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About two years ago I made a learning roadmap for network engineers who want to transform their skills towards Software Defined Networking. I presented it at various events including
Cisco Live. It was good, but it looks like I didn't provide the full story. So let's discuss it again, and we will start from the very beginning.
Any network engineer who just starts his or her career today will begin in Phase 1: as the
User of networking products where the engineer only knows how to configure the product, hopefully by reading the documentation from the vendor's website first. This type of engineer is what I call "Config Monkey" (sorry, monkey!). If you think you are still in this phase, please don't get offended: I started my career here too. There is no innovation at all, only follow the manual to make the products run.
Then we will move to Phase 2: as
Advanced User of networking products. This is the phase where the engineer understands how networking protocols work in detail. He is a domain expert now and can start fine tuning the protocols to optimize the infrastructure. IGP timers, fast re-route, BGP attributes etc. and the engineer
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