Oct. 22, 2023, Post by Curtis
Network Engineering is definitely not dying, but a lot of the methods used to implement network configuration as well as network design are changing.
Also, a lot of networking is becoming virtual, and because you can virtualize network equipment this means that you can move much of a network onto the cloud. That's not to say that it is gone, just moved to a different location.
Networks are never going away, and although the act of configuring networks is becoming more and more automated, they still need to be designed by people who understand the fundamental ways that the network works.
Every day there are more smart devices and these devices are connecting to more services than ever before. The amount of networks and interconnected networks is and will probably always be growing. Because of this, the demand for people who understand how to make this happen and do it in a secure way will be in demand. Network Engineering isn't going anywhere.
Configuring network devices from the command line is starting to diminish, but even the command line may never completely go away. There are two ways in which we are starting to configure network devices without the command line
When configuring devices through the GUI you really don't need to know any of the command line equivalents to configure a device although currently you still need a small amount of command line to get the basic configs to a device so that you can connect to it as well as enabling it to be configured by the GUI. This is not the case on all devices and the trend for network devices is moving towards being more easily configured with a GUI.
For network automation, you still don't need to understand the command line configurations. It will however help if you do know the command line commands as a lot of the code that you will be writing is semantically similar to the command line.
While it is still a good idea to know how to configure network devices using the command line, this is becoming less important going into the future.
Much of the hardware components of a network are being moved onto the cloud and to the infrastructure that links all the clouds together.
As we start using more software as a service (SAAS), this means that we are having fewer services being hosted on-premises. To make this point clear, if all of a company's services are hosted by someone else's SAAS on the cloud, then all the company needs in terms of the network is an internet connection.
This is the direction we are moving toward as it brings the complexity of running an organization down and allows for efficiencies to be created by these cloud services as they will be doing a similar service for many instead of many trying to individually figure out how to implement this same service.
This means that networks will be shrinking on the company level but the networks aren't going away. They are simply being shifted from the smaller organizations to the SAAS companies as well as the internet service providers. The companies offering these SAAS products will need very robust and secure network infrastructure to be able to provide their services and the ISPs will also need to increase their network infrastructure. So the demand for Network Engineers will start to move from smaller companies to SAAS companies and ISPs.
On top of that many organizations will not move everything to the cloud as there are plenty of reasons to keep certain services on-premises. Keeping services on-prem gives a company more control, especially over security, and can often be cheaper that moving to the cloud.
Cloud services will make for a lot of changes in the networking world, but they will not reduce the need for network professionals.
Cyber Security applies to all levels of the IT stack but most attacks are stopped at the network level. Firewalls, VLANs, and DMZs are just a few of the tools that Network Engineers use to secure their networks.
As we move into the future our networks are becoming more complex. They are more interconnected to more disparate services. This complexity offers more vectors for attacks. They have a greater surface area with lots of nooks and crannies for attackers to find exploits. Not only will there be more ways to attack our networks but we will also become even more dependent on them.
Cyber Security will be in ever-increasing demand and the people in charge of securing our hardware and software are and will continue to be Network Engineers.
2 types of automation that are and will continue to grow in the field of Networking.
1. Infrastructure As Code
IaC is the use of code to provision, deploy, and configure servers, storage, and network equipment.
IaC allows you to keep "copies" of your entire infrastructure which allows you to roll back to a known good version and every time you make a change you can make another copy. This is called version control.
It also allows you to spin up an entire infrastructure or quickly scale up an existing one. Combining this with cloud services gives you a lot of flexibility.
2. DevOps
DevOps brings automation tools (code) to the world of Networking as well as integrates networking with the systems and services that are running on the network.
Often the same automation tools that you will use on the network you can also use to automate configurations on servers. DevOps is bridging the worlds of Developers, Sysadmins, and Network Admins.
Automating network configurations has 2 advantages.
Since networking is not going away, though it may be changing locations, the need for people who can design networks will grow as fast as the amount of networked systems grows.
Our networks will continue to become larger and more interconnected. While the tools and protocols used to build and maintain these networks will change, the fundamentals that we build today's networks will still be the foundation that we build tomorrow's networks. There will still be packets that need to be guided to their destination with deliberate intention applied by people who understand security, efficiency, and redundancy.
The future of Network Engineering will have a strong emphasis on the following concepts:
The Network Engineer of the future will have quite a different tool set but in many ways will use it to achieve similar goals as today.
The role of a Network Engineer will change as technology changes, but the need for Network Engineers will be in high demand and growing for the foreseeable future.