A+ Prep - was Potential PLUG Presentation?

[Tony Wasson]

> Y'know, that's what I always thought a "Network Administrator" was, too.
> But when the company for whom I work had a job opening for a desktop
support
> technician, we got a ton of resumes from people who listed "Network
> Administrator" as a job title for jobs that consisted of troubleshooting
and
> repairing PCs-- in environments where the PCs were connected to a network.
> In interviews, several of these folks didn't seem to understand even basic
> LAN stuff (e.g. DHCP, DNS), or even know what an IP address is.  To me,
> "Network Administrator" implies that you understand "networking" (i.e.
> routing, switching, the OSI model, subnetting, ethernet, etc.), but I get
> the impression that not everyone agrees with that definition.  Maybe there
> should be an RFC that defines a standard for job titles (Support
Technician,
> Network Administrator, Network Engineer, Systems Administrator, Systems
> Engineer, etc.).  :)

Many network administrators/engineers and systems admins/engineer are
self-taught. Sure, they may have gone to college, but their current skills
comes (I dare say) from what they read and what they've experienced. So I
think a lot of the disparity in skills is due to experience (or the lack of)
and where and what they've worked on.
Everyone is on network these days, so 'network administrator' doesn't tell
you a whole lot. If the network he/she is running is say... 50 users, he
might never have a clue about switching, routing, VLANs, DHCP or DNS, and
end up fixing workstations and application bugs the whole time. The network
will work, but perhaps suboptimally. Depending on the company, he may be the
Network Manager (ooooohhhh), or the IT Manager. In the inverse, there are
people who spend their lives inside routers and switches and can't 'hup' a
daemon or restart a service to save their life -- watch out!
In general most UNIX & GNU/Linux users seem pretty well rounded. I'm not
sure if this is due to the curiosity present in most users, or the fact that
we have to know more to 'play' with others (reading .DOC files, checking out
Windows Media files, sticking our workstation on the network). Anyone who's
used Linux for a few years usually has at least a passing knowledge about IP
networking, NAT, DHCP, encryption, compiling a bit of code, and reading the
documentation. The danger I see of being a hardcore Linux user is viewing
Linux as the 'end-all, be-all'. The saying I remember is "When you are a
hammer, everything looks like a nail."