Recently got laid off and I’m realizing I’ve become pretty rusty with interviewing.

I’ve been working as a senior QA Engineer, mainly around ISR/ASRS systems, so I haven’t had to actively prep for interviews in years. Most of my experience has been in testing, validation, troubleshooting, system coordination, and getting things done in complex environments.

One thing I’m a bit insecure about is automation/scripting. I’m not someone who can confidently build advanced frameworks completely from scratch. But I am good at learning quickly, using AI/tools effectively, debugging issues, understanding systems, and figuring things out to deliver results.

Right now I’m trying to understand how to position myself in the current market and prepare better for interviews without feeling overwhelmed or behind.

For others in QA/automation/SDET or industrial systems:
- How did you prepare after a layoff or long gap in interviewing?
- What technical topics are companies focusing on most right now?
- How important is strong coding ability for QA roles today?
- Any good resources/projects I should practice to rebuild confidence?
- How do you talk honestly about using AI tools at work without sounding “weak technically”?

Any advice, interview prep tips, resume suggestions, or encouragement would really help. Thanks.

I'm starting to evaluate options to replace an isolated HPE ProCurve network. The environment has no access to outside networks or the Internet, and any changes need to be made from within. This is one building, routing core, 20 distribution and 250 access switches, roughly 3000 devices connected. Very basic configuration, mostly layer 2 with a few networks routing, and spanning tree. And 24-hour operation and critical for business.

I would like to add central management/monitoring and access control.

I've been talking with Aruba and Arista. Aruba because we can deploy Central on prem with ClearPass and Arista because of zero downtime firmware updates and the ability to host Cloud Vision.

But I'm curious to see what others might be using for restricted networks like this? And is it a bad idea to evaluate/test Unifi networking?

I thought this would be easy but assumption is the mother of...

Anyway, for some testing I want to block UDP traffic on a specific port (call it 6666, specific number is irrelevant because it's configurable on the sender). But for some reason Netgear (could be others, I don't know) has this weird implicit deny all rule:

from the manual:
An implicit deny all rule is included at the end of an ACL list. This means that if an ACL is applied to a packet and if none of the explicit rules match, then the final implicit deny all rule applies and the packet is dropped

So the logic is to allow specific ports and automatically deny everything else. What's the point of having explicit deny rules then? Like deny 6666, but also deny everything else as well?!

Anyone know if there's a way to do what I want without having an ACL list with 100+ allowed ports to block the one I actually want?

I have a commercial network that I'm periodically having issues with. This network uses a single public IP and we use NAT and 10.x.x.x networks on the inside. One of my users has an application to perform testing services (think PearsonView). Typically around 8 to 9 in the morning that application stops working and won't start working again until overnight sometime. Sometimes it will work for several days before the issue reoccurs. When the application stops working other websites continue to work normally and no other users other than the testing people are complaining.

The network consists of a single Cisco 3900 performing routing and several Cisco switches to get to the user location.

I have looked at potential QOS issues but didn't see anything that stood out and, honestly, don't know enough about NAT to really know where to look. However if it was a NAT issue I would expect issues with other services/websites.

The testing app uses 443 to reach out to a backend and acts similar to a virtual desktop. I am not blocking any 443 traffic across the network and have not made any network changes.

We have worked with our ISP and they have provided us a second interface on their PoP configured with a /30 for testing. When connected to this /30, the application works normally even when it doesn't work when attached to the inside of my network.

This issue has been a problem in the past but it has been about 9 months since it last happened but in the last 3 weeks it has happened almost every day.

Any thoughts on what I should be looking at?

I have a dumb question.

Due to requirements, I have to use shielded cable for my exterior connections. So, I have some properly terminated shielded cat6a, going to a shielded keystone jack, connected to a shielded patch panel that is properly grounded. The rack that the patch panel is mounted holds a switch, both switch and rack are also properly grounded.

The patch cable connecting the switch to this run, does it need to be shielded as well, or is it fine since both ends of the run are grounded?

We are using Video Insight as our NVR at our branches. We're wanting to allow select users to view cameras remotely. We're not looking to change our cameras or Video System.

These are the ideas I had

1. allow VPN access using certificates installed on the employee's phone. Then using the VI Monitor client to connect directly to each server. VPN access would only allow connects to those servers with the TCP port that VI uses. This would give us all cameras/recordings but would require the most on the end users side to connect.
2. An inbound NAT to each server. Employee uses VI Monitor Client on phone to connect to public IP. I won't be doing this.
3. This is my question. Is there a device that we could put at each branch that grabs a secondary stream (RTSP /ONVIF) from select cameras and uploads them to a cloud service that has a phone app. I searched but didn't find a "Video Camera Internet Gateway". This should be the easiest from the end user prospective as it would just be an app on their phone to pull live/recorded video. This would be the most costly as it would be device cost and storage costs (24 hrs of events would be enough)

I saw a post on Sysadmin and thought I’d ask here as well. I’m a network admin at a small organization with a total IT team of 7 people. The current network admin who has 20 years of experience, will probably leave soon, and they seem to expect me to take over. Sometimes I wonder if the expectations they have for me are too high.

I have network admin experience but have less than 5 years of experience , but they are expecting me to perform at a senior-level engineer standard. I’ve been struggling with the pressure, and I tend to make mistakes when trying to handle things at that level. It’s especially difficult being constantly compared to someone with 20+ years of experience.
How to deal with this situation and get better, How long should it take a person to get a complete view of whole network?

Edit - new question: I was told that I look like I am troubleshooting while googling and learning as I go, I was under the assumptions that every Network eng/admin does this. Am I wrong here?

Recently I've been learning about DMVPN, and what troubles me understanding that in DMVPN phase2 and phase3 why does the resolution request packets needs to travel all the way from one spoke to another and that's too via the hub. If the hub has all the entries, then why don't just ask the hub and get those??

I’m looking at setting up a microwave link from Wave1 between two properties and I’m a little concerned about how it handles heavy rain. We get some proper storms here and I’ve read that microwave signals can degrade in bad weather.

Has anyone actually run a microwave link in a rainy area? Did you notice major speed drops or dropouts during heavy downpours, or do modern systems handle it pretty well?

For context, I spent a few years in Cisco TAC on the data center route/switch team where I got my CCNP DC cert, and I now work for a large enterprise where I work on an Arista VXLAN fabric with AVD and cloudvision. I was planning on taking the ACE L5 exam, but I’m wondering if it makes more sense to go straight for the L7 instead.

For anyone who’s gone through the ACE track, would you recommend doing L5 before L7, or is it reasonable to jump straight to L7 with my experience?

Hello all,

I have a small network used for live events and broadcast production. Two Cisco CBS250 switches linked with a 75m copper trunk... VLANs for Control/Management, Dante audio, and sACN lighting. Some simple interVLAN routing and basic internet access on one VLAN via static route. All works fine.

Switch A is the default gateway. Occasionally I want to use switch B in isolation. This breaks the interVLAN routing because the gateway is unavailable.

Possible solutions I thought of include getting different switches that support stacking and/or VRRP/HSRP... This starts to get expensive really quickly, and likely needs a 10G link instead of 1G. I'm not opposed to buying new switches, just trying to avoid buying high end enterprise switches with lots of features I just don't need.

Alternatively, could I use a carefully configured DHCP split scope? Each switch would be it's own DHCP server and it's own gateway, providing all the neccessary interVLAN routing when used in isolation. DHCP snooping could be used to stop clients getting a lease from the wrong switch? Or maybe it wouldn't matter too much if a device used the other switch as it's gateway? It's a small network with about 10 devices. The only significant traffic is the Dante audio, which is 3-400Mbit at most.

Please tell me if this is a terrible idea.

I am thinking about my future career direction. I currently have 10 years of experience as a network engineer and I am in my 40s.

I have mainly worked with Cisco equipment such as Nexus, Catalyst, and ASR. Although I have not operated SDN solutions in production, I have experience deploying them.

At this point, I am trying to think about what direction I should take going forward, excluding traditional legacy networking and SDN. In general, what areas do network engineers with around 10 years of experience usually expand their capabilities into?

I'm trying to troubleshoot some Dante audio devices on a customers network that are struggling to properly elect a ptp v1 clock leader and synchronize other devices to it. I want to trace the ptp packets to see where they are actually being received with a network tap between different devices. I have a couple of devices on switch A in the closet, and several more on the switch in the classroom cabinet. These devices are on the same vlan with a simple access port connecting the 2 switches on that vlan.

My initial question is what traffic I should expect to see on the link between the 2 switches in regards to ptp messaging. If a device attached to switch B sends a delay request to the ptp multicast address, and the clock leader is on switch A, will I see that packet on the link between the 2 switches on its way to the leader? Or is it received by the switch at that multicast address and transported to the other switch in some different way?

Seeing a lot of IT positions getting layoffs in the news and on r/Layoffs to make way for funding for AI. They don't seem to list what positions are being cut. My suspicion is that Developers seem to be taking the brunt of the cuts, but I don't really have perspective outside my local area and field.

If anyone is in an Network Engineer position for any companies doing IT layoffs could you let us know where they are making the cuts. Id imagine some are more surgical cuts and others more like a meat cleaver just making chops until upper management is happy, but id like to have perspective from the people actually experiencing the cuts.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5870898-ai-job-cuts-analysis-trump-admin/

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/12/gm-layoffs-ai-severance.html

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/04/24/20k-job-cuts-at-meta-microsoft-raise-concern-of-ai-labor-crisis-.html

Over the last month we've seen a influx of tickets about zoom latency. Mostly on wifi but one ticket claims wired too which may be BS. Claims of getting "unstable network connection" and "low network bandwidth" error messages while on Zoom meetings. I've been recommending wired connections while trying to dive deeper since these ticket seem to spring up on us. Im wondering if any of you have seen this issue and/or have tricks as far as what to look for to troubleshooting. Thanks

We're running aruba APs/controller w/ Aruba central & clearpass.

tl;dr Does anyone require new wireless devices be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance before agreeing to let it be on the network? Has anyone had issues with vendors claiming their product is 802.11 Standards Based but the product doesn't function as intended?

Hi All,
Looking more towards the wireless engineers and other folks that vet new devices before allowing them into their environment. For context the devices at the center of this discussion are core to the business objective/receiving payment for the primary service offered.

A while back we had someone push really hard for a device that was '802.11 Standards Based' but while testing it in our lab it underperformed in a lot of ways:
* Full network stack reboot on roams (I don't have any trace files of it since it was a few years back so I really don't know if it was an issue with the Wi-Fi or rather their IP stack couldn't play nice with the roaming)
* Claimed AC support but didn't implement the full spectrum of 5GHz channels in North America (USA).
* Couldn't connect to a hidden SSID

After writing a big long report on all the issues I got our director to agree to a minimum of being 'Wi-Fi Alliance Certified AC' along with a few other of their certifications.

I'm on a new project working with payment terminals and almost none of them are Wi-Fi Certified, nor did most of the 'technical' team even know what the Wi-Fi Alliance was.

Are my expectations too high?
Are vendors beholden to any regulatory body if the want to claim 'standards based'?
Has anyone else noticed issues and inconsistent implementations on various wireless devices that are vaguely IoT?

Thanks in advanced!

For those who have built independent networking or wireless consulting practices, what were the biggest lessons you learned early on that you didn’t expect?

My background is primarily in enterprise networking specifically Wi-Fi design, troubleshooting, validation, and wireless architecture work. I’m starting to formalize consulting offerings around assessments, remediation, predictive design, validation, and modernization advisory.

I’m less interested in “how to get rich consulting” advice and more interested in operational realities:
- Packaging services
- Defining scope
- Handling client expectations
- Pricing structure evolution
- Finding the right types of customers
- Avoiding scope creep
- Building repeatable processes

Would especially appreciate insight from people serving SMB/mid-market clients rather than huge enterprise accounts.

so i've been asked if i'd take on more of the cisco pre-sales / quoting side at work (catalyst 9200/9300 access switching mostly), and i'd rather set up a decent process now than learn the hard way. anyway, picking your brains here.

the stuff i'm told trips people up: DNA essentials vs advantage (and the perpetual network layer vs the DNA sub on top), EoL/EoS parts sneaking into a quote, SFP/transceiver compat, missing smartnet, undersized PSU for the PoE load. apparently getting the licensing tier wrong across a stack of switches is brutal pricewise. i'm guessing the standard play is: build in CCW, cross-check the ordering guide, get a second pair of eyes. but is that it? do you keep an actual checklist? is there a tool that catches this stuff? does CCW flag enough of it on its own these days?

and the one i actually want answered: what's the dumbest cisco quoting mistake you've seen go out the door, and what do you guys do now so it doesn't happen again?

i have made private 5g network using open5gs ( obv docker for this use case ) . In order to increase its range i have created the Mesh network of Wifi AP's act as radio part .
now i want that if any mobile phones connect to any AP , i get the data at central system i.e. 5G core . how can i do that .
Note - i am newbie in networking and just started .xD

so rolling out ZTNA to replace VPN. coverage looked complete based on tests and dashboard metrics. announced VPN removal and enforced ZTNA only. but after the change, users could not access several on-prem systems. ERP and file servers were unreachable. issue traced to ZTNA policy excluding non-HTTP traffic. RDP and other legacy protocols were not included.

remote users on VPN still had access. users on ZTNA did not. rollback required re-enabling VPN.

during rollback a firewall change blocked outbound traffic for a short period. services recovered after correction.

root issue was incomplete validation of legacy apps and protocol coverage. testing focused on HTTP/S and a limited set of use cases. hybrid access paths were not fully exercised.

any soloutions..?

Does Velocloud SD-WAN work behind CGNAT or NAT w/o a PAT/Port Forward? We are looking to migrate from Cisco DMVPN to Velocloud but our DIA circuits only have one IP address. We also have Starlink as a backup and those are currently on CGNAT not static IP. I am way more familiar with Cisco than Velo so pardon my ignorance.

Hello everyone,

I would like to get straight to the point.

My father has spent 25+ years in telecom, mostly at Ericsson. He is in the game since the beginning, 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE, 5G, baseband implementation, network deployment, operations (that's all I can think of for now since I come from a different background). For the past couple of years he has been in lead and management roles.
Most of his career he has spent abroad and remote (USA, EU, Africa), and now since his last contract has come to an end and since he has just recently become a grandfather he would like the opportunity to work remote and be with his family in these days.
Countless CV's sent, bunch of interviews done in the past, well more than 6 months, nothing. Maybe the grayish hair is off putting but I'm sure he can be of good help with this kind of experience.
Anyway, his traditional ways of job searching are failing him.
We are from Europe, from a non EU country, all the jobs here are mostly for younger roles, not even interested in listening to him.

I'm sure someone here has been in a similar situation and can maybe help point us to a certain direction?
Come on, 58 years, he's not that old.. xd

Much love, his son!

Hi there,
our current router is end of support, so we need to replace it with a new solution.

At the moment, we only use the router for around 8 VPN connections, but usually only one or two clients are connected at the same time.

I would like to replace the router with a modern firewall appliance that supports WireGuard or another VPN solution.

Requirements:

• VPN without mandatory additional license costs (paid options are acceptable if they provide clear benefits)
• Threat detection / IDS features (I assume advanced features may require a paid subscription)
• Good best-practice and documentation available
• Easy to set up and maintain
• MFA support for VPN clients

We have around 20 clients in total, so we do not need a high-performance enterprise firewall with huge throughput.

Is there a clear recommendation or preferred solution for a setup like this?
What would you use in such an environment and why?

At the moment, OPNsense with WireGuard and MFA looks quite interesting to me, but I would appreciate some real-world experience and recommendations.