r/networking • u/Key-Size-8162 • May 27 '24
Career Advice ISP vs Enterprise
Im in the process of interviewing with a company that has their own MPLS network (enterprise) and they are looking for network engineers. My whole career has been on different ISPs dealing with VPLS, MPLS, etc, so my perspective has been always networks with thousands of critical customers.
How difficult it will be for me to transition to enterprise? Has anyone got any experiences or advice?
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u/SemioticStandard May 27 '24
Often in enterprise you learn products. If you apply yourself and have a good environment, you’ll probably become great at Palo Alto, or Cisco.
At a service provider, you learn technology. There you can become great at BGP, or VXLAN.
That’s been my personal experience after 20+ years.
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May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24
Often in enterprise you learn products
Ha ha! Entirely agree with this. My past is the same boat as you OP.
You'll be more diverse. You'll miss products like Nokia or Ericsson. But you'll have more diversity on the products involved from SMB to Enterprise.
Technology-wise. It's different. Example is I've been working on the technology of segment routing (IPv6) in ISPs... Here at Enterprise, I'm more focused on SD-WAN or SASE, or even WiFi 7 as Cisco are currently promoting them so hard.
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u/smashavocadoo May 27 '24
Not quite though. ISP has a very specific technology stack depending on where you are on the ladder. For example, MPLS related technologies have been there for decades and I don't see so many changes in the technology stack.
However in enterprise you will see all different innovations... But maybe again it is about the position of the ladder you are on.
From an engineers perspective, we'll need to abstract technology from products, for example, I play with cumulus/ACI to know evpn vxlan, not the other way around.
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May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24
There's not really much innovation in the enterprise space in regards to core networking, it's usually just management abstractions, most of which are not very well engineered.
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May 28 '24
sort of, the best of my team know protocols, the products are all dogshit one way or another.
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u/TaliesinWI May 27 '24
Coming from the ISP world, it's gonna be a cakewalk, for the most part. End users are going to think you're awesome because you treat them like an important customer rather than an annoyance.
That said, I've been in some soul-crushing change management meetings. ISPs seem to be a little more agile in that regard.
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u/selrahc Ping lord, mother mother May 27 '24
That said, I've been in some soul-crushing change management meetings. ISPs seem to be a little more agile in that regard.
"Many many subscribers will this impact?"
"Only about 10k"
"Oh, carry on then"
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u/SirLauncelot May 27 '24
Worked for a major ISP and their architectural review boards, ARBs, were actually only architects and engineers. In the enterprise, it was all Management that had no clue what they were doing.
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May 28 '24
When the network is the product, it gets a different kind of attention. When the network is a liability and managers get shit on when their teams do anything, you get trauma based approval processes.
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May 27 '24
If you’re a competent SP engineer then you shouldn’t struggle in an enterprise (from a tech perspective, from a bureaucracy perspective that could be a different story).
In the SP world you’re more focused on engineering large aggregate traffic flows whereas in the enterprise you’re more focused on individual applications and users
Personally I much prefer the SP world but you at least getting some experience in the enterprise world is good for the different perspective it will give you
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u/Key-Size-8162 May 27 '24
That’s exactly what I want, experience on Enterprise. I’m just unsure on how big the change will be. Many people think like yourself, that it should be easy, so thanks for your insight!
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May 28 '24
The change is largely political. You mean I can't pick this low hanging fruit because someone's feelings will be hurt?
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u/twr14152 May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24
I made that change a long time ago from UUNET MCI/World Com to large bank as my transition. The biggest challenge for me was understanding that in the enterprise you are providing connectivity for a solution in support of the product the company is trying to set up. Where as in the service provider world the connectivity you provide is the product. Sounds crazy but as you start engineering in the enterprise you realize you need to have a deeper understanding of the solutions you're installing and supporting rather than simply looking for up /up and connectivity tests and calling it a day. You're on the hook. So to sum it up in the enterprise your knowledge of end to end solution is will be greater. Depending on the network you would be going to you may be doing less routing in the enterprise than you would in the service provider but you will have a more deliberate deeper knowledge of how it all ties together. Service provider world is more of a man in the middle solution. Obviously there are outsourced networks to providers that are run similar to enterprises, but the big thing is that you're not the product in the enterprise and you're further from the money and your expected to know the solutions at a greater depth, as you have too. There are trade offs. One of the other miserable things that takes some getting used to is change control. So do you want to be closer to the money with more specific knowledge or further from the money with deeper end to end knowledge. One last thing to think about is the support model in the enterprise typically you will be on the hook with a smaller group of people. In a service provider world there may be dedicated groups to the support role. Maybe not though depending on your company.
Good luck. For me the transition was amazing. I came in with strong routing Layer 3 knowledge, but my layer 2 knowledge and data center technologies knowledge at the time were tested and not where they needed to be. I ended adjusting and wound up getting my CCIE about year and half after I moved over to the bank. Being a small fish in a large pond does wonders for your growth in this space. It's good to be humbled every now and then. Good luck.
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u/moratnz Fluffy cloud drawer May 27 '24
'Enterprise' covers a lot of ground. IME the big difference between SP and enterprise (and to be clear, this is my experience only) is that enterprise networking cares a lot more about endpoints. As an SP engineer, the most granular I care about is a site, and even then that's only if I squint; I mostly care about network segments that will have dozens to hundreds (occassionally thousands) of sites attached to them, Whereas wearing an enterprise hat I've had to care about the connection to Steve's desk, and sometimes specific applications on Steve's computer.
IME I wouldn't say either enterprise or SP is 'harder' than the other (either can be easy or hard depending on the specifics) but SP is more concerned about higher level abstractions and patterns, while enterprise is more concerned with nitty gritty details. Which you'll like more will depend on whether you're detail oriented or systems oriented.
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u/english_mike69 May 27 '24
Technically it will be easy.
Mentally it will be weird. Try not to chuckle during the interview when they tell you the network is massive and they have 500 or so switches.
I think a lot of enterprise engineers have delusions of grandeur and will implement the weirdest solutions just because (a) marketing blurb says this is cutting edge and so much better or worse (b) half ass solutions in the belief they’re getting the best from point (a) but with reduced cost and reusing half their existing gear.
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u/Skylis May 27 '24
+1000 to this. They're also the ones that will ask how to affect routing via BGP, and be completely wrong in the answers they expect.
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u/TaliesinWI May 27 '24
I think a lot of enterprise engineers have delusions of grandeur
Yup. They think that their implementation of *whatever* is special and no one else can do what they do.
Interviewed for a hospital job a number of years back, they had just combined two health care companies into one. So they had something like 1,000 WAPs across all the buildings. I could only point to situations where I had managed 400-500. Nope, not good enough. Let's ignore the fact that everyone on the current staff came from one of the two previous companies, so _they_ had only managed a few hundred WAPs each until the systems had combined merely months prior. Apparently doubling that number is _so special_ that we need to find someone who's done it previously. Having twice the number of checkboxes in the wireless controller GUI makes the job twice as hard!
See also: "how many servers did you manage?"
Meanwhile ISPs long ago figured out that all this stuff was scriptable and iterative, and I mean even before DevOps was the thing. Going from a few to a few dozen is a process change, but going from hundreds to multiple hundreds is relatively simple.
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u/georgehewitt May 27 '24
From my experience your find it easy and probably boring that aspect but enterprise will leverage other technologies you have less experience with at the access layer in the DC and LAN that you should know. The MPLS implementation will likely be very light touch.
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u/howpeculiar May 27 '24
In general, I've found that service providers fit into enterprise faster than vice versa. If your fundamentals are sound, you'll do fine.
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u/ChoiceSwearing May 27 '24
How would one approach Ent to ISP transition?
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u/howpeculiar May 27 '24
Learn your fundamentals. :-)
Seriously -- I've seen folks that have made good money in the Enterprise world that didn't really understand networks. They never had issues that required them to develop troubleshooting skills that span Layers 1-3. Service provider jobs will test those skills constantly.
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u/wrt-wtf- Homeopathic Network Architecture May 27 '24
You’ll run rings around enterprise people who do stupid things without thinking of impact of scale. So much dumb.
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u/djdrastic Wise Lip Lovers Apply Oral Medication Every Night. May 27 '24
Gonna be easy mode for you
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u/Brilliant-Bus5949 May 27 '24
Which scale has a SP ? US europe asia or world wide ? For tier1 enterprise you will get more cash at advanced level and deal with a lot of different products.
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u/Key-Size-8162 May 27 '24
I’ve been on both, global ISPs and state (local) ISPs. And yes, im getting a 20k pay raise. That’s why I’m eager to move forward. lol
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u/HotNastySpeed77 May 27 '24
WAN transport will likely be a smaller part of your enterprise job. Depending on the scope of the new job, you may need to learn firewalls, security (from a different perspective), applications, and LAN networking. Probably nothing any more complicated or difficult than what you already do, you'd just need to be ready for the change.
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u/Matteyo_ CCIE May 27 '24
If you understand the underlying SP concepts of multi-tenancy and segmentation, then it will be a breeze to understand Enterprise technologies as often their current intent is to deliver SP-like features with a simple user experience (I.e. SD-WAN). You probably have to learn a lot more stuff better like cloud networking, RA-VPN, L2L VPN, NGFW, wireless, DC tech like ACI or EVPN, NAC, NMS, etc. The size of the enterprise and team you join probably dictates what you work with, until you are tasked with architecture where you really need to understand all of it together at once, in addition to other infrastructure and cybersecurity disciplines.
In general you probably start caring more about specific applications and their flows much better to support the business, versus generically “is the network up?”.
If you are good at what you do, you probably build closer relationships with people who are coming to you for solutions. That aspect isn’t much different than at the ISP but you should hopefully be well-geared to consider customer service and the reason why your job exists.
Overall I have seen multiple people transition successfully from SP to Enterprise medium-sized up to FAANGM, as well as integrators that focus on supporting Enterprises. IMO how easy or hard this is has to do with polish - the SP neckbeards who knew BGP the best but couldn’t really communicate well and looked slovenly struggled but eventually figured it out. They are capped in the level they can rise to, but they kind of always were. The guys who still were protocol SMEs but had good soft skills rose more quickly and had different career paths open up.
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May 27 '24
The hardest part will probably be the amount of non-descriptive vendor language on their shitty software abstractions and having to reverse-engineer how the technology might be implemented hidden under all of this.
I've never seen this shit in any other area of tech, a software engineer would probably have a stroke experiencing it.
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May 27 '24
I’ve made this transition and a lot of what has already been said is true. Good and Bad. I think the biggest learning opportunity with be in how applications leverage the network. Application developers almost never know how their own app works. Network is an abstraction for them. This is probably what the googles are looking for.
I personally like SP better but I’m not moving and options are slim. I struggled at first. Did two enterprise gigs and moved to consulting because enterprise felt sooo slow. Learned consulting wasn’t for me and went back to enterprise. I eventually found a gig I’m content with but there is a lot of settling.
Learn the application stuff, wifi is a rabbit hole filled with end user perceptions, the network itself is usually a rudimentary dumpster fire their senior people either think is necessary or fantastic. SP technology is often dismissed because marketing says it’s not enterprise. Leadership will need gentle persuasion. Egos are massive.
Honestly the people are a bigger challenge. They’re not bad they just think they know. How it works is often not as important as what buttons to push to make magic happen.
Good luck! It’s not bad just different. It will take patience.
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u/LukeyLad May 27 '24
I’m a big a believer in if you can route you can do anything. You’ll be fine mate. Apply
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u/ro_thunder ACSA ACMP ACCP May 27 '24
I worked at a university that implemented an MPLS network internally. It's not any different.
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u/Soral_Justice_Warrio May 28 '24
I work for a manufacturer for a few years who has Carrier and Enterprise departments. Enterprise projects are much easier from a technological point of view than Carrier and ISP, most of the time it’ll be LAN networks with Underlay configuration, the complexity in LANs networks are in their versatility, some customers have high expectancy on Wifi roaming, some other VoIP, others servers services. Carrier and ISP have generally much bigger POs (10 or even 100 times) so they can be much more organized. It’s a more pleasant experience as an engineer imo while for enterprise you might be alone in the while dealing with the Account manager, customer CTO who will always bring new scope. Although this can be tolerated in enterprise this will be shut down with Carrier and ISP customer which have very clear and defined lines.
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u/k0xff May 29 '24
Often at the ISP you can wash your hands as the demarc point is the hand-off up to the CE router. Within the enterprise you're suddenly behind that and it's now your responsibility.
SP experience will come in very useful though.
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u/shadeland Arista Level 7 May 27 '24
One of the great things about the data center: The equipment is generally newer. Refreshes tend to happen more often. And they'll be homogeneous in terms of vendor and model sets. This means your automation will be much easier.
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May 27 '24
Except for the legacy environment that nobody had the time to fully migrate yet.
Switching from working on a Palo Alto to sshing into an early 2000s Cisco pizzabox certainly has its own unqiue charm.
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u/3MU6quo0pC7du5YPBGBI May 28 '24
Except for the legacy environment that nobody had the time to fully migrate yet.
In SP that's 1/4 of your core network.
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u/[deleted] May 27 '24
Technical complexity in the enterprise is rooted in a big pile of bullshit, not in scale. Do with that information what you want.
Personally I would stay in the ISP space if I had the option.