Looking for a Tier 1 ISP Mentor for career advice.

Tue Nov 22 17:46:24 UTC 2011

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Keegan Holley
<keegan.holley at sungard.com> wrote:
> 2011/11/21 <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu>
>> On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:40:08 EST, Tyler Haske said:
>>
>> > I'm looking for a mentor who can help me focus my career so eventually I
>> > wind up working at one of the Tier I ISPs as a senior tech. I want to
>> > handle the big pipes that hold everyone's data.
...
> I'd say
> their ultimate goal is to touch a little as possible which is usually as
> unglamorous as it sounds.  Also, alot of things are scripted so much of
> what you touch may not be as fun.

Tyler, this is absolutely key, and absolutely true; if you really, really
want to get a jump in the industry, don't worry about learning active
directory or exchange (unless it's a particular hobby interest of yours);
instead, learn a good scripting language;
PERL is the canonical example, but python or tcl are equally fine
candidates these days.  Most of the really big networks, whether
access ISPs, content providers, or tier 1 transit networks try to
automate as much of the work as possible; it's the only way to
stay ahead of the demand curve.

If you want to be a hot property in networking, you should have a
good blend of network skills, scripting/development skills, and
ideally enough system administration background to know how
to make the boxes running those tools happy as well.  Being
able to understand the packet flow from the application, down
through the OS, and onto the wire, and then back up again at
the far end is going to make you much more useful than an
engineer that just knows how to get bits from point A to point Z,
but that's it.  Being able to turn up a 100GE link by hand is
useful; but being able to write a script to turn up dozens at
a time--that's what networks will fight over to get.

(Also...echoing an undercurrent from several of the other
voices...set up an account on tunnelbroker.net, get a
v6 tunnel going to your house, set up a linux box with
your favorite flavour of DNS server on it; start learning
how to handle v6 DNS zones, the odd and occasional
challenges involved with dual-stacked hosts and different
DNS entries.  And then start experimenting and breaking
things--some of your best understanding is going to come
from breaking your setup when experimenting, and then
figuring out why it broke, and how to get it working again
in the way you want.  Debugging dual-stack networks is
going to be required knowledge by the time you hit the
industry; no reason not to start learning and using the
information today, to really get comfortable with it.)

You'll find that many of us are happy to answer intelligent,
well-thought-through questions; what we don't tend to like
are answering questions that are easily found through quick
search engine queries.  If you've done your own exploration
first, and come up empty, chances are it'll be an interesting
enough question someone out here will be willing to give a
shot at answering it for you.  But if you ask questions that
would be just as easily answered through spending 5 minutes
with a search engine, you'll find even the best mentors will
start to give you the cold shoulder.  ^_^;

And finally...don't get discouraged; if you're pretty sure this is
what you want to do with your life, stick with it.  There can be
some big ups and downs in this industry, but the chance to
build something really big that touches millions of lives every
day brings with it that huge sense of accomplishment that
only comes with achieving something on a truly global scale.

Best of luck!

Matt