8 essential skills for network engineers in 2017

The current average job responsibilities of a network engineer are increasing over time, and what was once a relatively static role managing the transmission of frames and packets from point A to point B has now evolved into a manager responsible for network, server and storage infrastructure. In 2017, network engineers will need more skills in order to align the network with business goals.

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Network engineers are at the heart of the infrastructure and need to have a deep understanding of the applications and data in the network. Considering that the silos of server and storage management are being broken down by technologies such as virtualization, containers, and hyperconvergence, and the network is the core that binds these technologies together, network engineers need to understand the integration of these technologies.

The skills required of network engineers now revolve around the applications themselves. With technologies such as automation and SDN, today's networks are tailored for the critical applications running on them. Therefore, network engineers must understand application priorities, traffic flows, and other strategies to optimize data transmission. Gone are the days when network administrators only needed to understand layers 1 to 4 of the OSI stack. Today, network engineers must understand the stack at the application layer.

Finally, security will play an increasing role in the daily responsibilities of network engineers. Security will become a top consideration for any new infrastructure project, with engineers determining the enterprise perimeter and internal defenses to provide a unified security solution that extends from the network to the endpoint device.

The following will introduce the skills that enterprise network engineers should master in 2017.

Application traffic

Whether you need to configure advanced quality of service (QoS) or deploy software-defined networking in the data center or on the WAN, a clear understanding of how applications work from a data flow perspective will be critical in 2017. The flow of application traffic as it interacts with clients, databases and cloud services is important for network optimization, so a close relationship with application administrators will be a priority.

Cybersecurity

In the past, network engineers focused their security efforts on the edge of the network. Engineers had a good understanding of firewalls and intrusion prevention, but when it came to functions such as email, web, and endpoint security, these responsibilities were shouldered by other IT teams. But with the development of unified threat management (UTM) technology, this is no longer the case, and network engineers are playing a greater role in the architecture and support of end-to-end unified security solutions.

SD-WAN

In 2016, much of the hype around software-defined networking was around WANs due to the OPEX savings they could bring. However, some enterprises that did not understand the limitations and benefits of SD-WAN solutions were surprised to find that SD-WANs could not provide the throughput and low latency required for mission-critical applications. Therefore, in 2017, network engineers need to understand when SD-WAN products are appropriate and when WAN services, such as MPLS, are appropriate.

DNS

A deep understanding of the priorities of DNS functions inside and outside the enterprise is a must-have skill for network engineers, and it is becoming increasingly important in today's networks as more and more security issues revolve around DNS. DNS is part of many unified network security architectures and is a key component of public and private clouds, which means that network engineers need to have a good understanding of how DNS works so that they can better troubleshoot network problems.

Internet of Things (IoT)

If there is one IT trend that will give network engineers a headache, it will be the Internet of Things. Network engineers need to scale their wired and wireless networks to accommodate hundreds or thousands of IoT sensors, and they also need to secure the devices once they are connected to the corporate network. If involved in an IoT deployment, network engineers will provide guidance and develop strategies for IoT connectivity and data security.

Virtualization of network components and services

In 2017, SDN will no longer be a hot topic in the network industry. Although SDN has made great progress in data centers and WANs last year, it is unlikely that the SDN architecture will expand beyond these two markets in the next year. Instead, many IT companies have concluded that before end-to-end SDN networks can be realized, network components and services must first be virtualized. Therefore, the skills required to understand how to virtualize network services and functions are gradually increasing.

Network Automation

For years, other departments in IT companies have reduced redundant tasks through scripting and automation, but network engineers have had little interaction with scripting and automation. The reason is simple: the network is essentially a static architecture that is largely self-sufficient in the form of redundant protocols. Networks have become increasingly flexible in how they dynamically handle traffic, push policies, and provision new resources, which has caused network engineers to spend hours on repetitive tasks. Therefore, after learning network automation skills, many network processes can be automated through scripts and APIs.

Hyper-converged systems

Hyperconvergence is the integration of computing, data storage, and networking functions into a unified system. Network engineers need to understand the management tools used to deploy and operate hyperconverged systems. IT companies need network engineers to understand how hyperconverged systems work from one end of the technology stack to the other so that the system is optimized for the applications running on it.