Why Network Engineers Need To Learn Linux

Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the O’Reilly learning platform—then explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day. It’s common for a Linux engineer to hold a bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering or engineering or have equivalent experience. David’s software tools and training have been downloaded +100,000 times. Many thousands of engineers like you use his tools and training on a regular basis.

• The responsibilities of those in a network administrator role are largely related to the maintenance of network systems and the day-to-day operations of computer networks.
• This difference in salary is due to network engineers being more senior IT professionals and having more experience than network administrators.

All major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCloud) have some free offering which allows you to spin a Linux host. The drawback is that all of those offerings have an expiration date, so you won’t be able to use them in the long term. Each distro has its strengths and weaknesses, also its particularity for projects in a company, you have to choose the right one to succeed in a project. Engineers need to create documentation on systems related to IT and knowledge base areas. Much like Fedora, CentOS Stream is a distribution that stays in line with the development of RHEL.

Important linux commands to know as a network engineer or developer

1) A lot of network operating systems are based on Linux, or have a Linux shell you can access, or use Linux type commands. CompTIA Network+ is one of the best certifications for computer networking. By earning CompTIA Network+, networking pros can prove their skills to employers and negotiate a promotion or higher linux network engineer salary. Those interested in getting into computer networking can use CompTIA Network+ to land an entry-level job in the field. Displays the distribution name and version with additional information, useful when network engineers or developers want to know which distribution to work with for a particular project.

• Different vendors offer varying degrees of access to the underlying Linux operating system with the trend being to give the user more and more access into system internals.
• Network engineers looking to understand these open source projects should make sure they understand the Linux networking primitives that these tools leverage.
• Many studies have also reported that system administrators who are comfortable with Linux are getting paid much more than their counterparts working on other operating systems.
• If an organization uses more than one software platform or computer, it needs a network administrator and a network engineer.

If we consider that most network switches are built off of a Linux base, and provide similar functionality, the CLI becomes an abstraction of the underlying Linux system. While I think this is a fair generalization, it’s also fair to say that most vendors don’t run a completely vanilla version of Linux or the Linux kernel. As a distribution designed for penetration testing, Kali Linux comes with a massive variety of preinstalled tools that network engineers are certain to find useful.

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So, Linux System Administration is another avenue for engineers who want to work on this popular open source operating system. Engineers assist in tweaking the performance of the system, so that network infrastructure is abundantly available. They are responsible for the development and maintenance of configuration management solutions. Moreover, they provide support for infrastructure, design and develop tools for infrastructure monitoring and reporting. Engineers use software tools and IP network technologies to monitor performance and to resolve problems.

• A Linux Engineer installs and monitors Unix/Linux open-source operating systems and caters to the client’s needs in this environment.
• They need to maintain local documentation, which gets updated on all features of servers.
• You should test out software like Nmap and familiarize yourself with networking on your new Linux distro so that lack of familiarity doesn’t become an obstacle later on.
• The brilliant part of Linux is that there’s a multitude of “how to” articles on the internet that can walk you through just about anything you’re looking to do.
• Because network engineers have more experience than network administrators, it’s not uncommon for them to be assigned managerial duties.
• Despite modifications, having access to the native Linux shell affords us some significant wins.

According to Gartner, Android’s share in the smartphone market for the first quarter of 2016 was 84%. Furthermore, Linux also has a future in appliances, such as drones and smart TVs. Since it is possible to customize Linux for as per the particular needs of each user, web developers also began embracing it as far back in the 1990s. Many studies have also reported that system administrators who are comfortable with Linux are getting paid much more than their counterparts working on other operating systems.

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In addition to the native Linux features, there are other projects such as Open vSwitch (OVS)that seek to extend Linux networking functionality. While OVS isn’t native to Linux, it does have its own Linux kernel module and is used extensively with open source projects such as OpenStack. OVS is a prime example of how a Linux host can be extended to provide more than basic level of network attachment. It’s also a good example of the direction things are heading and the skillset that will be required to effectively work and troubleshoot Linux host networking.