Books for the NOC guys...

Fri Apr 2 14:01:09 UTC 2010

On Apr 2, 2010, at 7:09 AM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:

>
> This morning I went digging for a book to recommend that someone in
> our NOC read in order to understand at a high level how Internet
> infrastructure works (bgp, igps, etc) and discovered that the old
> standbys (Huitema, Halabi, Perlman) have all not been updated in a
> decade or so.
>
> On the one hand, they're all still quite relevant since there hasn't
> been anything really earth-shattering in that department, but they are
> all going to be lean to nonexistent on stuff like IPv6 and NLRI  
> negotiation.
>
> So, what are you having your up-and-coming NOC staff read?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -r
>
It kind of depends on what you want from your NOC folk and (at least a  
little bit) which "level" NOC people need the resource.

In addition to the ones already listed, we encourage Tier 1 and Tier 2  
people to read and understand these two books:
T1: A Survival Guide
http://www.amazon.com/T1-Survival-Guide-Matthew-Gast/dp/0596001274/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270216284&sr=8-1

Network Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide
http://www.amazon.com/Network-Maintenance-Troubleshooting-Guide-Solutions/dp/0321647416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270216655&sr=1-1

We find these are both pretty solid resources, especially for our Tier  
1 folks. Since much of what they eventually deal with are Layer 1  
problems, having resources that focus on Layer 1 helps get their mind  
moving that direction. If we have a routing problem, that generally  
needs to get bumped up anyway since it means somethings misconfigured  
or a routing protocol is acting up.
--
Brad Fleming