What Does a NOC Engineers/Technicians Monitor?
A Network Operations Center is designed to assist businesses with keeping their network running at maximum capacity, and they help to ensure that all of the data on the network is safe, secure, and backed up if something happens to the network’s hardware. Although a NOC does a lot of the work alone, it is essential to recognize the NOC technicians and NOC engineers and know what they are held accountable for. After all, without these technical professionals, the NOC would not be half as effective as it is. The four tasks that NOC technicians and NOC engineers are responsible for are detecting threats, resolving any issues that relate to the network as soon as possible, network up-time, and 24/7 monitoring.
ExterNetworks understands the importance of having highly trained engineers and technicians available to make sure that NOC is running properly. After all, a NOC is still a technology device, which means that many things can go wrong that require it also to be monitored and worked on. Here are a few things that NOC’s engineers need to monitor with a typical NOC:
-
Client Interaction
NOC technicians need to be able to interact with the client that is using the NOC to keep them updated on issues and updates about the NOC. Usually, it is the technicians that have the most client interaction with the company, because they are the ones that call and keep the company updated on any issues or that the company contacts when they are experiencing issues on their end.
-
Monitor Automated and End User Incident and Outage Reporting
A NOC has to be monitored to make sure that the company using the NOC gets timely user incident reports and outage reports to make sure that their network is secure, and it is not being mishandled on the company’s end or behalf of the NOC.
-
Ensures Proper DNS, Firewall, Server Configuration, IP Switching, and VPN for Customer Networks
A NOC Services is designed to do a lot of different tasks for a company’s network, but it is essential that it is monitored to make sure that everything is running smoothly. It is a NOC technician and engineer’s job to make sure that the NOC is properly ensuring different aspects of the company’s network to ensure it is working correctly and doing what the company needs it to do. For instance, a lot of companies do not have in-house technicians that fully understand a NOC or their actual network. Therefore, it falls to the technicians and engineers at the NOC to make sure the server configurations and firewalls, among other things, are correct to prevent any breaches into the company’s network.
-
Responding to Alarms/Alerts According to Standard Operating Procedures
Every NOC has Standard Operating Procedures that technicians and engineers have to follow while monitoring it. It is their job to make sure that if any alerts or alarms go off during their shift that they respond to them according to the Standard Operating Procedures put in place for those situations.
-
Managed Control Protocols and LAN/WAN Infrastructure
A company’s LAN/WAN infrastructure is essential, and the technicians at a NOC are designed to help monitor the protocols of this infrastructure to ensure that everything is running correctly and that no one is misusing them on the company’s side that might cause a breach of security to the company’s network.
-
Managing the Trouble-Ticketing System
A company can send troubleshooting tickets to the NOC, and it is the technician’s job to manage these tickets to make sure they are monitored about in a timely fashion. This is how they make sure that the NOC is running properly on the company’s end, as well on theirs.
-
Proactively Monitoring to Ensure 24/7 Operation
A NOC is there to provide a company with security and backup 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on their network. With a NOC, companies have people ensuring that their network is working properly at all times of the day and week for the maximum performance.
-
Implement, Maintain, and Repair Routing
There are many situations where a company needs to add new routes for its data, and it is an essential aspect of a NOC and its technicians to make sure that the current routes are correctly maintained. They also help to repair any routes that are having issues in implementing new routes if the company needs for them.
-
Troubleshooting Related to Any Network Outages
On occasion, a network will experience an outage, and it is the job of the NOC technicians to troubleshoot issues that are related to the outages to help and solve them and hopefully prevent them if possible in the future. Some outages can be avoided, but for the ones that cannot, NOC technicians are experienced in helping get a network that has experienced an outage back to working condition.
-
Create Reports on Uptime, Bandwidth Usage, Server Utilization, and Other Key Metrics
NOC technicians and engineers are expected to provide updated reports to the companies that use the NOC to show different types of information, like server utilization, bandwidth usage, and uptime. This information is used by the company to adjust things on their end accordingly to make the network run better for their needs.
-
IP Surveillance and Any Other Terminal with an IP Address
Everyone online is assigned to an IP address, and therefore, it is crucial to have surveillance on the IP addresses that are accessing a network to prevent any malicious attacks on the network. Technicians and engineers help to inspection the IP addresses and the other terminals that access the network the NOC is watching over.
Overall, it is imperative that a Network Operations Center has competent engineers and technicians to make sure that it runs properly and that the company using the NOC gets all of the information needed to maintain and feel secure about their network. NOC technicians and engineers monitor networks for business year-round, and they make sure that everything is handled in a timely fashion to keep a company’s network working at optimal levels.
