From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

Major components of a modern network

From the course: Career Essentials in System Administration by Microsoft and LinkedIn

Major components of a modern network

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- [Instructor] The modern network is all about the devices that are on-premises, and have to be managed by you, the CIS admin. Starting with the Core Layer 3 Switch, this is the backbone of the network. We call it the backbone because the very first cables we used were so thick, they were barely able to bend, and resembled a backbone when handling them. You would then tap into the cable to connect the PCs at that time. Now we use a high-end network switch to connect our devices in a star pattern where every device cable emanates from the switch. You may also have the switch have a duplicate nearby to fail over to just in case of an outage. We may have many layer to switches surrounding the core switch. What's the difference? The Layer 3 Switch can route packets between different networks called subnets. We used to have to have multiple routers for this job, but now we can do it all with one switch. We also need a way to get out to the internet. So we need a firewall, which is our device on the gateway between the local network and the outside world. First, it connects to our internet service provider before moving beyond as needed. We're going to have to have servers that will provide various tasks, such as active directory, file and printing, websites, email and others. Some may be in the cloud instead, but they still need to be configured, and maintained no matter what. Many offices now have a VoIP system either in internal or in the cloud to manage phone calls along with handsets. You may have multiple offices, and would like to connect them using either VPN, MPLS or SD-WAN connections. This provides seamless access between offices. There may even be a separate tunnel to Microsoft Azure, AWS, or some other cloud service to access virtual machines, storage, backup and containers. The list of services continues to grow every month. Finally, you may have Internet of Things devices that are being developed quite rapidly. Appliances and other devices may connect to the vendor to tell them you're low on ink for your printers or your microwave needs servicing. The modern network is constantly changing, and using faster and more secure devices every year. All of them will need IP addresses, updates and security.

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