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Resources for ISP Sysadmins?
Okolo Callender asks: "I work for the local telephone company on one of the Caribbean islands, and am the tech in charge of all internet services. Most of my time is spend maintaining our ADSL network. With almost no training, I have become quite good at maintenance and troubleshooting of our network, however I am finding it difficult to find books or online information that tackle tips and techniques more specific to ISP admins. General LAN networking info and raw Cisco documentation is fine, but I would like to find more 'cookbook' style solutions to common ISP-related problems. What books and/or online resources can the Slashdot crowd recommend?"
If you're self taught and in the thick of it you probably know more than most people. I expect you don't realise how much experience you've gained. Maybe you should consider putting up a site for other people in a similar situation to you, if you're seeing the need for one.
I was conned by an old man in a cloak. It turns out those *were* the droids I was looking for.
Why does everyone assume that because a question is asked, that the person asking has not gone to google and sifted through reams of search results already. I figured that the slashdot crowd may have come across some things that I have not. Thanks for the no-help buddy.
Hmmm, a post from an admin of an ISP saying that he does not have training on his systems etc.
A little searching and you can find that ISP - what are the odds that there will be a few misconfigured devices that leave a security hole or two because the underfunded admin never got that information.
And then the attacks begin....
In general your going to have to find books on each specfic technologies. Most of the general ISP resources are from the mid 90's when dial up was all the rage.
/w OC-3 cards, multilayer switches, DSLAM's and wireless bridges. Got a chance to mess around with a good mix of different layer 1 and layer 2 technologies along with a few different routing protocols. One course I totally underestimated was level 2 to 4 switching, I had no idea that ethernet switching was so complex.
An ISP sysadmin is a very specialized area and over the past few years the field has gotten smaller and smaller with everyone buying out everyone else. So your pretty much on your own.
I've just spent the past year doing Telecom Eng. Technology at the Collage of the North Atlantic. The courses included L2 to L4 switching, tcp/ip, network cabling, LAN's and DSL(Why they put these together), digital telephony, voip and prevoius to that I did a mess of eletronics and math courses. That broad range of courses still left out alot of topics which I covered on my own. I really made of the best of all the lab time I could get, built my own model internet out of old 2600 serise routers, a few linux boxes
Anyway my point is, you have to understand the underlying technologies and from there build a working knowledge of how to use your equipment at hand.
Oh yea and don't underestimate the power of linux in networking. A linux box can handle just about any task/service above layer 2, just gota get good hardware and with the money you save not buying cisco buy two or more, so you can always have a hot backup.
God, root, what is the difference?