What is the difference between NOC, Network Admin, Network Engineer?

nact

How is what they do in their jobs different?

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Legacy User

The difference can depend on different factors on the size of the company, type of company, size of the team, and the job role can be dramatically different between companies.

Grabbed these definitions from online:

Network operations center (NOC) technicians are in charge of monitoring critical network elements and engaging in proactive network systems monitoring. Troubleshooting is a daily task for a network operations center technician, and they also monitor the software, network, and signal strength from satellites.
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A network administrator is the person designated in an organization whose responsibility includes maintaining computer infrastructures with emphasis on networking. Responsibilities may vary between organizations, but on-site servers, software-network interactions as well as network integrity/resilience are the key areas of focus.In the case of a network related issue, an issue will be directed towards a network administrator. If a network administrator is unable to resolve an issue, a ticket will be escalated to a more senior network engineer for a restoration of service or a more appropriate skill group.
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Network engineers are responsible for implementing, maintaining, supporting, developing and, in some cases, designing communication networks within an organisation or between organisations. Their goal is to ensure the integrity of high availability network infrastructure to provide maximum performance for their users.

So for big companies theres teams for each roles for mid size Network admin are the network engineers, for smaller companies you do everything.

shodown

NOC

I write the rules they follow. Monitor network, call administrator when problems arise

Administrator
They make the changes I come up with and take tickets from the NOC

Engineer.
They turn my 'Design' into actual configurations. Make pretty VISIO's. Takes tickets from Administrator on escalation.

Architect(me)
Deals with Upper management, and turns business needs into designs. Takes business language and turns them into technical requirements. Acts as a firewall for engineers. Labs everything up, but forgets about change control and how long things actually take when not in the lab. Constantly reminds sr engineer how smart he/she was they were an engineer, but walks away and realizes the Sr network engineer can turn circles around them on the CLI

Legacy User

Damn right the visio's are pretty thats our artistic expressions lol

nact

Also do you need a CCNA to qualify for NOC?

EANx

No, not every NOC will be monitoring Cisco gear. But if you don't have experience, you probably will need some networking cert.

Ismaeljrp

I suppose it also depends on the workplace.
By shodown's definitions, I'm NOC, Administrator, and Engineer all at once...lol no tiers exist where I'm at.

nact

EANx wrote: »

No, not every NOC will be monitoring Cisco gear. But if you don't have experience, you probably will need some networking cert.

What kind of cert would be enough? Would CCNA be overqualifying?

Mike R

No a CCNA wouldn't be over qualifying, plenty of NoC jobs have that has a preferred cert. N+ is a good one that's vendor neutral. Juniper has others but I don't see many if any jobs looking for Juniper certs.