NOC Tech -- Your Daily Routine

someasiandude

What is ur usual work day like as a NOC Tech?

Is this job achievable with only A+/Network+ certs?

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Roguetadhg

NOCs vary from place to place.

pram

Log in, get dispatched 40 tickets, zone out in existential ennui for the next 6 hours, rinse repeat daily, collect paycheck.

the_Grinch

When I was on the NOC we'd do the following:

1. Take calls and open tickets
2. Respond to NOC Alerts (Disk space alerts, downed circuits, downed servers)
3. Deploy monitoring agents
4. Deploy antivirus

As Rogue has said, every NOC is different, but the above duties (whether just one or a combo of many) are the standards.

paul78

I don't work in a NOC but to answer your original question - yes - it's certainly quite possible to get a job with only a A+/Network+. As others pointed out - NOC positions vary based on the organizational structure of the enterprise that the NOC is supporting.

Good luck.

Forsaken_GA

Log in.

Ignore the phone when it rings.

Do some superficial ticket updating, cherry pick the queue for the easy ones.

Look at funny pictures of cats in between bouts of looking busy for the bosses sake

Go home and play World of Warcraft for 14 hours

NetworkVeteran

LMAO! This is too close to the truth.

Forsaken_GA

I, uh, may or may not have been that guy in the past. I've known more than a few of those guys.

healthyboy

whats the difference between a noc analyst and a noc engineer

Forsaken_GA

in my experience, one is usually a phone monkey and ticket *****, the other may actually get to login to some gear every now and again, and gets to sit on the bridges and escalate to groups outside of their own.

every NOC is different though, with their own responsibilities and power structures

MiikeB

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Log in.

Ignore the phone when it rings.

Do some superficial ticket updating, cherry pick the queue for the easy ones.

Look at funny pictures of cats in between bouts of looking busy for the bosses sake

Go home and play World of Warcraft for 14 hours

NOC Tech 1: "Hey is anyone going to take that ticket for the downed exchange cluster?"
NOC Tech 2: "Can you grab it? I am kind of busy with the 14 (install adobe reader patch) tickets I just grabbed from queue."

PsychoFin

When I was at the NOC I did the following:

1. Respond to alarms (trunks, links, sea me we cables and hardware alerts)

2. Answer incoming calls from CSC and priority customers.

3. Troubleshoot P and PE connections, BGP peers, pseudo wire, OSPF

4. Night and weekend copy-paste monkey for new router installs and stuiff the implementation team was 'too skilled' to do.

Regards,
Fin

someasiandude

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Log in.

Ignore the phone when it rings.

Do some superficial ticket updating, cherry pick the queue for the easy ones.

Look at funny pictures of cats in between bouts of looking busy for the bosses sake

Go home and play World of Warcraft for 14 hours

Sounds like my kind of job Lmao

Roguetadhg

sounds like the implementation team didn't implement?

darkerz

Our NOC is a little different...

Walk in,
Take tickets, escalate with carriers and respond to morning down's and issues.
Configure and lab all Cisco, Samsung and Adtran single or multi-site setups before shipment.
Stress test all Networking and Firewall (Sonicwall) gear, resolve any issue with equipment before shipping out.
Handed new projects daily for VoIP deploys, Managed Security Deploys, Network Deploys or all 3.
- Submit initial design plan and visio
- After approval from VP and management, lab the setup
- Troubleshoot along the way (we're given new devices, new "product lines", etc. on a weekly basis)
Monitor and check our MPLS customers (I've scripted this entirely now).
POC for all of our MPLS ("Enterprise") class customers. Just yesterday, I had to push over a DR across a 10 site MPLS setup for a financial firm and had to on the spot troubleshoot RIB failures from doing so and had to call our carrier to find out why their equipment wasn't pushing my updates to 2 of my sites (turns out it was an IOS bug with their particular hardware, I had to point this out because I got frustrated and had the tech team viewer me in to figure it out).
Password and User resets for everything between Sonic wall logins, ShoreTel logins, Read Only server and router logins...
Troubleshot a VPN failing between 2 customer sites (fixed it)
Received confirmation I'd be flying down to LA next weekend to plan out and work through our new hosted VoIP service core MPLS design with our consultants and just rip the setup apart.

And to end the day and in between everything, lab and proof out our MPLS-BGP core design and attempt to utilize L3 VPN's across the MPLS between sites for a slew of things (Fun project), while following up with customers from when I had to proof out our network entirely and lead them to realize their OSPF configuration internally would not work for a multitude of reasons.

My title is "NOC Engineer".

Each day is just as hectic and full of fun, but then again we're a Small-Mid sized ISP.

Drovor

I work in a NOC but unfortunately I think it is all basic Level 1 type duties. So yes, for this position you could be hired with just A+/Network+. I don't even think the other guys who work here even have that!

I've been trying to get some work on the side from admins to further my knowledge but it is like pulling teeth.

Some of the things we do:

Monitor servers/applications
Contact vendor for hardware issues
Physically install/remove servers and patch cabling
SAP backups on the weekend (Script)
Windows patching
Password changes
Process tape backups for offsite
Monitor ticket Queue but don't handle many tickets
Run reports

lantech

Drovor wrote: »

I've been trying to get some work on the side from admins to further my knowledge but it is like pulling teeth.

Sadly this one sentence summarizes my last 2 years of employment

mayhem87

Damn I want to be in darkerz company lol. At my NOC its rather boring. We sit around handling incidents, taking support calls, and watching a lot of Netflix.

Drovor

lantech wrote: »

Sadly this one sentence summarizes my last 2 years of employment

Been here going on 5 years through two contractors and now an outsourcing company (just gets worse). Although since I didn't have much experience I learned a lot but now it is just stagnant. Trying to use my time now to finish my B.S. and hopefully move on.

Drovor

mayhem87 wrote: »

Damn I want to be in darkerz company lol. At my NOC its rather boring. We sit around handling incidents, taking support calls, and watching a lot of Netflix.

Would be good to use that time for certs and/or school!

shodown

NOC #1

Watch Circuit go down. Call someone else to call the carrier to open up a ticket. Open up a internal ticket to track the process and call back every hour. I lasted at this job for 6 weeks, and moved onto another NOC

NOC #2

Status Reports every 4 hours. Global Juniper MPLS network. T/S BGP Peerings, OSPF failures(both far and few between) and local LAN segments. Very few tickets, and a lot of study time since this was 3rd shift. Lots of CCNP study time. Landed a Network engineer job before I even took my Composite exam. This turned out to be a very good job for me. My shift lead was a network engineer during the day at another org, he just had this job cause it was easy. This was the 1st time I had full access to very large Routers Juniper M320's, T640's. The T1600's where coming soon for the main sites as a lot of places were closing and they were homing things back to a few core sites. I should have stuck around, as they were going to make me a wan engineer, but I was a cisco fan boy at the time. (live and learn)

Choose the right noc. Some of them are like NOC1 which sucked, and others are like NOC2 which can be a great experience.

mayhem87

Drovor wrote: »

Would be good to use that time for certs and/or school!

Trust me already doing that. achieved my CCNP and various other certs this year along with going to school full time for my associates. But there comes a time when you become burnt out on training and just zone out on the screen.

VAHokie56

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Log in.

Ignore the phone when it rings.

Do some superficial ticket updating, cherry pick the queue for the easy ones.

Look at funny pictures of cats in between bouts of looking busy for the bosses sake

Go home and play World of Warcraft for 14 hours

That was my life before I put on my big boy pants and got into networking...sometimes I really do miss getting wasted and hanging out in vent while half a$$ing a raid

gadav478

This has got to be the one of the best threads on this site for individuals trying to get into networking.

+1 OP

Drovor

@mayhem87 - Very nice! Definitely deserve a break after that..

Drovor

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Go home and play World of Warcraft for 14 hours

Check - Played WoW all the time when I was getting my A.S. I did good in school but most of my free time was in WoW playing with my now wife

Miss playing games but need to step it up in my career.

prtech

Green goes red, tell somebody.

Mike-Mike

pretty good thread

healthyboy

i come to work, since i am the only one who has access to the server room i sleep for the first 3 hours next 3 hours is serious work, i eat for 1 hour and other 1 hour i just do work and talk with mates at work, it feels good when your the only one who has power to the server room.

drkat

I've worked for a few NOC's they all are different. I mostly deal with telecom NOC rather than monitoring stuff.

NOC #1
Log in, get hammered with tickets (Circuit Down, Internet Slow, Router Config's etc etc) leave go home..

Right now I do a hybrid .. I work for a CLEC who is also a Cisco VAR so I'm a NOC Engineer for the CLEC side and VAR Engineer on the VAR side.. so guess I'm getting double pounded...

VAHokie56

healthyboy wrote: »

i come to work, since i am the only one who has access to the server room i sleep for the first 3 hours next 3 hours is serious work, i eat for 1 hour and other 1 hour i just do work and talk with mates at work, it feels good when your the only one who has power to the server room.

I bet your employer loves paying you to sleep