Hello All,
Keen to get everyones input on if its worth learning about MPLS VPN, BGP right now? It seems every company i look at wants knowledge of Wifi / ISE / Firewalls / SD-WAN to name a few. So am i better off learning some of these? My current job is a traditional MPLS VPN network so the reason im learning that.
Thoughts?
EDIT - What gets you a job? Every job I look at wants Wi-Fi / ISE / Cloud knowledge etc not bgp/mpls. Am
I behind the industry?
Learning BGP is (and will be for a very long time) fundamental to being a proficient network engineer. If you are in enterprise networking you still need to know what mpls is - ie a private l3 carriage service. But understanding how an mpls core works - mp-bgp and ldp etc isnt really relevant unless you are aiming for carrier land.
Multiprotocol BGP is really, really important for all current overlays.
I personally worked my whole carrier for ISP/carriers. Learning BGP and MPLS was essential nonetheless. And most companies relies on carriers/ISPs for their long distance services (or Internet).
If you like doing enterprise networking, you may get away by never learning MPLS, but you should definitely learn BGP, it is obnoxious in many enterprise context: data centres, ISP/Carriers connections, virtualization (most virtual routers runs BGP).
I would argue that midsize enterprise could benefit from MPLS also. Makes building larger networks easier imo. But, this is debatable and can be a hard pill to swallow when you have limited staff and resources.
why would Wifi/ISE/Firewalls invalidate the use of MPLS or BGP?
BGP yes. However, 99% of people use the term “MPLS” to mean “L2/L3VPN from my carrier” and have nothing to do with MPLS.
Few enterprises know or touch MPLS. It’s useful if you want to go SP though.
God yes
SDWAN vendors and fancy firewall knowledge is temporary.
BGP knowledge is forever.
BGP is good until there is a new protocol. MPLS is something you should learn if you wish to go to Telco/crazy sensitive networks…
Learn BGP, its pretty easy and once you know it you get a far better understanding how everything is really connected. The orielly’s book “BGP: Building Reliable Networks with the Border Gateway Protocol 1st Edition” from 2002 is still stupid up to date on the topic too btw. The protocol ain’t changing and will likely not be replaced in the next 30 years.
I’m on a larger team and I have the deepest knowledge of BGP, and even I don’t consider myself an expert on it. I really wish we did have an expert. It’s heavily used in certain respects, especially internet hosting, multi-homing, and even cloud hosting. It’s like the routing swiss army knife. Knowing it seems to help more often than you would think.
MPLS VPN, on the other hand is frequently hidden behind carrier connectivity. If you have a job where you need it, adding that knowledge isn’t hard to get started on.
Yes. Learn BGP and MPLS.
Depends on the company and their technology stack.
I worked as a network lead at one company and didn’t touch MPLS or BGP because it was entirely sdwan, ngfw and Web-UI point and click adventures.
Next company it’s MPLS, BGP, big DC deployments because that’s how they built their network. (Required though.)
MPLS is fundamental (need to know both RSVP and LDP in basic MPLS). You must know about l2vpns (both Kompella and Martini), l3vpns (ebgp or ospf as a pe-ce). You can avoid learning about mvpn - it is quite rare. BGP is fundamental. The only topics from BGP you can drop are about confederations - nobody use those.
If you already know MPLS, the BGP /VPN part would be easier to learn.
I am working in a telco, so yes, my work is provisioning dedicated links and l2/l3 vpns
If you want a pure network job, you need to learn it
Honestly, it really depends on the scale and complexity of your network. If you’re managing a large enterprise or ISP, BGP/MPLS can offer serious benefits in terms of scalability and resilience. But for smaller networks, it’s probably overkill. I’d say weigh the cost and complexity against your actual needs. Sometimes simpler solutions can get the job done just as effectively.
Can I ask, what do you already know? Maybe you already have enough knowledge to be a great network engineer.
It is as worth it as it was 10 years ago. Anyone who cared about BGP/MPLS then still cares about it now. You’re just looking at the wrong industry.
BGP is vital in today’s networking IMO and you should learn it.
I would argue that EVPN is a better newer version of MPLS and is easier to work with IMO. If your current job uses MPLS it’s worth learning that of course.
Wifi / ISE / Firewalls / SD-WAN
These guys are a dime a dozen. Throw in VOIP so you can jump from one ticket to the next when a weird user doesn’t like something about his phone (LOL).
Why not learn carrier grade networking, distinguish yourself and get your CCIE-SP and JNCIE-SP? You’ll be far less helpdesk and user facing. I would even say facing IT generalists is as painful and time consuming as users, maybe more so since they want to be taught during the fix.
cheers 