I’ve just spent the last week or so replacing the core networking infrastructure where I work. It involved plenty of late-night work to avoid disrupting service during peak hours. We ended up replacing two of our major routers and implemented a simple tiered architecture which should allow the company to grow much bigger than they are currently.
Since starting work here, I have been the Cisco expert, because I had my CCNP certification (which has since expired). Although I did well on the exams, I had very little practical experience working on live routers. In the couple years that I have been working here, I have learned a lot about configuring routers and switches, and setting up BGP and OSPF routing.
I’ll probably won’t get into a job where these are my primary functions, but I think that its good to understand how networking and routing works. It makes debugging and troubleshooting much easier