Is electricity part of Networking?

We have a course in my program (Networking) called Electricity for computer systems. It teaches about watts, current, decibels, resistors, etc.

My question is, will this stuff come back again when I'm on the job? Or is this even related to the Networking field?

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networker050184

Depends on your role. If you are doing design or implementation you will need to take power into consideration. Probably not to the level of that class, but I guess it couldn't hurt.

chrisone

It is if the company you work for uses their server or network engineers to be responsible for that aspect. Small to mid sized companies have their network/server engineers share the responsibilities of electrical management. This is common since both departments usually are in and out of the IDFs , MPOE's, and especially Data Centers.

Medium to larger companies have an infrastructure manager, specialist, or department that works with electrical technologies. Either way you will have to work with this fellow so that he provides you the proper electrical requirements for your equipment.

So it does pay to have some knowledge of electricity. In the end you will be involved one way or another. If you are in a medium sized company where you share the responsibility, most engineers ignore this part. So you could potentially be a highly valued person in the company if your knowledgable in something everyone tends not to care about, even though electricity keeps the show going on lol

iBrokeIT

That level of knowledge is probably not relevant to most IT jobs but it is good knowledge to have to make you a well rounded individual since all of your devices run on electricty!

OfWolfAndMan

When you deal with bigger enterprise equipment such as 4000/6000 series Cisco switches, power requirements are pretty big, as you will need to make sure you have enough UPSs (Uninterruptible power supply) and proper voltage requirements. After all, you don't want half your network going down due to power issues.

aftereffector

According to my supervisor, if electrons flow through something, it's my job to know how to install / operate / fix it, so yes

I don't have to design circuits or calculate resistor values, but I am glad that I learned the basic physics of electricity - it helps me understand a small part of the technologies I encounter every day (SRAM vs DRAM, how logic gates work, physical layer connectivity, and so on).

realPSI

Very interesting good to know. I was a Nuclear Power Electrician/Industrial Technician electrician.

ccnxjr

I work for a small company, we don't have an infrastructure manager

However, at the very least, you should learn how to calculate power draw for your equipment versus how much is supplied/available!
(your power "budget" so to speak)

We recently moved, so one of the things I had to look at was power capacity and available outlets, ie, how many things can be plugged into one circuit without it tripping the circuit breaker.
So things like, what is the power draw from our servers/routers/switches housed in the IT closet, do those outlets share a breaker? and if so , which ones?
Also, for making sure that we're not overloading a UPS, and purchasing ones with the right capacity, planning to maybe replace multiple smaller ones with larger ones if needed, etc.
Also, if people have to share an outlet, should I move the shredder/printer?

This also applies to our cabinets at the datacenter.
We rent colo space, and part of our rental agreement includes power.
We are responsible for making sure enough is supplied for our equipment or coordinating an additional supply.

That kinda stuff...

mikeybikes

Everything draws power. Knowing how to calculate how much is super handy. Especially when sizing UPS units.