Understanding the Network Architect’s Role

Today, the network infrastructure (or fabric as I like to call it) is vast compared to how it was just 23 years ago, and even more sophisticated than when networks were around in the early 1970s. The infrastructure has evolved, and so has the people required to take care of and maintain them. But even in doing so, the role and responsibility have also evolved to be more. Before, the responsibility could have seen one or two people doing everything, such as racking and stacking, cabling, router configurations (as there were no switches at the time), installing hubs, and storage consolidation. Now, there are many roles in an organization that specialize in these varied tasks.

So much emphasis is put on the various roles within an organization when it comes to the IT business unit versus the IT department. Let’s not confuse the two – the IT department is your desktop/laptop support team who can grant you access to various services, while your IT business unit is responsible for making sure that your various lines of business are functional and sustainable to generate revenue for your organization. The latter encompasses the network architect.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• What is a network architect?
• The function of a network architect
• Understanding network architecture

Let’s get started!