Good Networking Forum?

[Cliotoby]

I know theres the Cisco Community, but are there any other forums worth joining out there that deal with networks?

 

[182Pete]

It depends on what aspect of networking you are interested in, more specifically which vendor. Cisco are not the biggest player in the service provider market, but they are doing well in the DC and Cloud market (Nexus and UCS is taking care of this).

Packet Pushers and Ethereal Mind are two of the best Cisco sites.

 

[Cliotoby]

Cisco mainly as thats what ive focussed on. Cheers ill check them out

 

[Cr33do]

Pete,

I've noticed you answer a lot of the networking type posts. What line of service are you in, I'm presuming ISP/Carrrier?

I'l was also looking for a good networking forum the other day (LAN-WAN-security orientated) across multi-vendor platforms. I mainly deal with Cisco, HP, Juniper etc. I will take a look at the ones you have suggested.

Nick

 

[182Pete]

Hi Nick,

I spent 15 years designing and deploying Frame Relay, ATM and MPLS core networks within the service provider market.

I now have my own business. We provide consultancy testing and labs for service providers and also now cloud and blade deployments. We host stuff aswell and have a growing presence in the Docklands Data Centres (Telehouse, Archway, Global Switch, IP House).

Peter

 

[Cr33do]

Peter,

Very interesting! Sounds like you have/are doing very well.

I work for a Network services company. Core business is maintenance but we also offer professional services amongst an array of other things too. More LAN/WAN than carrier based though.

I work in the Managed Services team where customers can outsource a little or all of their in house IT responsibilities to us. We use a variety of tools to monitor and manage their networks. It's good because I get to experience a wide range of networking kit and we have labs/demo areas to simulate scenarios if required. I love getting involved with some of the complex faults/requests.

I have never been to the London DC's as our London engineers, due to their location, get those calls. I have visited the new(ish) DC at Newport, Wales as one of our customer has their core located there. Quite impressive and Massive!

Nick

 

[Adam.]

Tek-Tips is not too shabby.

 

[182Pete]

Peter,

Very interesting! Sounds like you have/are doing very well.

I work for a Network services company. Core business is maintenance but we also offer professional services amongst an array of other things too. More LAN/WAN than carrier based though.

I work in the Managed Services team where customers can outsource a little or all of their in house IT responsibilities to us. We use a variety of tools to monitor and manage their networks. It's good because I get to experience a wide range of networking kit and we have labs/demo areas to simulate scenarios if required. I love getting involved with some of the complex faults/requests.

I have never been to the London DC's as our London engineers, due to their location, get those calls. I have visited the new(ish) DC at Newport, Wales as one of our customer has their core located there. Quite impressive and Massive!

Nick

Sounds like you are doing well. Troubleshooting different environments with different kit is great experience and will serve you well throughout your career. I've met many designers and implementation engineers who are great at conceptual stuff but when it comes to fault finding and testing if things work they are not as good.

In the logical sense the Docklands DC's are an eye opener. I have studied BGP and internet routing architecture for many years. As far as I'm concerned Telehouse North and East are critical components to the transit and exchange of raw internet traffic across the UK. In recent times this is mainly due to the presence of the LiNX Exchange and the ability to setup cheap, high bandwidth private peerings.

 

[*JimmyJ*]

something i want to get into.