Igniting a Pathway to Your Architecture Journeys
Network Design & Protocol Mastery
5 projects
What are top skills to be an Network Architect?
TECHNICAL SKILL
Basic Redundant Internet Connection Design
Goal: Design a dual-ISP setup with failover for a small office network.
Key Skills: Default route configuration, failover detection (e.g., track ping), static route metrics.
Challenge: Ensure automatic switch-over to backup ISP when the primary fails.
Level Up: Implement load balancing across ISPs using policy-based routing or dual WAN routers.
TECHNICAL SKILL
Basic Routing Lab: Static vs Dynamic Routing
Goal: Build a lab with 3 routers to compare static routes and a basic dynamic protocol (BGP or OSPF).
Key Skills: Route tables, route propagation, hop-by-hop design.
Challenge: Fail a link and observe convergence behavior.
Level Up: Add route summarization or authentication to dynamic protocol setup
technical skill
Protocol Inspection Lab with Wireshark
Goal: Capture and analyze protocol behavior under different conditions (e.g., congestion, dropped packets).
Key Skills: TCP 3-way handshake, retransmission analysis, QUIC vs TCP/HTTP2 inspection.
Challenge: Identify application slowness due to MTU mismatch or TCP window issues.
Level Up: Document 5 real-world root cause scenarios based on PCAP analysis
TECHNICAL skill
High Availability Network Design with Floating IPs
Goal: Build an HA design where multiple servers or gateways share a floating (virtual) IP for failover.
Key Skills: VRRP (or Azure Standard Load Balancer with HA ports), heartbeat, failover detection.
Challenge: Test failover under interface or node failure conditions.
Level Up: Use cloud-native health probes and routing rules to shift traffic automatically.
TECHNICAL skill
BGP Path Manipulation and Traffic Engineering
Goal: Influence outbound/inbound traffic flows using BGP attributes (e.g., LOCAL_PREF, MED, AS-PATH prepending).
Key Skills: Traffic control, policy application, attribute ordering.
Challenge: Force specific exit paths for different prefixes.
Level Up: Monitor the impact of path changes on performance using traceroute and flow logs.
Creative Tools
Tools to help aspiring architects plan, design, and grow through hands-on learning and real-world projects
Requirements Generator Tool
This uses the 3-Tier Architecture to guide decisions on storage, security, scalability, high availability, and caching—analyzing their impact for optimized solutions. For learning purposes only.
Built using bolt.new
Requirements Generator Tool
This uses the 3-Tier Architecture to guide decisions on storage, security, scalability, high availability, and caching—analyzing their impact for optimized solutions. For learning purposes only.
Built using bolt.new