How to be a Network Engineer in only Seven Years!

Well, I was working as a Branch Manager at a computer shop. It was my first IT job, 1998. I had had a restaurant career, guitar salesman career, cash register repairman career, semi-pro guitarist, and a vending machine repairman career. Sometime in 2000, I had ramped up on building and upgrading PCs, and learned what hoops Windows wanted you to jump through to trick it into working.

I started noticing that a lot of our clients were getting DSL, ISDN, and T1 connections, and building ethernet LANs. Wouldn't it be cool if I learned networking and could work on stuff like that? Some of the more senior folks at the computer company had gotten to go to a Microsoft convention of some sort, and brought me back a binder with several demo CDs from Microsoft, including a late beta release of their new network server operating system, Windows 2000 Server. So I decided to tear into it.

I bought a Win2K Server book, put together a second PC, got some ethernet cards, cable, crimpers, rj45 connectors, and a 4-port hub. I started meticulously using the book, installed the server, and going through the capabilities and configuration of all the features. The problem was, I could not get a lot of things to work "in the lab". It was supposed to be simple; you just launched this management application, clicked on this dropdown, put a check in this box, typed something in that text field. If it didn't work, ??? There were no useful logging or debugging messages, no way to see what was actually happening on my new network. Just... Nothing. The abstractions that Microsoft used were so far away from what was actually happening in TCP/IP land were frustrating me. It was like trying to do brain surgery with boxing gloves on. This experience lasted several months.

Our regional manager at the company was making some consulting money running around town setting up network servers for small businesses, by selling them inexpensive PCs, and installing and configuring their network services using a copy of Slackware Linux he had burned to CD. I had been offered copies of Red Hat and Slackware before, and they had been described as "a hacker operating system for your computer, written by hackers, that is really good at networking." I took my new IT career seriously though, and had no interest in "playing around" with a "hacker operating system". It sounded like a neat exercise, I had some experience with early personal computers by Commodore, where everything had to be done by writing some software. I had written a lot of small tools and games, and later done the same in DOS for about 10 years. A hacker system sounded fun, as opposed to Windows, where you had to buy an expensive development package and learn something called C++ to make tools and toys.

Since I was a manager, I was starting to feel like I was part of the Dot Com Boom, an IT Big Shot, hehehe. I started watching TechTV's stock market coverage, and reading things like CNet tech news. I knew that Sun sold serious network servers, big expensive machines, and I learned that they ran UNIX. I had heard of UNIX on and off since becoming a computer hobbyist in 1981 or so, I knew it was Serious System. I did some research and found out that Sun had released their UNIX on CD for PCs! I was very excited. I found out that it was almost 2GB of software to download, which was more than I would be able to get away with on our office network at the time, which was a slow DSL link. I also found out that, while it had been free to download for a time, it was now only available for purchase. The full CD set with a manual was around $100. It wasn't a lot of money, but I didn't think I could convince my wife at the time to let me buy it. I knew that it was a way to grow my skills and advance my career, but I didn't think I could sell it to my ex-wife. Sad, I know. Then one day I saw a story about how companies were maximizing their profits by using PC hardware running Red Hat Linux instead of Sun computers, and that Linux was "UNIX for personal computers". Eureka! So I could learn how to run a real UNIX network server, by using my laboratory PC at home! I started researching Slackware Linux, the flavor my buddy at work was so successful with. I found that there was something called ZipSlack, which was a copy of Slackware that was shrunk down to fit on a Zip disk (like a 100MB floppy for you young'uns). I made a ZipSlack Zip disk and it's companion boot floppy, rubber-banded them together, and took them home with me.

I told my coworker my intention, and he told me about a web site called tldp.org, The Linux Documentation Project. He lent me his copy of Slackware and told me to read the Installation How-To and the DOS-To-Linux How-To at tldp.org. They would explain what was happening when I attempted to install Linux on my machine, and how to do DOS-type things in the new UNIX environment.

I guess this is part one, it is time for me to go leave the office and do stuff. Happy New Year to folks out there, 2008 is coming, hold on to your hats.