:00
You know, there is some sample out there. Yeah, actually, that's the far end of it. Let's go to the very polarized other end of this, that is you sitting down reading RFCs.
Unknown Speaker 25:14
And for people who are not familiar with the term RFCs, or standards that are basically used by all vendors, RFCs or requests for comment, and they often come from I triple E, and when new protocol is being rolled out, let's say you're robbing portable Wi Fi six that you just mentioned earlier, these will have their own RFCs they would define it, what are
Unknown Speaker 25:44
the specifications? What are the technical things that would actually make this protocol work, and then vendors want to use that they go use those RFCs use those information, and then they build the device that is actually working with
Unknown Speaker 26:00
other vendors. That's how the
Unknown Speaker 26:03
operation, the interoperability between different vendors work. You can go sit down and read those RFPs. That's too much that's not needed. But when you are trying to learn something, it's better for you to learn the fundamentals. Be sure that you're dealing with all of that. And despite feeling that it's this, you know, you would ask yourself, Is this really necessary? Do I really have to know this? You would appreciate it at some point in your career that you actually took the time and learn. I'm not saying go sit down and read the RFC, drivers documentation you can find, but don't
Unknown Speaker 26:43
cheat yourself out of information here. Hundred percent. I think it's one of those situations where and this has happened to me a lot, where I've been trying to figure out a problem with a client's network or with their server or something like that, and I'm three and a half hours into it, and I'm getting nowhere.
Unknown Speaker 27:00
Where, and then you walk by and you're like, you check this, and you go to the water. And by the time I come back, I'm just like, son of a bitch. Like, how did you? And it's because you read that one thing on that one forum from 2007. Or you read that one thing in that RFC Handbook, you know. So I think that it is really important to not cheat yourself on that kind of stuff. And another way that I kind of overcome that stuff is I go on YouTube, and I find communities. So one guide that I found to be really practical. I don't know if you agree, is Eli, the computer guy, and he's very good for fundamentals. He'll he I think he has a four hour seminar on TCP IP, and the seven layers and now.
Unknown Speaker 27:40
Yeah, so he was huge. Probably six years ago, when I was starting the business. Actually, he was I would call him my first mentor. And he cuts through everything he's like, this is not what you need to know. I've got 20 years experience in the field. Here's the fundamentals. Here's how you can get your first client. Here's what people are going to actually ask you to do. And he cuts through everything which was
Unknown Speaker 28:00
Really great for me, I wish that I coupled that with like a CCNA or something like that. So I could have had kind of a little bit of a formal training as well. But I usually go on to people like him, someone like network Chuck is also very good. You've turned me on to him. And having them kind of demo stuff in the click Beatty ways is really helpful and I kind of look at what they're doing. And then I go, Okay, well, what would a small business want? Or what would my target want? Let's say it's a big corporation or whatever. And then I can sit at home and I could go, Okay, well, a small business would want to have Wi Fi that's public and private, they would want to have a network that's public and private, they would want to have a firewall, they would want to have switches. And then I can go ahead and design a network for 15 people in a business, instead of like you said, trying to grind through an RFC manual for four hours going, why the hell am I learning this? And at the end of the day, when you put in your eight hours, you can go, Hey, I'm halfway done. My setup I've got I've got a fully functional private Wi Fi system.
Unknown Speaker 29:00
I've got a fully functional to VLAN network that I built up myself, you know, and I think that's really important for people that are starting. And even I think on your level, what do you what do you think, like when you're at the tippy top or getting up to the tippy top of things?
Unknown Speaker 29:16
What are some things that keep you motivated? As a more experienced engineer?
Unknown Speaker 29:21
You have to accept something and that's true about again, there are many, many things we talked about are not necessarily what
Unknown Speaker 29:30
you don't know what you don't know. So you have to be honest with yourself and put the time into those spots that you know are your weakness and focus on them. Also, don't take
Unknown Speaker 29:47
guesses or just don't do things with the hope of getting it done in production networks. Again, that goes back to the value of loving things up at home, trying them
Unknown Speaker 30:01
Be confident with things that you are claiming you're capable of doing. For me,
Unknown Speaker 30:08
whenever I
Unknown Speaker 30:11
face a task, or a project, and I know that this particular device, I'm not 100% sure about all its features, I tried to spit it up in my lap. I tried to set up even a smaller version of that network, see how it goes? What are the things that I'm not sure about them? And that would actually give me a reason to now sit down and study about something that I didn't know. Like, right now, the new trend is that you hear from many people is cloud cloud cloud. And I say this, I know it's a source of debate, and probably many people are not gonna like me for saying this. But this is just marketing. Cloud is internet. It's been around. There was a time that we say okay, this is a data center. This is an office
Unknown Speaker 31:00
Now they say, Oh, this is Amazon. Yeah, sure. But Amazon Cloud Service is the data center is following the same structure as any other network. But they are giving you this certification. So you are basically certified, you are trusted with managing their platform. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 31:22
So you hear all these trends. And if you have a strong fundamental, if you did the homework, and if you learn things, the way they're supposed to be very, then you would not have an issue to go through their documentation or their training or look at new things or try their trial versions and figure it out. Yeah. But if you've been cutting corners, and you've been just trying to get certified to get a X amount of dollars a year as your salary, then yeah, the trend is going to change. It will change. It's a guarantee. And then what do you want to do that?
Unknown Speaker 31:58
start from zero
Unknown Speaker 32:00
Learn that new platform or whatever is trendy at that time. That's not how it works. It's at least not a good long term. I don't know, man, I got some friends who only know Microsoft DOS, and they're doing very well.
Unknown Speaker 32:13
Um, so yeah, I think that's completely correct. Because like the cloud thing, like you said, it is all marketing nonsense. And I think that a big important thing
Unknown Speaker 32:23
is to note that OneDrive is great, but what are you doing? It's not sinking on your local computer. You know what I mean? Like, Amazon cloud services are great. What happens when your phone system that's hosted in the cloud stops connecting to your local phones? What are you going to do? You know, I mean, if you're only able to say, Well, I can log into the Amazon panel, and I can make sure that the servers working, okay. It's like, okay, that's great. I can also log into a Windows system and tell that that's great. How are you going to break through the firewall here? How are you going to do it in a way where you're not going to get this business hit by ransomware? How are you going to let these systems communicate in a trusted fashion, where it's actually going to function? And people go What? It's like Okay, did you
Unknown Speaker 33:00
Setup port forwarding? Well, yeah, okay, so now you want everyone inside of this business to lose everything they've ever worked on because of ransomware and port scanning. And it's like, you know what I mean, there's a lot of things where, and I should probably slow it down a little bit, but I know in case there's new people listening, but there's a lot of things people do, like you said, that are very platform specific, where they completely ignore the fundamentals. And I think it's really important for people to understand again, get your comp ti a plus, you need to understand what a Windows computer is. What is a Mac computer, then you can get into the network stuff. What is a window? What does SMB look like? What's SMB one? What's SMB two was SMB three. I remember we had a client have that I think was like their printer or their files went down for I don't remember like two or three days. And I had two different Tech's look at it. This is before you joined us. And it was a company on the North Shore. And I went on site and I was like SMB, one is disabled. It was scanning files from a printer. No one could get it to scan over. So I went in and I was like SMB one is disabled.
Unknown Speaker 34:00
on this server, why is SMB one disabled? And the tech that had worked on it was like, well, I read in best practices, that malware spreads through SMB one, so I cut it off. And I was like, Okay, you've also disabled like 75% of the functions in this office by doing that. And then it turns out licensing stuff wasn't working. And there's a bunch of problems going on. But again, because he'd heard from this one platform that SMB one was bad, he cut it off, and he didn't know that, oh, shit, I've terminated licensing software. I've terminated file scanning from printers. I've cut off a lot of Mac OS sharing, like so it's very crazy. How a lot of people just get hyper focused on this marketing stuff. And they completely disregard the fundamentals. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 34:46
I'm sorry. No, that guy who did that? We'll never do that again. Exactly. So that's the value of being hands on and find things in a control environment before cutting off 70% of business functions. Yeah, hundred percent.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
And that's why I think that I've been so fortunate is I fallen on my face a million times behind closed doors. You know, I mean, I've made a tiny mistake at two in the morning, no one notices, I do my quality control testing. And then I go, Okay, I can't do that. So you'll say, like, let's say, when you and I were working together and you were designing a project for us, I would be able to pipe in every once in a while, then either contribute or critique something. I would not know why. Like, if you were saying, if you were to say, Okay, well, why won't that work? I can say, well, layer four of the networking structure means this or that, but I can say, well, because I did that once and then I got punched in the head. Again, so it's a mix. You know, it's a mix of getting the the formal training about him in the real world training. So yeah, what do you think the future looks for everybody? I know you mentioned the cloud stuff, but I know the COVID thing is stressing a lot of people out and other industries. I've been busier than ever. Have you been busier than ever. Yes, it's it's crazy. Well, the company I work for, they do both IBM
Unknown Speaker 36:00
Services not known for the ISP because it's less for end users and home connection and more for offices and sorry to interrupt. So that's internet service provider and managed services provider for people. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. No worries. Yeah. And then
Unknown Speaker 36:20
this covert situation actually showed many business owners that they should trust their employees but working from home. Now, what are the benefits of this? This is a bad situation globally, and it's hurting many businesses. And it would, it would actually, at the end cause all of us only business owners. The job market is going to be here, even now that they're opening everything back up. There are many businesses that think, okay, maybe we can manage and they're going to file bankruptcy in a few months. I hope this situation is going to get better, but the only good that came out of this was that he chose business owners
Unknown Speaker 37:00
They don't really need to pay rent for a place necessarily. They don't have to have everyone coming to the office every day. People don't need to drive their car, drive their cars as often as they do. You don't have to commute to some specific place to take care of the responsibilities. And all this would be actually a boost to IP services and the level of it needs in businesses. Now we have many clients that they cannot have their employees at their offices, they come to us and they asked how we can help them to set up VPN for them if you're going to host their servers for them. So they don't have to have anything physical at their office. And once they take care of that, what's the use of having the lease and renting that space? Right? Yeah. So it's a double edged sword. And we've been confident in a bad way up to this point, but now business can
Unknown Speaker 38:00
use this opportunity to see that, oh, everything was working just fine. People pour through data at their job. So maybe now we should look at having hybrid environments, try to have people or carers remotely as much as possible. It's a good thing. It's good for environments good for our cities. It's
Unknown Speaker 38:18
overall, I would say it's a positive thing. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, as a network engineer, do you think you're gonna be in more demand less demand?
Unknown Speaker 38:27
Uh, yeah. Well, now I remembered the last question you asked before I give you that answer and the future of network engineering. As with many other
Unknown Speaker 38:39
ever changing IP fields, is going to be more of automation.
Unknown Speaker 38:46
More of learning how to code. It was not a requirement for a network engineer when I started to be familiar with automation or Python or do Ansible or
Unknown Speaker 39:00
automate services, the environments are not as big either.
Unknown Speaker 39:04
Now, it's a common thing for people to have a hybrid environment have Amazon services spin up X number of servers that they need to manage, right? Everything is changing. Now. In addition to that doctors are changing the landscape a lot. Now, you can afford to have a much more complicated and versatile, virtualized environments that you couldn't do because the previous virtualization was based on chopping up your hardware,
Unknown Speaker 39:38
chopping off your kernel your operating system. Now you can have many more doctors than you could ever imagine having virtual servers. So all these things are making the environments to run on.
Unknown Speaker 39:53
multiple number of nodes, multiple number of servers now you can have many doctors with
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Are you going to do you? Are you going to manage the network individually for each of them? Now you need to know automation. Now you need to learn Python and Ansible. Now you have to manage your network from one point on many different devices. So that's the trend. That's something that I personally knock box and I'm working on. And I'm glad actually, it would give me a reason to sit down and dedicate some time and study again, it's not only about learning that technology, it would keep you on your toes. It would teach you how to be
Unknown Speaker 40:36
on a schedule, how to have discipline, how to have time management skills, and these are things that after learning that technology would help you at your very job day to day. Yeah. being disciplined, being good with your time management. taking that out to know last minute of productivity out of your day, when you really need it. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 41:00
You mentioned that I think that's all great advice. You mentioned that you're kind of lacking in that field. But I know that you are unique in a lot of ways in the industry. What are some ways that you kind of recommend people
Unknown Speaker 41:15
move forward with that kind of stuff? Like how would you explain you approach your projects? And what advice do you have for people that are kind of approaching something new? Like, like you said, you're going to be approaching this coding stuff.
Unknown Speaker 41:28
How do you approach any project that you're working on?
Unknown Speaker 41:31
Well, if it's a project for a client, if it's happening at work, people should remember the most important part of any project is the client who's paying for that project.
Unknown Speaker 41:47
That's very important. I see so many attacks just blaze right by that. So thanks.
Unknown Speaker 41:54
So basically, that's a top of the list. So it is always important to have
Unknown Speaker 42:00
complete understanding of what environment they're trying to have. What are the goals? What are the criterias that would make this project successful, versus making it unsuccessful? And then you would be given a budget sometimes.
Unknown Speaker 42:18
We both know because we've dealt with clients, and they've been actually going through this together. Sometimes people don't know that this money is needed to be spent. Yeah, they overlook and they're like, Okay, why should we spend this amount of money on our network? We were doing just fine. Good in it your switch? Yeah. And the modem from our, your favorite brand.
Unknown Speaker 42:43
That's the number one brand.
Unknown Speaker 42:46
My favorite brand? Yeah. But then when you explain to them that how much you're gonna see down the road, or maybe you come here for the
Unknown Speaker 42:58
having security versus
Unknown Speaker 43:00
Not having security, how much damage getting ransomware actually have on your business? Can they afford to go through that? Or sometimes as simple as they asked me? Do we really need internet connection from two different service providers? And I asked them, okay, having a second internet connection would cost you $1,000 a year. If you lose your Internet connection for two days, or even one day for six hours, what's the cost for you and for your business? So you're given this project and sometimes half of this back and forth. It is not about squeezing the client or forcing them to pay more. Sometimes they want to put more money in you have to tell them hey, you're just overspending you're splashing. You don't need to. Yeah, I can do this but half this month. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 43:54
I have a big problem with texts that do that, because it makes it really hard for the rest of us to do our job.
Unknown Speaker 44:00
I've come into some businesses and you've come with me. And we've tried to explain to them like, yes, this, here's the price, like, here's what we're getting it for, there's no margin here. And they've just been screwed over so many times that they just they can't, they don't have any trust left, you know what I mean? Because what we do to a lot of people does kind of seem like black magic. And a lot of those texts do come in a lot of these businesses that do come in, and they take advantage of that. And it makes it really difficult for all of us to kind of get what we need to do. And to touch really quickly on one other thing before we continue, is regarding the cost thing that you mentioned, for example, we've installed the server for a health clinic, and you helped us replace their network, I believe, and since they've done that 15 of their computers were will actually honestly I think we had 11 computers scheduled to be replaced. All of them except for two are now working flawlessly.
Unknown Speaker 44:55
So they now don't necessarily have to urgently
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Replace 15 workstations, all of them are scheduled to replace, but they don't need to necessarily spend the money to replace 11 workstations now, because they spent a little bit extra money on that server and a little bit of extra money on that network. So I think it's really important, like you said, do the cost value proposition. Listen to the client, talk to the client, hear what they're saying, a lot of guys just get sucked into this best practices, I get cool toys to play with. And sometimes you'll walk into a place and you'll say, what were you quoted previously? And they'll say, Oh, this guy wants to put in this system or that system. And you go, Well, that's what do you How big are you? How big are you trying to get like, what's your roadmap over the next couple years? And people will just say, well, we're trying to hit 25 people, and it's like, okay, I don't think that you really need to have this catalyst in here. You know what I mean? I don't think you need to have a $900,000 network infrastructure and server combination for this million dollar a year business. Maybe you need to actually just downgrade to something that's more in the 50,000 hundred thousand dollar range.
Unknown Speaker 46:00
Because you listened and because you told the client what they actually needed to hear, that makes a huge difference. I think that's one of the reasons why we've done so well. And why I like working with you so much is because you'll just cut through the BS with people. You know what, we'll leave a meeting and it'll go, I wish we could have worked with the catalysts or I wish we could have worked with that shiny new toy, but it's not what they need. You know. So I think it's important to touch on that stuff. I just wanted to bring attention to those quickly. Sorry. Please continue. Remember that.
Unknown Speaker 46:28
I don't know what he said that this is my mind. I want to add it before we move on, because it's very important. What vendor explained things to clients? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 46:39
You have to make sure that you're not throwing technical terms up. Yes. It will make him uncomfortable. It will make him feel stupid. It will take away from that conversation. We always have to have a good analogy, something that they can understand and they can relate to and
Unknown Speaker 47:00
Through that, just show them the concept of what you're trying to put together as a solution for them. So
Unknown Speaker 47:07
back to what you were saying with their network infrastructure, and having a good server. Now, if they were not spending money on their network, it's like buying a car parked in your parking, and then you don't spend money on fixing your driveway. And then you don't have a driveway to go out and drive it on the road and enjoy it. It is exactly like that. So maybe give tangible examples to people that would be able to follow you. They're like, Okay, so this firewall that say I eat here is exactly like my driveway, so I can drive my Ferrari out and enjoy it. Otherwise, my $400,000 car has to sit here because I can't even get it on the road. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really important that the analogy thing really helps because again, like you can, if you can't explain this stuff to folks in language, understand they're not going to get it like if you start talking about the seven layers of networking.
Unknown Speaker 48:00
or whatever, people are just going to tune out, you know, even some some MSP business owners and some technical salespeople, they're not going to follow you. But if you're like, Hey, you know, why isn't this working? Okay? Well, you see your VLAN is kind of like your bedroom in your living room, and you got this wall between them. And it's really well insulated. So if you're trying to talk to someone, and they're in the living room, and you're in the bedroom doesn't matter how loud you yell, they're not going to hear you. Okay, got it. They don't need to understand you've created two digital networks and all this other stuff, you know. So yeah, I think the analogy things very powerful. So, yeah. Cool. Um, what else do I have here? So, what are some common mistakes that you usually see while people are making that we're speaking of using the analogies and not speaking technically to people? What are some common mistakes you've seen our engineers making either while they're designing things or while they're studying or just general mistakes? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 48:54
Well, in designing things, I would say being an MSP for years now.
Unknown Speaker 49:00
I get to see the work of other network engineers and network administrators. But it's now taking over and trying to improve it or if it's broken and they couldn't fix it, and they had to bring you in. It's very polarized. Two things that stands out to me is that they either overcomplicate things,
Unknown Speaker 49:21
or they go lazy and make it super simple. So let's say that it's an office of five people, some network engineer was just for flexing their muscles. They did 200 VLANs, for an office of five people. Yeah, right. That's bad. If you would be surprised how often we find those things, because I'm not I'm not gonna say that. It is always the case. But sometimes they do. They do make it complicated. So they're the only people can understand that. Yeah. Very bad business practice. But it's not.
Unknown Speaker 49:57
It's not that hard to find. Yeah. You
Unknown Speaker 50:00
Other version is that having something super simple, that's another common mistake that I see that they try to avoid that situation and making things, they try to make things simple to hand off to someone else. They make it too simple. That is just kind of stealing from the functions that you really need it.
Unknown Speaker 50:18
So these are two common things that I see at work.
Unknown Speaker 50:23
In terms of studying
Unknown Speaker 50:25
something I see that is very common by people is that they just study things for the sake of passing the exam.
Unknown Speaker 50:36
And we touched that a little earlier whenever we're talking about certification and study. Do not do that because you would cheat yourself out of very
Unknown Speaker 50:46
reason that you are studying that instead of going out and having fun with your friends watching the movie, spending time with your significant other. You sit down you study but instead of digging deep and doing the right thing and last
Unknown Speaker 51:00
And trying things and truly learning the fundamentals. You just try to be prepared to answer, answer multiple choice questions. That's not good. So that's a common thing that I see that people study. And
Unknown Speaker 51:15
I would say
Unknown Speaker 51:17
the only way to avoid it is to have a better perspective of when you're going to use any future. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's all really good advice. I think I think that's a really good, really good advice, man, like, thinking about the plurality of people because I won't say it's a majority, but there's a plurality of these individual technicians that kind of turned themselves into God at the organization. And like you said, like, you walk in, you have five people employed in the business, there's five VLANs, that maybe there's 10 VLANs, because it's one for each of the guys laptops and desktops. And there's all these crazy firewall rules and all these hoops to jump through and it's like, why, like, I get it, but like, why, like, why did you do this? And it's like, well, I was bored and you know, some new things.
Unknown Speaker 52:00
The university.
Unknown Speaker 52:01
Yeah, they always say get out of here. But
Unknown Speaker 52:05
yeah, I think it's I think that's great advice. And it's really important again to make sure you like you said earlier, if you've got a lab for those things, you don't need to make it overly complicated a client site. It's all about balancing. And again, listen to the client, figure out what they're trying to do. And then give them a solution if it's going to take you four hours to do what they really need, then to do four hours, and if you think of something where they're saying, Oh, we want to do a VPN solution and monitor this, we want to do that. And you're the type of person that wants to be a little bit more comprehensive. And you want to say, Okay, you know what, let's add in like a some sort of sort of some sort of cert to add an extra layer of security of this. You can talk to them you can say, look, I can do this. It's gonna take me an extra two hours right now I'm gonna have to come in once a year refresh the cert, it's gonna cost you 500 bucks a year. What do you think and then they'll go well, why? And you go well, ransomware costs an average business hundred $16,000 a year. 2018 average cost the US 800 something thousand last year.
Unknown Speaker 53:00
In your bigger business, maybe you need this. If it's a one person entrepreneur, they're gonna be fine. You know what I mean? They don't need to have all this crazy stuff. So I think it really ties back to again, making sure you have the right tools set up, making sure that you have the right community setup, making sure you're listening to the clients. And I think it's mistakes or how you're going to learn in this field, I think and you want to make the right mistakes, like you said, you want to be if you're losing time with your friends, your family, your significant others, it should be worth it. And it should be taking steps towards a goal. That's that's going to help you build a better life for yourself and fire that passion for technology that you have, and not be seen as this thing for you to resent. Because I've seen a lot of people in this industry later in life have a lot of resentment. And they're very bitter towards other people. And it's very unfortunate to see people go that way because it's it right if you're doing things right. People are gonna ask what the hell am I paying for? And if you're doing things wrong, people gonna ask what the hell am I paying for?
Unknown Speaker 54:00
And it's a very thankless job. But at the end of the day, I think that people like you, and I just have this passion for it. And it's what we love to do. And I don't know what I would do if I couldn't work with people like yourself and work for the clients that I have. And I just think that it's really good advice, man. What are some tools that you recommend everybody use
Unknown Speaker 54:22
just in their tool belt day to day or if they're wanting to learn more things.
Unknown Speaker 54:28
One thing that I don't see many people use or at least in MSP environment, it's using the free tools that you can find out there tools like Wireshark for example. And the best way to start being comfortable there is again, using it in a lab environment. The traffic is very limited. You know what you're supposed to find out that wire and then you Wireshark you see you know all the Heather's you see all the payload of the packet.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
You can just go through different things that are making that traffic. And one day when all the doors are closed as rainy data, some network is down and you don't know what's going on. That tool in your toolbox will actually come and help you being comfortable with going over packet captures, especially with older new firewalls in the market. And there are many good firewalls. Surprisingly, there was a time that you didn't have that many options. In terms of firewalls, it was not something that was built by many vendors. For a long time people have I'm just getting sidetracked but no worth talking about it for a long time people had routers
Unknown Speaker 55:48
to connect to their service provider, and then they are IPS IDs they had in line printed prevention or detection is very separate functions.
Unknown Speaker 56:00
Find a thread on their network, right? Now firewalls, they can do all those things in one place. Yeah. And very important for technicians and for network engineers to be able to look at packet captures, look at the traffic that is going on the wire and just pick it apart, say, this portion of the I know what it is this I don't know, this doesn't look good to me. This lines up with this announcement that was out there, zero day attack that they said does this, this is looking something like it, Brett, you know, in for you enable to be confident in your observation. It only comes from practice. So I would say something that I don't see many people and it's very important to actually add to your toolbox or be comfortable with is actually using Wireshark and other tools that are coming with firewalls, to be able to look at live traffic and say what's what Yeah, how
Unknown Speaker 57:00
Slowly I used to go on
Unknown Speaker 57:02
a website is it it's some military geek thing. I can't remember what it's called right now. I'll put it in the link in the description. But it's basically a catalog of tools like that. That's why I found Wireshark. And it's cheese camera was called. But yeah, you can go on there. And it's like, here's a free antivirus tool. Here's some you can use to like, just do packet scanning. Here's another tool you can do to analyze, like ARP captures, like these kind of things. And it was really interesting being able to just go onto this website. And they've got a whole list of these tools that they approved for technicians to use, just download them for free. They've got trials, whatever. And I was able to use those tools. I remember there was a point where when I was first starting the business six years ago, probably so I started seven years ago, but six years ago when I was starting to really go and fix computers for people. I had a list of like 25 different pieces of software for Mac and 25 different pieces of software for Windows. And if I was doing a Windows tune up, I would go through and I would run all these things.
Unknown Speaker 58:00
Like last wire and Malwarebytes. And all of these other programs have been bought up by these big companies now. And I would just run these programs. And I'd be like, Okay, cool. Let me see what goes on when I'm running this stuff. And I'm using those different tools like, like you said, it kind of nudges you in the direction where you end up expanding your knowledge. And you're not relying on this one little system. Like, I remember probably eight years ago, before I started doing this professionally, maybe I'm mixing up the years I'm not gonna have time but I think the Cisco rv 230 is that the little box thing is that the 320 or the 230? Not sure. It's like a super cheap budget Cisco firewall. And it was like the only thing I could rely on because like I couldn't find anything else but it did secure VPN connections, it did DDoS protection. It had all of these like little tiny things that you would look for in an affordable package. And there was nothing like that at the time. Maybe
Unknown Speaker 59:00
was maybe I was ignorant, because I was like a 19 year old kid scrounging around. But yeah, I remember using that and then having to combine it with all of this other stuff like,
Unknown Speaker 59:10
see now I forget even the firewall stuff is the problem and I'm not doing too much technical stuff anymore. So what's the firewall that's free? I keep thinking free DDS free DNS, but it's not. It's a perfect DSP. There, there are many Linux based Great Firewall. Is there a perf? One feel like that's another one?
Unknown Speaker 59:30
Well, you can use what is that one called? pf sense. That's it. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So yeah, like I would have a box running pf sense. And there's a couple other little firewall things you can have running. And yeah, but like you said, I think that nowadays, the most important tool is your brain. You know, I think that's definitely very important. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 59:51
I think that about does man. Do you have anything else you want to touch on or you think people should know about that we've kind of sparked or actually be the event.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Over many common questions for someone who likes to start, or they're already doing a little, they want to do more. So I think we pretty much went over all the more important topics. That's perfect. Cool. Is there anything that you want to promote or anything personally you have going on that people can check out? Well, personally, I wouldn't have put it out there yet. But since you're doing this now, people can actually look me up on LinkedIn, try to connect with me and keep an eye out on going to release a series of videos that I'm putting together for people who are working as network administrators and want to take it level off, be a network engineer, you better North Korea, Australia. And I'm putting together these videos but I started was meant to be for the old CCNA route switch.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:00
But the certification all changed last February, and there is no route switch anymore, which is kind of sad.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:09
It's gonna make people with CCNA certification, less hands on and just you know,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:16
people have some information. It's not that I want to talk it down. And only time would show how they actually are in the job market and how much they can actually do when it comes to their work environments. But again, because of all the changes to the certification, and I'm planning to keep these videos for free, I would put them on YouTube channel, I would announcer through my LinkedIn because I don't have that YouTube channel set up yet. And we are working on the name. Most likely I'm going to call it certification, which is a mix of being certified and being your wizard or wishes you definitely need and once I put them
Unknown Speaker 1:02:00
videos out, it's gonna cover everything from fundamental information of TCP IP stack, all the way to common things that you would actually encounter in your day to day. And I'm very excited about it. I have some of the videos recorded already. Some have to change because of the change in certification landscape recently, but I would be very excited to share that with our audience. That's awesome, man. Yeah, let me know whenever you launch it, and we'll put the links to certain ization and the YouTube channel, whatever you end up naming it down below, and I'll make sure to link to your LinkedIn right now.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:35
I have one other question for you that you kind of sparked for me, which is do you think the conglomeration of these big companies like Cisco kind of scooping up everybody and coming up with their own course loads? Do you think that will be damaging for technicians in the future because as an employer, and as a technician, I agree with you, I actually think that they are making a bit of a mistake by taking out the more hands on stuff in the field. Do you think that this is something
Unknown Speaker 1:03:00
That's going to continue. Do you think that people are going to have to reach out to experts like yourself and learn more hands on things that way? Or what do you think the future kind of looks like with us? Well, I think they're kind of catching up with the market.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:14
You can't really blame them for doing it the way they're doing yet. You earlier he asked me, what's the next big thing and I said automation. But if I want to name another thing, if you were asking me next few big things, I would have said after that software defined networking, so they've taken out that portion of it, and now they're adding more SD van SB access, things like that. Yeah. And it's understandable. People are moving away from using COI, the way we used to learn things. Now everything has a GUI and things like that, which is fine, but they can break and then you would really need to know how to do it on the CLR.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:56
Braking never,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:58
never happened.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:00
Never had to flash the firmware.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:03
Yeah, the point is, you know they're making
Unknown Speaker 1:04:07
they made some good changes to that we didn't go into details of it. Now you can get specialist certificates that are just a single example. And the, as the name says they make you specialize in one thing. So you can go and be a specialising route and be specialized in automation and things like that. They're all great. But one thing that I want people to not forget if you're about to start, and you don't know where to start network plus or CCM is feel the way to go. Because you want to learn the fundamentals. Don't worry about what this vendor platform is offering me versus the other one. You are not there yet. And it's not even useful information for you to learn because they're going to change when they release their next generation. So don't worry about those things, but that he was getting
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
Cisco certification in job market
Unknown Speaker 1:05:03
Ullswater more than everyone else. Also does Jennifer. Also if you talk about firewalls, does fortigate and Paul toe so there are all these big players. But if you really want to learn the fundamentals, just go for those entry level certifications, learn something and then see what actually interests you. You would be passionate about something they know. Think of it you would go to a party and you meet someone for the first time and you find something in common, whether being sports or cars or traveler or whatever it is the topic, you would find that thing in common with them because you both been passionate about it. Now you can share information. You would create that passion once you have information. You cannot be passionate about something you don't really know what it is. Yeah. So put the time and learn the fundamental
Unknown Speaker 1:06:00
You got to develop that interest in that topic. And then from there, it would be very hard for you to go wrong. What have you learned? It's going to be just another added tool to your toolbox. Right? Yeah. 100%. And I think the best places for people to start and you can add on to this or correct me if I'm wrong. COMM Tia a plus, if you're totally fresh, learn that level, do get your network plus. And then after that, I think you'll know at that point, you know, I would also recommend, if you're going to be studying for CompTIA a plus, and you're going to be studying comp T is network Plus, you should be looking at YouTube channels like network, Chuck, Eli, the computer guy. Maybe you have a couple of other ones. Yeah, I would say David Bumble. He's amazing. He has courses on GNS three Academy. That's where he started to get popular four or five years ago, but now he runs daily videos on his YouTube channel on his LinkedIn. He's extremely helpful. I've seen it
Unknown Speaker 1:07:00
interactions with people. He's always there. It's not just you know, some someone looking after his social media. And he offers a lot of free courses, go to udemy.com. And look David Bumble. And when you see his courses, he has a lot of free courses. And he's great at explaining things. He doesn't make assumptions. He does it for people, people who don't know anything. And yeah, that's another great resource. Obviously, if you're going to pay
Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
I would recommend signing up for CBT nuggets. Yeah, if Also, if you're going to pay, I would say better value for someone like myself is already used to be called salary books. But now, separate books was bought by O'Reilly. So now you can get all the books, and many video trainings, self paced trainings for 40 bucks a month. Yeah, yeah, I think CBT nuggets is
Unknown Speaker 1:08:00
Huge. I know so many people in the field that have gone from zero to hero. Yeah, yeah. Awesome, man. Um, yeah, I think that's perfect. I think that's gonna give people a good start. Because I know a big, the biggest, scariest thing you can do is get started. And I think if you just follow network Chuck, you follow David Bumble, you follow these people, I think that what's going to happen is you're going to just you're going to get sucked into it, you know what I mean? You're going to look at the comments. They're going to talk about stuff, you're taking your network, plus, you're going to take the test, you're going to meet people, you know, that will probably not with COVID. But you know what I mean, you're gonna get exposure to these things. Like you said, you're going to meet people who have that passion as well, whether it's just online or in a forum, whatever. And you're going to kind of blow up with this stuff. And I think that if you look at one thing, I always tell people that that start with me that are getting a little bit frustrated on something is look at yourself three months ago or just wait until you're three months from where you are now. Because if you really dig in and you dedicate a half hour a day or two hours a day
Unknown Speaker 1:09:00
Or even 15 minutes a day.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:03
You're gonna be so far ahead of people. It's crazy. And and after three months, you're gonna look back and go, I can't believe I used to struggle with VLANs. Alright, and you're creating the most complex, you're setting up the five person business with 10 VLANs. Before you know it,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:19
say out of everything that we said, and I'm very happy that you brought it up, because I totally forgot about touching that point. I'm very happy. You said it gave me
Unknown Speaker 1:09:31
practice, it doesn't really matter if it's five minutes, I promise you more often than not, you gotta be interested in what you're reading and you do more than five minutes. But even if it's five minutes, make sure you're doing it every day. because well, even one day gap would very nice would break the chain. Yeah. And put you into your laziness and you know, just brushing it off and saying all I'm going to do 10 minutes in two days to cover for
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
to five minutes every day, don't do that. It's a trap, just do 510 minutes a day. And you got to be very, very knowledgeable in a very short amount of time. And even again, like those videos, we talked about Eli, the computer guy, and he's other folks like network chalk, for me is the easiest because he's entertaining. You know, I mean, like, now I'm sucked in like, he's got his wife and all this kind of stuff. But like, it's just so easy to just turn on one of his videos. And then five minutes later, I'm like, fine, I'll look into this other thing that I'm supposed to look at. And then you're in the wormhole, right? And then an hours gone by and you're like, Oh, shit, I'm late for dinner or whatever. So yeah, I think the daily things definitely very important, but that's awesome. So again, I think this is gonna be really valuable for a lot of people just getting started. I want to thank you again for coming on today. It means a lot. And I hope this video gives everybody a good foundation to start learning more about networking on and it kind of helps you with your career and developing and even if you're further along in your career, I hope it kind of helps you get a little bit more excited about what's going on data
Unknown Speaker 1:11:00
Today so in closing, as usual, if you could please leave a like on the video it really helps us out. And if you want to see more videos like this then please subscribe. If you have a suggestion for a future video, please leave a comment below or send us an email at Tech Tips at umbrella it services.ca and I hope you all have a great day and we'll see you soon