I have another here. Look at this, man. Wow,
that's nice. But I remember I added some Juniper
devices here. OSPF, different areas. EIGRP. I
used to do redistribution between routing protocols.
This is the internet. Different sites. This is
the two different sites. I need to send multicast
traffic between them. I even did, yeah, AnyConnect
from this computer here. Oh, wow. Remote access
tunnel. AnyConnect to this ASA. At York University
in Toronto, where I studied, the astrophysics
program had a specialization in space and communication
science. And what are your thoughts on CCIE,
the CCIE cert? CCIE is a very, very... This here
is a large lab that has been put together that
someone can go in and recreate on their own,
deciding to follow. the topology and the various
things that you're asked to do. So the university
degree, it's very important at the beginning
because that's kind of what gets you your foot
in the door. As time goes on, the value of that
university degree goes down. Things like certifications
and experience go up. And in this case, I was
the only network engineer at the municipality.
So I had the whole network to myself. If there
comes the need. to move to those technologies
are you in favor of that or you're like no i'm
more on the side of doing the things traditionally
i'm not going to be automating stuff this is
a small lab that i created i needed to do uh
multicast right from site to site so i did it
using a gre tunnel him So I had a lot of fun,
actually. Now, a lot of people are saying that,
you know, the network engineer is slowly becoming
obsolete because you have all of this automation.
And, you know, you're going to be more of a software
engineer rather than a network engineer because
everything can be done in software now. But is
configuring network equipment via the CLI still
what is usually done in companies or? How do
you handle it normally? And what are your thoughts
on Microtik? If you're listening to this as a
podcast, remember that it was originally recorded
as a video. If you're not following along, you
can go to my YouTube channel. My username is
Linkarzu. And if you want to support me to keep
this podcast going, you can donate in Ko -fi.
I'm going to leave a link in the description.
All right. So let's get started with this chapter
then. All right. So. The other day, I needed
to refresh some networking topics. I needed to
remember about BGP. I needed to remember about
MPLS, routing protocols, a lot of stuff. So I
went on YouTube and I found a channel, which
is the guest that I have today. Lazarus, how
are you doing today, Lazarus? I'm doing well.
Nice to be with you. Okay. Thanks for your time.
Thanks for... you being here i know you have
a company i know you're busy so really appreciate
it so like i was saying i was going through youtube
and i found your channel and i see that you talk
about networking i did watch your mpls bgp and
other videos that you have right the playlists
that you have there we're gonna get to know your
channel more in a little while but Before we
get there, you mind sharing a little bit more
about you, like who Lazarus is? Sure. My name
is Lazarus Agapedis. I am a telecom and networking
engineer. I love telecom and networking. I'm
very passionate about it. And I guess that passion
is something that has kind of overflowed into
the creation of this YouTube channel, which is
how you found me. My primary job isn't teaching.
I run a small telecom and networking consulting
firm with both local and customers that are both
local and abroad. But I've recently started with
this YouTube channel because all of the various
skill sets and knowledge that I've accumulated,
I figured I want to share it because I love sharing
it and it's something I'm passionate about. And
I want to share it in a way that I wish I was
taught when I was learning. Oh, yep. I did notice
that. And I was wondering, like, who this guy
is? Where has this guy been? I wanted to watch
videos about spanning tree and other networking
topics. You didn't have them. And I was like,
OK, I'll have to go and watch someone else. But,
yep. Where are you from? Where are you based?
Well, I was born and raised in Canada. I studied
there. I worked there for a year. And then I
met my wife, who is from Crete in Greece. And
I decided to move to Greece, and I did. I am
of Greek descent, so I knew the language. Okay.
And I've been in here for almost 25 years. But
I do have, like I said before, I do have both
local customers as well as customers that are
abroad. Okay. Just so people that is watching
this video, there's multiple ways people take
in life, right? I decided to go the wrong way
at the beginning of my life. Why did you choose
the right path? You know, like, because you have
a company. What inspired you to take this path
and how did it all start? If you want to share
that with us. Sure. I wouldn't say that I took
the right path. I would say that I took the wrong
path quite a few times and I learned from that.
And that was part of the right path. So in a
sense, you can say that sometimes the wrong path
is part of the right path. When I was growing
up, I was really interested in space, astrophysics.
I would always read up on, go to the library
then. We didn't have that much connectivity with
the internet. And I would read up on astronomy
and space probes and things. And I would always
follow along on TV because I was really interested
in this. I started studying, when I went to university,
I studied astrophysics. But I was fortunate because
at the university, York University in Toronto,
where I studied, the astrophysics program had
a specialization in space and communication science.
And it was really those courses that... I loved
the most, the ones that had to do with communication,
with wireless signaling, signal processing, electromagnetic
radiation, even spacecraft systems design. I
really, really loved those. Those really inspired
me. So by the end of my bachelor's degree, I
decided I didn't want to continue with physics.
And I went on to do telecommunications management,
a postgraduate at Sheridan College, also in Toronto.
And I fell in love with it. The course was 50
-50 between business approach and technology.
And these two things really do go hand in hand.
You have to understand both in order to be able
to go forward. It's somewhat limiting if you
just deal with the technology or if you just
deal with the business side. If you have both...
It frees you up to move forward more effectively.
So after I finished that, I started working at
Sprint Canada. This was way back in the last
millennium, 1999. Sprint Canada doesn't exist
anymore. Neither does Sprint in the US. But I
was in the voice traffic engineering department.
And that was really interesting. I was there
for a year. It was an excellent start for me.
And then was the point where I met my wife. I
came to Greece and I started going kind of in
a new direction, not so much with voice, but
more with data. I got a job at the University
of Crete at the Networking and Communication
Center, which is where I started working more
with networking, with Cisco. specifically and
especially Cisco products. I started working
with Cisco's voice over IP deployment, which
was the call manager version 4 .3, which is quite
old, if that means anything to anyone. And that
was where I really started expanding on my networking
area. And it was really nice that I was at the
university because the university is a large
organization. So I got to play with a big network,
which is not – you don't easily get to have such
experience. So that really – I was able to take
off with that, being able to play with such a
large network. But I found that – I found that
I started getting restless after a few years.
I felt I wasn't moving forward very much anymore.
So I took a job at the municipality here in the
city of Heraklion, which is another large organization
which has a big network. And in this case, I
was the only network engineer. at the municipality.
So I had the whole network to myself, unlike
the university where I was working with others.
So the network was my own. And at that time,
there was a new fiber optic network that was
a municipal fiber optic network that was being
put in that interconnected the multiple buildings
of the municipality. So I'm now in charge of
an organization with a thousand users. I had
their IP telephony system. I had their fiber
optic network that I was managing. I had their
wireless network, which was at the time the largest
municipal wireless network in the country. And
that really expanded my horizons because I got
a chance to deal with a lot of technology. But
at the same time... And I'm kind of going on
a monologue here. I apologize. I'm getting excited
by what I'm sharing. At the same time that my
supervisor played a very important role in my
progress, he allowed me to take part in the city's
smart city initiatives. a smart city initiative
that we had put together for the city. So that
also allowed me to connect with people and take
part in broader and larger networks. So my passion,
I guess, played a good role in that because that's
kind of the driving force behind. learning new
things, behind getting to know people, behind
networking with other cities in Europe. So that
was a really great experience. But again, I felt
at some point I was outgrowing the position.
And that's when in 2017, I founded Telecom Tech,
which is, like I said, a consulting firm. But
I still have, you know, the municipality as a...
And I've expanded to other municipalities as
well. But I started expanding to customers that
were abroad over, you know, with freelancing
sites. I was able to work with some very interesting
people throughout the world. And that was very,
very inspiring. And I guess at some point I figured,
okay, I've accumulated, you know, knowledge,
skill sets. in a wide area of telecom and networking.
And I wanted to start sharing that. And I wanted
to start allowing that knowledge to bring back
some benefit. So I started sharing it using YouTube.
And like I said, sharing this knowledge with
people in a way that I wish I was taught when
I was learning is very important to me. And it's
enjoyable. So I guess that's just a not so brief
summary of my path over the past couple of decades.
So I noticed that you were always after something
else, after something new. Like, why didn't you
stay at the position at the municipality, right?
Like, were you looking for new challenges? You
felt that it was not enough anymore? Because
people find a stable job, they stay there for
life. Right. So why did you decide to move to
something else? Because it didn't give me the
satisfaction that it did initially. I think the
satisfaction came from growing, came from learning,
came from, you know, experiencing new things.
From 2007 until 2017, you know, 10 years. I grew
to a point where the specific job position didn't
have anything new to offer me. So I think that
I just felt right. I don't think I can describe
it better than that. Yep. We have all gone through
that. When you get used to the job, it's like
you do it in an automated sort of way. And there's
nothing new, challenging that excites you. People
tend to, I don't know, find new paths, I guess.
Do you want to add anything else to your professional
experience in networking? I think you covered
a lot there. That's like the next topic. Anything
else you want to add? Well, in general. I don't
focus on one thing. I guess my primary focus
is generally networking. And that's why on the
YouTube channel, you'll see MPLS, VXLAN, BGP.
And I will get to Spanning Tree that you mentioned
before. So stay tuned for that. But I've also
done training in 5G networks as well. in collaboration
with Skillsoft, which is a large training company
in the States and Canada. So I guess my expertise
is quite broad in telecom and networking. And
the amazing thing is that you get to a point
where your skill set is enough to allow you to
learn new things. So, you know, it's one thing
to be able to say, okay, I deal with IPv4, IPv6,
and so on. I didn't really know much about 5G,
but when I was... approached to create a course
or content for 5G, I did the research and I was
able to learn because I was able to have the
background and the foundation necessary to be
able to learn. So part of the experience, the
gaining of experience, has to do also with learning
to learn. Learning to learn these new things
in the area of telecom and networking. Okay.
Okay. So we have your YouTube channel here, Telecom
Tech. You have 7 ,000 subscribers already. When
did you start with your channel? Around how long
ago? Well, in my first official video, although
it does say there that I joined in June of 2023,
my first official video came out in September
of that year. So it's been a year and a half.
Okay. And what videos do we expect to find here?
I know that I did find OSPF, BGP, MPLS related
stuff. What else should people expect to find
in your channel? Well, at this point in time,
I have playlists for BGP, MPLS, VXLAN. I've currently
started a new playlist on OSPF. So you'll find
a series on that. I have done a few videos that
are a little bit older on VoiceOver IP, subnetting,
IPv4 subnetting. I talk a little bit about IPv6.
But those were videos that kind of explored what
kind of topics people were interested in. But
I found that... The ones that have playlists
like MPLS, VXLAN, and OSPF are the more popular
ones. I am planning on focusing on additional
series and playlists that are CCNP focused. I
don't want to create videos or playlists that
are specific to a particular... a course or blueprint
because those change. So I'm focusing more on
things that will still be valid 5, 10, 15 years
from now. And that might sound like a long time,
but BGP, for example, has been around since 1998.
Yep. You're right. Okay. And what else? Well,
what's the catch with YouTube? Like why YouTube?
Because I did see the content and it's pretty
great. And I'm like, What's the catch, basically?
That's my question. Why are you doing this? So
I want to move away from network design and architecture
for clients, and I want to move more towards
teaching and training. So I figured YouTube would
be a good starting point for me to gain experience
in how to create videos because I had no experience
in this area. I also want to use YouTube as a
funnel. In order to lead people to my website,
which is telecomtech .io. For now, on this site,
I have information about myself. I have information
about the YouTube channel. I have some blogs
on topics that are described in the YouTube channel
as well. But soon, I'm going to start offering
in -depth courses with labs and downloadable
PDFs, configuration files. Quizzes and so on
in various areas, and I'm currently preparing
the BGP course which is essentially Following
a similar path to what the YouTube channel is
to what the YouTube channel is sharing But I'm
going much more in depth with live labs And content
that people can download and can create on their
own Is this going to be related, like you said,
to a specific vendor? Like, is this going to
be Cisco, Juniper related or more general? It's
going to be Cisco related. I will be using Cisco
devices. But in general, the idea is that it
can be applicable to other vendors as well. Cisco
in general has this philosophy. All of their
content in general is... is about 40 % about
the equipment and 60 % about the technology.
So by going through Cisco courses like CCNP,
CCNA, and so on, you don't only learn about Cisco.
You also learn about the technologies themselves.
But I am focusing on Cisco because that's the
vendor which I am most familiar with and I'm
comfortable with. And I guess it's the vendor
that I started off with at the beginning, and
that's kind of my first love in a sense. Now,
other than the courses that are coming up, I
already have available the... a telecom and networking
professionals career roadmap, which you can download.
And it's essentially a 27 page document that
has information, insights, strategies, and so
on concerning how. you can move forward in your
telecom and networking career. You can register
and download the document. It's completely free.
And in it, I also describe some of the things
I've shared with you now about my path and about
the various events that took place that led me
to where I am now and where I see myself in the
future as well. I noticed that it's pretty simple
to follow along in your videos. And it's really
complex topics like MPLS, BGP. It's not something
simple to teach. Do you have experience teaching?
Have you taught professionally in the past or
something? Well, I haven't been taught to teach,
if that's what you mean. For example, I haven't
taken courses on how to... convey this information.
It's just from my own experience. I started out
really when I was at the university, when the
university wanted to create a Cisco Academy.
So I was sent for a month to do training on CCNA,
and that's when I first got my first CCNA as
an instructor. The Cisco Academy didn't end up
happening at the university, but I was happy
because I got my certification and I started
teaching on my own people who were interested
in that. And I found that I was good at it and
others were telling me that I was good at it
and I would be able to share these complex topics
and break them down so that people would be able
to understand them. So because I enjoyed it as
well, I started sharing. all of these things
with courses. And since then, when I started
several years ago with TelecomTech as a company,
I got connected with a guy named Rene Molinar,
who has network lessons. He is in the Netherlands.
He is... Cisco networking guru not only Cisco
but other quite quite a few areas as well And
I started working with him just as a forum moderator.
I was one of two or three moderators that were
on his site Over the years the other moderators
left. I started taking on more and more responsibilities
and As you can probably see here My activity
on the forum, I have 9 ,600 posts in about eight
years. So you can see this was probably another
one of those big... steps forward. I did mention
about the university that was a big network.
I was able to learn a lot. The municipality,
a big network, and it was all mine and I was
able to learn a lot. This is another big stepping
stone in my journey that really helped me because
I had to respond to all of these forum posts
concerning a whole bunch of different technologies.
So I learned a lot by researching them and responding.
And over the years, I've been working more in
depth with Rene creating various labs as well.
You can see he has a lot of different courses
that he prepares them in a different format from
what I do. He prepares them as lessons. So if
we go into OSPF and we take a look at introduction
to OSPF, it's a lesson. that talks about various
things about this particular technology and protocol.
And then people ask questions, and I respond,
and that's been something that's really helped
me a lot. Yes, what I wanted to say before as
well was that other than the forum and the lessons
we've put together with Rene, some labs as well.
This here is a large lab that has been put together
that someone can go in and recreate on their
own, deciding to follow the topology and the
various things that you're asked to do. So you
can do it on your own. If you get stuck, you
can follow along in the tasks that are listed
here. And it really helps out to... to learn
these fundamental technologies. So I think that
this, along with my other teaching experience
that I mentioned, is one of the major things
that has helped me to be able to explain things
simply. Other than that, I've also been involved
with, I think I mentioned it before, with Skillsoft,
which is a training company. I have created several
5G courses as well. So this, for example, is
a Skillsoft course that I've put together and
it talks about what you'll learn. And is that
a video course? It is a video course. And as
you can see here, you have the various, they're
small little nuggets. The first two videos are
free for you to check out or you can, if you
purchase. The course you can follow along. But
this is content that I've prepared for Skillsoft
and then they take it and run with it. There
are over 20 courses that I've created for 5G
for Skillsoft. Oh, interesting. Okay. Now, do
you offer other services? You mentioned that
you work with different municipalities, right?
So you also teach, you teach in different platforms.
Do you offer different services? As a company,
I guess there are two major, other than teaching,
there are two major areas that we work with.
On the one hand, we have the local customers,
which are municipalities. We now have five municipalities
on the island of Crete where we support either
their networks or their Wi -Fi network or both,
their telephony. that work with these local customers.
And then I have the overseas customers, which
I've shared already about Rene and the work I
do with him. But I'm also involved in copywriting.
I write up both ghostwriting as well as writing
under my own name, various... blogs about telecom
technology. The topics that I've talked about
include BGP, they include voice over IP, 5G,
as well as various other areas. But that too
is one of my major activities. And I guess that
kind of falls into training and teaching and
sharing information in a way that's easy to understand.
Okay. Okay. Thanks. Now, there's something that
I wanted to ask you that is, I don't know, something
that I have in the top of my mind all the time.
What are your thoughts on the role of the traditional
network engineer? Because nowadays, everything
is more automated. You hear about Terraform,
you hear about Ansible everywhere. So what are
your thoughts there on that traditional role?
You know, like Cisco, you SSH into the router,
you configure it, you know, command by command.
What do you think is going to happen to the network
engineer? It's interesting because I started
out before all of this automation came in. So
I was a very CLI type guy, as most people of
my generation, my age. So I had to pivot. I had
to diversify. I had to learn new skills as I
was going down. Now, a lot of people are saying
that, you know, the network engineer is slowly
becoming obsolete because you have all of this
automation. And, you know, you're going to be
more of a software engineer rather than a network
engineer because everything can be done in software
now. I'm convinced that unless you have a solid
understanding of networking and protocols, you
won't be able to sufficiently use these tools.
If you don't know the underlying fundamentals
of IP, IPv6, TCP, routing protocols and so on,
you still will not be able to use all of these
automation tools. Python, Ansible, and generally
network automation, you won't be able to use
them to their full potential. Someone who doesn't
have very much experience in networking might
be able to do a few things with automation now,
but if you don't understand the fundamentals
behind all of it, you'll never be able to fully
understand and implement it in the best possible
way. Okay. Do you think there's still a lot of
room for people that want to get started in traditional
networking? Should they start with, you know,
all of this Cisco and CLI related stuff? Or what's
your advice there? If you're interested in networking,
you should start with CLI. You should start with
the command line. You should start by configuring
STP line by line, device by device, configuring
routing interface by interface. Otherwise, you
won't understand the logic behind the protocol.
Eventually, in a production network, you might
never or very rarely go in and use the CLI. That
doesn't mean that you shouldn't know how it works.
And that's why most of the courses that are given
out there, by Cisco and others as well, and even
my videos, they focus on the command line interface.
They focus on the understanding of the functionality
of the protocols. And if you don't use the CLA,
if you don't take a look and see... all of those
show commands and understand all of those things,
you won't be able to understand the protocol.
And then you won't be that useful in the network
design and so on. Now, you might be able to deploy
a network, but you'll have a lot of trouble in
troubleshooting it. You'll have a lot of trouble
in understanding why it works the way it works.
And I think that's an important aspect of...
Being good, being a good telecom and networking
engineer. Otherwise, you're just, you know, you're
just an amateur. Otherwise, if you don't know
the fundamentals behind all of it. Yep. And is
configuring network equipment via the CLI still
what is usually done in companies? Or how do
you handle it normally? It depends on the philosophy
of the company. I think it also depends on what
part of the world you're in. From my experience,
my clients, at least here in Greece, they're
not big fans of spending money to automate. They're
happy to keep the things the way they are. And
I think it's just a matter of philosophy or the
way things work. In other countries, you'll find
that people are more willing to spend the money
to automate because in the long run, you do save
money because you need fewer people to support
them and you can free up people's time to do
other things as well. But it's really a matter
of philosophy. I found from my experience locally,
you know, the CLI is fine. People don't want
to spend the money to create the automation or
develop the automation. Elsewhere overseas, again,
from my experience, the philosophy is different
and people will spend the time. So I guess it
really depends on who your customers are. Yeah.
I did notice that at my previous company, everything
was CLI managed a few years ago. But it's moving
away from that to maintaining configurations
and all that stuff in GitHub and stuff like that.
So it depends. But that's the company that I
was on before, which is a big company. Locally,
like you said, here where I live. People is that
it's not going to automate things yet. Not as
of yet. I don't know how long it's going to take,
but where I'm at, we're behind a few years. And
I don't think that's going to happen anytime
soon. Because like you said, it requires money,
right? You need to have people that can do it.
And they just don't want to invest in that, I
guess, as of yet. And I guess one of the skill
sets that we as networking engineers need is
to be able to convey the necessity of such things
to the decision makers, who are not technical
people. They're business people, they're business
administration, and so on. So you have to be
able to convey that. But you can only convey
it up to a point. Ultimately, it's their decision,
and the philosophy and approach that they have
is something that will affect that, definitely.
And what's your take on learning new stuff like
Terraform and Sybil? Are you on the side of,
you know, if there comes the need to move to
those technologies, are you in favor of that?
Or you're like, no, I'm more on the side of doing
the things. Traditionally, I'm not going to be
automating stuff. What's your take on that? Like,
what's your. I think. Well, we did say that in
your part of the world, my part of the world,
people are not that open to such changes. But
the changes will take place. Whether it's faster
or slower, they eventually will take place. And
you have to be, you know, you have to move with
the times. You have to learn new things. So I
would say that definitely it's something that...
We must do, we have to, we as network engineers,
we have to learn these new things. So I'm definitely
for learning it. It depends on also on where
you are in your journey. Someone who's just out
of university is in a better position to learn
this new technology than someone like myself,
you know, 25 years in the industry. I still like
learning new things and I do. It's just I can't
learn as fast maybe as someone who's something
completely new as someone who's maybe 25 or 30
years old. But definitely it's something that's
necessary. It's something that's good. It's actually
part of the excitement that's involved with this
area because there's always something new to
learn. And I think that I personally enjoy that.
Yeah. Definitely. OK. And what advice do you
have for people that is just starting thinking
about starting? You know, let's say that I'm
in the university. You learn a lot of stuff in
the university, not just focus to a specific
topic and you don't know what path to take. So
what advice do you have for people to starting
or thinking about to start in the networking
world? Yeah, well. The network networking is
a field which is very flexible. So my experience,
my example is that I started off with physics
and astronomy bachelor's degree. And through
that, I was able to go into telecom. So it's
you have a lot of options. You have a lot of
opportunity to pivot. It's not like when you
study to be a doctor, you you need. a medical
degree in order to be a doctor or a lawyer. You
need law school, go through the bar exam and
so on. And you're locked in, in a sense. With
telecom, there's a lot more freedom and flexibility.
You want to learn something new, learn it, get
your certification and go with it. It doesn't
really matter so much what... what university
degree you have, of course, it affects it. I
mean, if you're in computer science or telecommunications
or engineering, it's more related to these things.
But I know people who have studied biology, chemistry,
even someone who has studied theology and has
gone into networking. So it's a very flexible
path. that you can take. And actually, I wanted
to share at this point something that I've put
together that I mentioned before, the Telecom
and Networking Professionals Roadmap. This is
a 27 -page document that I've put together, and
it's essentially a guide for you to plan your
path in telecom. It's organized in a way where
you can See where you are now and examine what
your very next step is, which I think is the
most important question you have to answer today.
And it's the biggest challenge often. You know,
you said, what happens if you're in a university?
What do you do? What's your next step? Well,
if you're not sure, you have to find out where
you are and see where you want to go. This document
is actually organized as a roadmap. This is an
overview of the roadmap. And throughout the document,
I describe each section separately. For example,
you have post -secondary studies, which is the
question you asked about in university. And what
I do for each section is I have an example. If
we go to post -secondary, laying the foundation,
I describe what that point in your journey is.
And then I have a series of points with advice.
And this advice is specific to that point in
your journey. And it's advice that will help
you to see where you are and see where you want
to go. Hopefully, you'll be able to find yourself
in this path and use that. document and use the
roadmap to decide what your next step is going
to be. And I want to share with you one section
here that talks about various points of entry.
So you're able to enter into telecom and networking
from various points. I mean, you can enter before
university. I know of someone who's on the telecom
or who's on the networking lessons for him who's
17 years old he's in high school and he already
has a very solid grasp of networking this guy
got in very early and he's gonna be you know
he's gonna go places he's gonna be very uh um
he's gonna move forward very quickly but you
don't necessarily have to start off that early
some people enter after university like i did
other people get their business administration
masters, and then they get into networking. And
where you enter... Let me share a little bit
about my journey there, if I may. Yes, absolutely.
I didn't continue in the university. Well, I
am now. I'm 37 years old. This is my final year
in university. But when I started, I wanted something...
faster that gave me results faster so i decided
to go with networking decided to go with ccna
right got my certification i got another one
afterwards which was ccna security back then
doesn't exist anymore but you dealt with the
asa cisco asa firewall then i got my ccnp and
that helped me get jobs basically right so the
certifications did help me I got promoted. I
got different jobs. Then I came into a point
in which I was like, I want to try something
different. So I moved away from networking and
I wanted to go more into the infrastructure side
of things. You know, Linux, monitoring. I was
a monitoring engineer at my previous company.
I worked there for like seven years. I got laid
off, I don't know, like three months ago, something
like that. But giving the job market now. It's
difficult for me to find a job currently, especially
the country that I'm in. There's not a lot of
positions here. So I have to go back to being
a networking engineer now. So it gives you options,
right? And I didn't want to finish the university.
I don't think I need it too much. It does gives
me a lot of other topics that I can cover, programming
and stuff like that. adds more tools to my belt
right so like you said i didn't start the university
i started with networking then you know started
university i'm gonna finish it soon and i can
switch between the two environments you know
networking infrastructure side of things if i
don't find an option in one place i can migrate
to the other but uh yeah just continue just wanted
to to add that there definitely that's very helpful
and actually i wanted to share this graph that
I've created from within the document that kind
of gives you an idea of the importance of the
university degree, importance of certifications,
and the importance of experience, and at what
point in your career each one is important. So
the university degree is very important. You
can see it here. It's very important at the beginning.
Because that's kind of what gets you your foot
in the door to get your first job. You know,
right out of university, maybe you've done some
practical, you know, what is it called? Like
an internship. And then you get your foot in
the door through that university degree. As time
goes on, the value of that university degree
goes down. And things like certifications and
experience. go up so at some point certifications
become the most important thing um you know maybe
five seven ten years after uh your first job
and this is what i found in in my life this is
certifications were something that really helped
me to take off um at the beginning that part
of my life yes at the very beginning it's university
degrees after several years it's certification
and then Even the importance of certifications
go down after 10, 12, 15 years. And it's really
the experience which is what's most important.
So, you know, this is a general guideline. By
no means are the lines supposed to be exactly
there. You know, your graph might be a bit different.
But in general, this is what I've found from
my experience. Interesting. Okay. Do you have
any certifications, Lazarus? I do. Actually,
I was looking at them today to kind of remember
which ones I had in the past, because some of
them are expired or have been retired, like yours.
I do have a CCMP Enterprise. infrastructure.
And CCNA, CCNA Security, CCNA Collaboration,
Cisco Video Network Representative, CCNA Security,
Wireless, Voice. So I had a wide variety of Cisco
certifications. even the ones that are retired.
But other than that, I've also done some MicroTik
as well as some Ubiquiti. Those were done more
to gain a little bit of experience with those
platforms as well because I wanted to broaden
my understanding of those as well. Those are
the certifications I have. Okay, so that's the
next. topic that i have here so do you recommend
certifications what are your thoughts or your
advice there for people just starting i definitely
recommend certifications certifications are a
way that uh you can verify the skill sets you
have and they're verified by some authority um
and that's why it's important to choose the appropriate
certifications, certifications that are well
-known in the industry, certifications that are
widespread, like Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, Juniper,
Microtech, Ubiquiti. So these that are well -recognized,
it's important. And I think the graph that I
showed before also shows When they're important.
I found that my CCNP was the most valuable certification
that I had. It really opened a lot of doors for
me at that particular point in my career. Yeah,
same happened to me. I got my CCNP and I got
promoted where I was working at. Eventually,
I just reached the point, like I said, that I
wanted to explore new things, you know, but it
wouldn't have been possible without the CCNP
because. Yeah. Other people that have the certification
and that know how difficult it is to get it will
pay attention. It's going to draw their attention.
They're going to be like, OK, so it's like a
starting point. It makes you stand out from other
people for sure. It does. It does. Then I moved
into infrastructure. I didn't need CCNP there,
you know, because I wasn't doing any networking
related stuff. So I just let it expire. I was
not going to renew it. I was like, I'm not going
to invest my time in that at the moment because
it was not, you know, I wasn't using it, right?
So, but still, it's there in your resume, you
know, that you're CCNP. And what are your thoughts
on CCIE, the CCIE cert? CCIE is a very, very
valuable asset to have. Now, Someone might ask,
well, why don't you have it? For myself. The
reason is because I don't, at this point, I think
I'm beyond the point in the graph where the curve
gives me, where ECCIE will give me the benefit
I need. A CCIE has been compared to half a PhD.
As far as the amount of time you need to do it
and how difficult it is. So if you have two CCIEs
in two different areas, it's like having a PhD.
As far as how difficult it is to get and how
valuable it is as an asset. If you do achieve
it, it's definitely something that's a major
milestone in your career. If this was 10 years
ago, I would probably go for it. For me, at this
point in time, it's not worth the amount of time
I'll need to invest in order to get it for the
benefits that it will give me. Yeah. So the question
is, then, when should you get your CCIE? Should
you get your CCIE if you're working in networking
related stuff? Of course, right? Would it make
sense, I don't know, to get it once you have
a little bit of experience in networking? Or
let's say that I'm just starting. I don't work
in networking. Should I go for my CCIE first
or should I work in the industry first? If you're
right at the beginning, I think the most important
thing is starting to gain experience. So if you
have a university degree or... some credentials
that will get your foot in the door at a job,
go for that. Start gaining experience. Start
being able to say, I have one year experience
at such and such a job in your resume, two years,
three years. Start building that up. And at the
same time, start with low -level certifications
like CCNA so that you get a feel for what it's
like to write those exams. And do it in an area
that you're interested in. Start off with your
basic CCNA and then see if you can diversify
that. Go for various other certifications at
that level. And then move on to CCNP and then
CCIE. I would not recommend going directly to
CCIE, even if you have a lot of experience from
your job. The content that you need to learn
for CCIE is very broad. So you would never cover
all of that in any type of job because the job
you have is usually very focused on something
very specific. If you're a network engineer,
you might be dealing with MPLS on an ISP. You
might know MPLS very, very well and answer all
the questions on MPLS and do well in your CCIE.
There's so much more involved that you need to
learn. So don't depend just on your experience.
You should start off with your CCNA and then
CCNP and then go on to your CCIE. I think that's
the best, the path that will give you the highest
degree of success because when you do go for
your CCIE, you do pay several thousand dollars.
And if you don't pass, you have to, you have
to fork out that money again at a later date
to do it again. And there's a very high percentage
of failures in CCIE, which is good on the one
hand because you know that it is a difficult
and it's a valuable piece of paper. So your advice
is do not skip CCNP because there's people that
want to go from CCNA directly to CCIE. So it's
recommended to go through CCNP. That would be
my recommendation. That's not to say that someone
can't do it. I know people who have done it.
But I think the safest, or maybe not the safest,
but the path that will give you the most success,
I think, is going through CCNP and then CCIE.
Okay. Okay. What are your thoughts on these other
certifications that are more general? CompTIA,
there's like a general certification. CompTIA,
it's not like vendor related, but overall networking
concepts. Would you recommend that certification?
I would recommend that as well. I would consider
it to be on par with CCNA. It is vendor neutral,
but it is comprehensive. In the past, I have
worked with a company in the UK that was preparing
content for people that were wanting to take
that certification. So I've had quite a bit of
experience about the content that it covers.
So it's very, very closely related to CCNA. I
think it's... virtually at the same level. So
if you're considering being more vendor neutral
in your approach or in the company you're working
for, you're not focusing only on Cisco, it is
of some benefit to go for the CompTIA rather
than Cisco. But like I mentioned before, Cisco
is... has a high degree of vendor neutrality,
meaning that what you learn can also be applied
elsewhere and not just on Cisco equipment. Okay.
What are your thoughts on virtualization software,
however it's called, emulation software? I don't
know. DNS3, EvenG, Packet Tracer. What do you
recommend? Yes. Network simulators, network emulators.
They're extremely useful. They're a very good
way of learning for certifications, even creating
like a testbed for a topology you might want
to create in a production network just to see
how it behaves or just to use it as a learning
tool. Now, Packet Tracer is very CCNA oriented.
It's not an emulator. It's a simulator, which
means it tries to simulate the behavior of network
devices, which means it only has a subset of
the capabilities of devices. So it's not actually
running the Cisco IOS software. It's running
a software package that acts like the Cisco IOS
software. So it's very limited for anything beyond
CCNA. So if you're just getting started, Packet
Tracer is fine. It's free. It's a good way of
getting accustomed to Cisco CLI and Cisco devices.
GNS3 and EVENG are two open source emulators
that you can run on your computer. a steeper
learning curve, but they too are very useful.
They are actually emulators, which means that
they actually run the iOS software itself. The
problem with that, though, is that Cisco does
not give its iOS software for free. So you have
to find someone who has some contract with Cisco
to give you, in quotes, give you the... The iOS
image, the images. Cisco turns a blind eye, you
know, strictly speaking, it's not legal to have
them unless you have a contract. But in general,
because it's a benefit to Cisco, Cisco will turn
a blind eye to such things. There are other solutions
like Cisco CML, specifically for Cisco devices,
which... is Cisco certified, and because it's
a paid option, they support it very well, and
it's less buggy, and you can be more sure that
things will work as expected. But by no means
does that mean that GNS3 or AVNG are not useful.
They are extremely useful, and if you can get
over that learning curve, They're good tools
to have. Out of the two, which one do you prefer?
GNS3 or EVNG? I would say GNS3. I have more experience
with it, but I believe that EVNG is a little
more user -friendly in its deployment and setting
it up, especially. GNS3 is a bit... Maybe it's
a little more mature. This is my personal experience,
my personal opinion. Someone might disagree,
but that's fine. Personally, I prefer GNS3 simply
because I have more experience with it, and I
started out using it before EVNG was available.
And by no means are we saying to anyone that
they should get those images in an illegal way.
No, they should receive them through legal channels.
Yes. Okay. Okay. Wonderful. Okay. And what's
your favorite vendor, your favorite network equipment?
Is it Cisco or what is it? I would have to say
Cisco. Not to say that it's necessarily better
than others, but it's just that I started off
with it. And it's difficult to move away from
your first favorite. Not to say that I haven't
used other vendors. And one vendor that I'm quite
impressed with is Ubiquity. I've used them quite
a bit for point -to -point links. uh and for
wi -fi networks as well and i had set up a point
-to -point link that was about five kilometers
uh distance uh in a mountainous area here in
crete and it was running for over eight years
without me touching it Uh, it was there. I, I,
I got a call, you know, eight years later from
the person, uh, saying, Hey, my, my, for some
reason, the network is down what's going on,
but it was eight years later. So it was, it was,
um, they, and it's, it's, you know, that's, that's
a long time. And for equipment that that's, it's,
it's relatively cheap as well. Hmm. Okay. Okay.
Um, Going back to GNS3, I just wanted to show,
I was going through my notes from a long time
ago, and I did a lot of labbing back in time.
This is a small lab that I created. I needed
to do multicast, right, from site to site. So
I did it using a GRE tunnel. So I had a lot of
fun, actually. Now that I remember, man, I spent...
Hours, days doing these labs. This is just something
basic. But doing this is what got me to know
Docker. I think these are Docker images that
I could run in GNS3. So this got me thinking
about Docker, infrastructure, all of those things.
And if you don't know the basics, like you said,
you cannot build stuff like this. You cannot
understand how the Internet, how networks work,
how protocols work. So, right. I don't know.
This is like a video game, right? Doing these
type of things. I think it's it's pretty fun.
You learn a lot. You know, there's no way you
can do this. You know. I don't have. the resources,
the equipment to do this in the real life, right?
So it's a pretty good way to get started if you
want to practice. Definitely. And if you want
to get good in networking, you know, you should
spend about 60 to 70 % of your time just labbing
things up. Lab them again and again and again
without actually labbing. You can't learn. Labbing
is among the best ways to learn networking. I
have another here. Look at this, man. Wow, that's
nice. It doesn't make too much sense. It's not
something like real world, but I remember I added
some Juniper devices here, OSPF, different areas,
EIGRP. I used to do redistribution between routing
protocols. This is the internet, different sites.
This is the... The two different sites that need
to send multicast traffic between them. I even
did. Yeah. Any connect from this computer. Oh,
wow. Remote access tunnel. Any connect to this
ASA. So. Yeah. Yeah. I did spend way too long
doing all of that stuff, but I really enjoyed
it. So it looks like GNS3 is your favorite emulator.
Yeah. Yep. Because I try to do this in. AVNG
or AVNG, I don't know how it's pronounced, but
I couldn't deploy Docker images. Like this is
a Docker image here. This Ubuntu computer is
a Docker image. These are Docker. So I couldn't
do that unless I paid for EVNG. And I could do
that freely on GNS3. So that's why I decided
to go with it. And VLANs, man, it's like a video
game. So I really enjoyed doing that back in
time. It's really only network engineers or anyone
who understands networking in this way that finds
enjoyment in this. I talk about it with my wife
and she can't understand why I'm so passionate
about these. little, you know, black screen with
white letters coming up on the CLI and not understanding
anything. She says, how can you be passionate
about that? How does it work? It takes a certain
type of person, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People
that are into technology and all that stuff.
Same thing with my wife. I, man, I talked to
her about GNS3 a lot in the past. Every new technology
that I learned. she is the one that has to listen
to to that stuff you know so it was dns3 cisco
was juniper linux man all of the different topics
i talked to him i talk about them with her she
doesn't get it she just listens but i don't know
i think it's kind of annoying for them you know
to be listening listening to all that stuff but
it's nice that she listens yeah that's uh that's
important yeah good good and What are your thoughts
on MicroTik, the MicroTik routers? I think there
are big positives with MicroTik, but also some
negative aspects as well. The positive things
are that they're generally quite financially...
Cheap, yes. They're cheap. They have a lot of
options concerning functionality. They're very
customizable. There's a lot of options on how
to configure them. Their configuration is somewhat
unintuitive, I would have to say. Again, this
is my personal opinion. I believe that it's unintuitive.
It's somewhat difficult to configure them, to
make them behave the way you expect them to.
There are some strange little quirks in how you
have to configure them. And in general, I find
that they don't have the same level of reliability.
as other vendors, which makes sense. I mean,
they're cheaper. If you need something to work
quickly and you want to set it up, buy it, fix
it, make it, put it in and make it work. But
like I said, they're very configurable, so you
can do a lot of things with them. But I think
that the major concern is reliability. So if
you have a mission -critical network, where you
need high reliability and you need to make sure
everything's working 24 -7, don't use MicroTik.
But if you have a small office or a service you
want to deploy quickly and well and flexibly,
by all means, by all means. Makes sense. Yep.
I think it's a matter of what you actually need.
Okay. So they are good. They're excellent for
specific purposes. Okay. Like for the house.
In my house, I have two ISPs, right? Because
I worked from home. Well, I work from home. So
I need something stable. I need internet all
the time. Or I needed internet all the time.
So it was like, okay, what am I going to do?
What am I going to use? Cisco, I cannot afford
a Cisco router. And it's going to be a huge thing
making noise there in the living room. My wife
is going to hate it. You know, I could probably
get like a Meraki device, but they're expensive.
And I did get some OpenSense routers in a virtual
machine. They worked with the two ISPs well,
but they had some small issues because I used
to run them as virtual machines. So I was like,
what should I go with? It's just a house. So
I heard about MicroTik. I purchased the MicroTik
router, I don't know, like $100 or something.
And I have it configured with the two ISPs. It's
not simple because you need to do scripting,
right? So you need to program the router itself
so that when it detects that one of the links
is down, switch to the other one and vice versa,
right? So it sends me messages. If one of the
ISPs is down, of course, the other one has to
be up. It's going to send me a message to Telegram.
letting me know that one of the ISPs is down.
But it's not simple to set up. I completely agree
there because you need to do everything via scripts
and it gets involved, really involved and kind
of complicated. You're not doing a lot of networking
anymore. You're doing more like programming,
we would say. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Have you had,
I don't know, experiences with Microtech in big
businesses? Are there any drawbacks, things that
are not compatible with Cisco equipment? Like,
have you managed them in BGP or just small networks?
I don't have any experience with MicroTik in
large networks. I've mostly used them for quick
fixes. For example, I wanted to set up, I wanted
to connect a, I wanted a BGP, sorry. I wanted
a DHCP server. So I put in a little MicroTik
switch that was running a DHCP server and off
you go. I never used MicroTik for anything, like
I said before, mission critical. So I don't have
any direct experience with compatibility issues
with other vendors. Okay. Okay. What are your
thoughts on network monitoring? And I'm just
bringing this up because I used to be a monitoring
engineer, so I have a lot of experience with
monitoring stuff. So what are your thoughts there,
your advice? Should people monitor their networks
and how would you advise them to do it? Well,
definitely monitoring is important. I think it's
most important for the network administrator
because it makes your life easier. So for the
municipality, for example, that I support here,
we've set up a network monitoring system that
just, very simple, just checks the uptime, just
checks the connectivity of all of the network
devices. We have about 80, 85 switches in the
whole network, a couple of routers. It makes
our job easier because we can proactively be
informed of outages. We have it set up with Telegram
as well. It sends us a message saying that such
and this device went down. It's been down this
long or when it's rebooted or whatever. So we
know beforehand what's happening. So if someone
calls and says, hey, why is this building, you
know, we've lost connectivity. Yes, we already
know we're working on it and it's going to be
resolved very shortly. Um, it, it makes, uh,
it makes the life of the network engineer much
easier. And, uh, it also provides a level of,
um, uh, professionalism, uh, to your clients
because when they call up and you say, oh, really,
it went down. What happened? You know, you, you
look like you, you don't know what's happening,
but if you say. If you're already on top of it,
you can, you know, and, you know, you're, we're
working on it and it's almost fixed. Or you resolve
it before anyone notices, which is even better.
And you can let them know. And then you can send
the report afterwards saying that there was,
you know, down times for a minute and a half
at this place and this place, this place, whatever.
And they say, oh, wow, you've responded in that
way. That's wonderful. So I think the major benefit,
other than the fact that, you know, you make
sure that you maximize uptime, which is the most
important thing. It's also good for the network
engineer because they are able to do their job.
and it simplifies your job. What tools do you
use for monitoring stuff? One of my employees
has set it up. It's Libra NMS, which just follows
the network. Now, what they've asked for recently
from the municipality is they want to check the
quality. of the network at each location. There
are 12 big buildings that are interconnected
with the municipal area network, the fiber optic
network, and there are over 40 smaller buildings
that are connected. So it's one thing to see
uptime. I mean, just the pings show you that
the device is up. But if you want to check the
quality, you need something like an IPSLA. So
right now we're in the process of creating an
IPSLA in various Cisco devices at various locations.
And that IPSLA is going to be sending information
to the server. And we're going to actually, there's
going to be a developer who's going to put together
a small script that's going to be able to show
a list of all the locations and then give a...
a percentage with a color that shows the quality
of the link. So, you know, 97 % green or 100
% green. And then if it's under 90%, it'll go
to yellow. So that with one look at the dashboard,
and this is catered towards non -technical people,
they'll be able to go in and see what is the
quality of the links. at each location and then
you can actually click on that location and then
it'll give you the quality of the links that
connect to other sites within the municipality
sites that are government sites that are used
by the mean is the people in the municipality
or general internet connectivity so that's something
that we're developing right now and on the one
hand it's good because you again you get an idea
of what the network looks like on the other hand
it's also a way to show your give them an opportunity
to be able to participate in the monitoring of
the network. Oh, interesting. Okay. Thanks for
sharing all that knowledge. I'm sure that your
experience with monitoring is deeper than mine,
but that's maybe something that I guess we're
working on currently and I wanted to share. Okay.
Okay, yeah. People do things different way everywhere,
right? So you're using the routers, basically.
They're going to be the ones sending the information.
It's not going to be a server inside sending
the information, right? So you're using the routers
already. That's right. That's right. And I think
that has also to do with the philosophy that
we were talking about before. Are you willing
to spend the money to develop something that's
more detailed? Do you want to run JSON or other
scripting languages within the devices themselves
to send more detailed information? Do you want
to put a detailed SNMP agent in each device?
At this point in time, financially, they're not
offering something that will be able to do that.
So this is kind of a low cost solution. So you
have to adjust. It gives them what they want.
Yeah, exactly. You have to adjust, okay. And
what would you recommend? Someone in my case,
like for example, right? If you want to connect
a small business, what do you use in small businesses
or houses, right? I'm using Microtech here. Is
there any other vendor you would recommend besides
Microtech? Because you don't need a huge router
in a house or a small business. What vendor would
you recommend in that case? Let's say that they
want double ISP and just failover between the
two ISPs. What do you usually do? I have also
used, on some occasions, TP -Link. which is another
low -end vendor, but they have devices that have
a lot of capabilities. I think they're on par
with MicroTik probably as far as reliability
goes, but they're more intuitive in their configuration.
Probably not as flexible as MicroTik, but I've...
In homes where it's, you know, nothing mission
critical, it's a good solution that I've used.
Okay, wonderful. For load balancing as well,
and even, you know, very fundamental firewall
or fundamental security or VPN implementation.
Okay, great. All right, so I'm going to be...
uploading this as a podcast as well. So I don't
know when, because I still have a few other chapters
that I need to upload. So you will be able to
listen to this as a podcast, I don't know, a
couple of weeks from now in all the major platforms,
Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and all
the other ones. So are there any final thoughts,
anything you want to share before we wrap it
up? I think ultimately what's most important
is to make sure that you do what you love. I
will never forget something that an older cousin
of mine said. I was 12 years old. He said, make
sure that what you choose to do with your life,
make sure that you love it. Because you're going
to be spending more time doing that than you
are with your wife. You know, at 12 years old,
that really impressed me. And it stayed with
me, you know, 30, you know, almost 40 years later.
And that's so important. Love what you do. For
me, my job is my hobby and my hobby is my job.
You know, Monday morning comes and I'm happy
to go to the office. Not always. OK, I'm not.
I'm not, you know, that crazy. But I like it.
I enjoy it. And for me, that's a huge blessing.
It's a huge blessing to love what I do. And I
think that if I would wish anything on someone
I love, like my child, my children, the thing
that I would wish for them most is that they
will love what they do. It gives not only job
satisfaction, but I think life satisfaction.
Because it's a huge part of your life, what you
do. And if you don't like it, it's tormenting.
Maybe it's not there. Yeah, maybe you're not
in the right place, right? Yeah, maybe you're
not in the right place. And if that's the case,
don't be afraid of making the decision to change.
regardless of what area you're in. We're talking
about telecom and networking, but you might be
in something else. Don't be afraid to change
if you're not content, if you're not satisfied,
if you're not happy with what you're doing, because
your happiness is worth it. It's worth it to
make the change. Okay. Wonderful words. I'm just
going to show your YouTube channel real quick.
So I'm going to leave this in the video description.
A link to your YouTube channel. You have all
of your links listed here, right? Let me just
switch to this real quick. Where's my... There
we go. So you have links here to your website.
Let's see. Yeah, this is your website. Yeah.
Twitter, Instagram. So where should people go
then? YouTube and your website. Those are the
main ones. The YouTube and the website, yes.
Okay. Also, from what you told me, you'll put
in the description a link to the roadmap as well,
the career roadmap, so people can download that
for free as well. Okay, wonderful. So it's been
an honor, Lazarus, you know, all of these years
of experience were shared with a lot of people.
I don't know how many people which will watch
the video, you know, maybe at least one. I'm
going to watch it, you know, but... I really
thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing
all of this with us and hope to see you in the
next video. OK, and I appreciate very much the
opportunity you give me to to chat about these
things. It's it's a pleasure and an honor for
me as well. I really appreciate it. All right.
Let's see. Bye bye.