10 top networking guides for sysadmin success

Everything is interconnected. Sysadmins need to understand how systems talk to each other, how to make them perform better, how to prevent failures by adding redundancy, and what to do when something breaks.

[ Cheat sheet: Get a list of Linux utilities and commands for managing servers and networks. ]

Networking is a broad and complex topic, and having a solid foundation for how it works is a must. Year after year, Enable Sysadmin's authors share a wide range of knowledge about networking to help you build your foundation.

You are free to make your own choices, but ultimately your choices make you. —C.D. Sutherland

Learning rarely follows a linear path; instead, you pick up knowledge as you try to solve problems, or your curiosity leads you. Jump around the following articles to learn more while having fun and becoming better prepared to manage your organization's network.

Top 10 networking articles of 2022

• How to troubleshoot network connectivity problems by Marc Skinner: There are no silver bullets here, but rather a good start on tackling connectivity problems. Beginning is always the hardest part.
• Automate network testing with this open source Linux tool by Jose Vincente Nunez: If you want to uncover a performance issue or just know your network better, iperf may be the only tool you need for the task.
• How to build redundancy into your network (and what to avoid)  by D. Greg Scott: Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and decide where to put your efforts. This article recognizes that network redundancy is a complex task but not impossible to achieve.
• How we use eBPF to observe OpenShift network metrics by Marcio Macias: Network flow metrics are not a new concept but a tool that helps monitor your OpenShift cluster is. The impact of having readily available data to establish a baseline or to detect a performance problem is huge.
• Network automation with Ansible filters by Roberto Nozaki: Is there anything you cannot automate and customize with Jinja templating and Ansible? Read this one to find out. (Hint: It is also fun to do.)
• Monitor your network switches with this open source tool by Timo Scheibe: Checkmk is an open source tool that allows you to monitor your switches' health. This article also gives you a few strategies on what to watch for and how.
• How to configure chrony as an NTP client or server in Linux by Morgan Peterman: Having synchronized time for a group of systems is mandatory for compliance and easing troubleshooting. Imagine trying to correlate events with systems with different times. Learn how to use chrony to keep your time in sync by reading this article.
• How to connect to a remote computer using VNC in Linux by Seth Kenlon: Remote working is now the norm for IT professionals, and using a VNC is one of the many ways to connect to a remote system. Learn how to do it in this piece.
• Configure Apache HAProxy to balance web server traffic by Shiwani Biradar: At some point, if you are running an HTTP network service, you will need to scale up because a single server will become a bottleneck as your number of clients grows. Also, load balancing will offer you redundancy if one of your nodes goes down. Check this article to see how to balance traffic.
• Traceroute vs. tracepath: What's the difference? by Damon Garn: Traceroute and tracepoint are very similar, but not all tools are created the same. For example, do you know which one requires root for some operations? This article tells you all you need to know.

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Wrapping up

I hope you find all these articles as useful as I did. And if you have a networking survival tip, consider sharing it by writing for Enable Sysadmin. Join our community and continue the tradition of knowledge sharing that makes the Linux ecosystem great.