25/02/2020 6 Hot Network Specializations to Pursue | Network Computing

NETWORKING (/TOPIC/NETWORKING)

6 Hot Network Specializations to Pursue

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It’s important to remember that the new skills learned in a specialization must be built on top of a solid
foundation of networking basics.
By Andrew Froehlich (/author/andrew-froehlich)
FEBRUARY 04, 2020

(Source: Pixabay)

Being a network administrator in 2020 often requires skills far and beyond what is often considered "core competencies." These disciplines
commonly focus on routing, switching, WiFi, remote access, and basic network device hardening. But for those that have mastered the essentials,
many are left wondering what areas they should specialize in that will not only be interesting – but will also be skills that are highly sought after.
Let’s look at six hot areas of enterprise networking that aspiring professionals may want to consider pursuing.

Network security

While many IT professionals seek to achieve a broad range of IT security skills that covers the entire IT infrastructure, you may instead opt to
specialize only in the area of network security. Because the eld of IT security continues to expand, it’s becoming increasingly di cult to truly
become an expert at everything. Instead, the better option may be to focus on tools and processes that protect the network, network edge
(https://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/network-edge-stretching-boundaries-sd-wan), and any data traversing it.

Network automation, integration, and interoperation

Until recently, network administrators required few programming skills. Because most enterprise network hardware and software were
proprietary in nature, admins were limited to con guring the systems only as the manufacturer envisioned. Less than a decade ago, however,
customers began looking at open-source alternatives that were far more exible from a network device integration, automation, and
interoperation perspective. Smartly, the major network vendors identi ed this trend as a threat to their bottom lines and began opening the
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25/02/2020 6 Hot Network Specializations to Pursue | Network Computing
ability of end-users to program critical parts of their software. Network professionals nally had a way to granularly adjust network hardware
and software for the purpose of increasing performance, sharing information with other network components, and automating
(https://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/pragmatic-approach-network-automation) many tasks that previously required human
intervention.

Uni ed communications

The advancements in uni ed communications (UC) technologies are growing at a tremendous rate. Whether this deals with the migration of UC
away from on-premises deployments in favor of the cloud – to advancements in streaming video, collaboration tools, or AI-backed customer
experience (CX) integrations -- the need for professionals that understand UC while also having a strong background in enterprise networking is
extremely high. What also makes UC more appealing in 2020 is that many of us can largely avoid the need to understand legacy telco
technologies such as POTS lines and T1 circuits. Instead, these have been replaced with session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks that operate over
IP.

Network visibility

Most network administrators have the basics down when it comes to network monitoring. The use of SNMP, syslog, and NetFlow/IPFIX helps
admins piece together a basic view of a decentralized-intelligence network. However, even with these tools, large visibility gaps can form that can
hide signi cant performance or network security issues. There are two approaches to gaining additional visibility – and both are great skills to
obtain. The rst approach is to use modern network analytics (https://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/8-common-network-
analytics-data-sources) (NA) tools that pull in highly-granular network health information from multiple sources across the network. This
method is great for those that are planning to work in traditional network environments where the routing and switching intelligence is designed
to be distributed across all network devices on a hop-by-hop basis. Modern NA tools use arti cial intelligence (AI) to sift through mountains of
collected data to pick out relevant info that provides admins a “single pane of glass” view of the network that was previously impossible to
achieve.

The second way to gain network visibility is to migrate to a network that centralizes intelligence into a single control plane. Whether this is a
solution based on software-de ned networking (SDN) or intent-based networking (https://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/why-
you-should-pay-attention-intention-based-networking) (IBN) architectures, the result is a single source of visibility from one end of a network
to the other.

WAN/Cloud connectivity

Because of the expected explosion of IoT devices connecting to corporate networks over the next decade, network administrators and architects
will be required to solve the problem of data transport in an increasingly decentralized and borderless network. Areas of focus here include SD-
WAN, the use of LTE/5G connectivity (https://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless-infrastructure/5g-coming-when), and hybrid/multi-cloud
network performance.

WARNING: Don’t skip on the basics

While specializing in a speci c segment of the overall network can make you the “go-to expert” within your team sounds appealing, it’s important
to remember that the new skills learned in a specialization must be built on top of a solid foundation of networking basics. Thus, be sure that you
don’t get too far ahead of yourself when it comes to learning specialization skills. You’ll likely end up struggling to understand the “why’s and
how’s” of these specializations without the proper networking background. Instead, make sure you start your specialization journey when you
truly feel you’ve got a solid handle on the core network principles.

Check out these other Network Computing articles to explore new developments in the eld:

Troubleshooting Network Performance in Cloud Architectures (https://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-

infrastructure/troubleshooting-network-performance-cloud-architectures)
Wi-Fi 6 is Coming: It’s Not Too Early to Plan for 802.11ax (https://www.networkcomputing.com/wireless-infrastructure/wi- -6-coming-
it’s-not-too-early-plan-80211ax)
Getting Started with Serverless Computing (https://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/getting-started-serverless-computing)
Futureproo ng the Branch Of ce (https://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/futureproo ng-branch-of ce)

TAGS: Commentary (/article-type/commentary), Networking skills (/tags/networking-skills), security (/tags/security),

Automation (/tags/automation), Uni ed Communications (/tags/uni ed-communications), Networking (/topic/networking),
Careers and Certi cations (/topic/careers-and-certi cations)

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