Top 12 Network Support Specialist Skills to Put on Your Resume
In a rapidly evolving digital world, the role of a Network Support Specialist has never been more critical. To stand out in this competitive field, showcasing a well-rounded set of skills on your resume is essential, encompassing both technical prowess and soft skills that underscore your ability to manage and optimize network systems efficiently.
Network Support Specialist Skills
1. Cisco IOS
Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) is the software running on Cisco routers and many switches, delivering routing, switching, and a host of network services.
Why It's Important
Cisco IOS underpins configuration, control, and troubleshooting on Cisco devices. It’s the toolkit a Network Support Specialist uses to keep packets flowing, policies enforced, and outages short.
How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills
To sharpen your IOS game and make networks calmer, faster, safer:
Stay current: Keep devices on recommended releases (IOS or IOS XE) to gain fixes and features without courting instability.
Standardize configuration: Use templates and configuration management (Ansible, Netmiko, Cisco NSO) to cut drift and speed rollbacks.
See everything: Enable syslog, SNMPv3, NetFlow/Flexible NetFlow, and streaming telemetry for deep visibility.
Harden the edge and core: Apply ACLs, Zone-Based Firewall, IPsec where needed, Control Plane Policing, secure management (SSH, AAA, TACACS+/RADIUS), and disable legacy protocols.
Tune traffic: Use QoS (classification, queuing, shaping, WRED) to prioritize critical apps and steady jittery links.
Automate: Lean on Embedded Event Manager (EEM), TCL, and Python on IOS XE (Guestshell) for repeatable ops and fast reactions.
Keep learning: Pursue certifications like CCNA and CCNP (ENCOR/ENARSI) and lab regularly.
Do this well and your IOS devices behave—predictable, secure, and easy to manage.
How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume
2. Juniper Junos
Juniper Junos is the operating system for Juniper routing, switching, and security platforms, offering a consistent CLI, transactional commits, and robust automation hooks.
Why It's Important
Junos delivers stability and a clean operational model across devices. For support work, that means predictable behavior, quick rollbacks, and powerful tooling to diagnose and fix issues fast.
How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills
Own the CLI: Master set/edit mode, commit/confirm/rollback, and operational commands for crisp troubleshooting.
Understand the guts: Learn RE vs PFE roles, key daemons (like rpd), routing instances, and how processes interact.
Plan upgrades: Use dual-root partitioning, staged rollouts, and snapshots to make upgrades boring (in a good way).
Automate: Leverage commit/ops scripts, Junos PyEZ, event policies, and external tools (Ansible, Salt) to tame repetitive work.
Cert up: JNCIA-Junos first, then JNCIS (ENT/SP/SEC) as your role demands.
Practice: Build labs with Juniper vLabs or run vSRX/vMX on EVE-NG/GNS3 to experiment safely.
Share and learn: Participate in communities and internal knowledge swaps to trade battle stories and fixes.
With repetition, Junos becomes second nature—and outages get shorter.
How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume
3. TCP/IP
TCP/IP is the protocol suite that stitches networks together, ensuring data finds its way and arrives intact.
Why It's Important
Every ticket, every trace, every route flap points back to TCP/IP fundamentals. Understanding the stack is how you separate symptom from cause.
How to Improve TCP/IP Skills
Right-size buffers: Confirm window scaling and autotuning are enabled; align buffers with bandwidth-delay product on high-latency paths.
Mind the MTU: Validate end-to-end MTU, rely on PMTUD, and use jumbo frames only when truly supported across the path.
Choose modern congestion control: CUBIC is standard; evaluate BBR/BBRv2 in a lab before production.
Keep loss low: Enable SACK and tune retransmission/keepalive timers to your environment.
Prioritize wisely: Apply QoS for business-critical flows; classify, mark, and queue consistently.
Watch the wire: Use flow telemetry and packet captures to pinpoint bottlenecks and misbehavior.
Special cases: For long fat networks, consider acceleration proxies only after testing and policy review.
Small adjustments can produce outsized gains.
How to Display TCP/IP Skills on Your Resume
4. MPLS
MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) forwards traffic using labels instead of long lookups, improving performance and enabling VPN services across provider and large enterprise backbones.
Why It's Important
MPLS gives you deterministic paths, scalable VPNs, traffic engineering, and fast failover. For complex networks, that’s control and resilience baked in.
How to Improve MPLS Skills
Engineer the paths: Use Traffic Engineering with RSVP-TE or Segment Routing (SR-MPLS/SRv6) to steer flows where capacity exists.
Guarantee service: Map DSCP to EXP/TC and enforce QoS across the core so SLAs mean something end-to-end.
Plan capacity: Trend growth, watch LSP utilization, and upgrade before queues bite performance.
Build for failure: Deploy FRR (LFA/ti-LFA), multiple disjoint paths, and fast convergence to keep traffic moving during faults.
Observe relentlessly: Monitor LSP health, LDP/IGP adjacency, RSVP state, and end-to-end latency/jitter.
Secure the core: Isolate infrastructure, filter control-plane traffic, authenticate label protocols, and keep routing tight.
Evolve services: Use L3VPN, L2VPN, or EVPN based on need; migrate toward segment routing where it simplifies operations.
Well-run MPLS feels invisible. That’s the point.
How to Display MPLS Skills on Your Resume
5. BGP
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) exchanges reachability between autonomous systems and steers traffic on the internet and large private networks.
Why It's Important
BGP stability equals uptime. Done right, it keeps routes sane, policies clear, and traffic where you want it—not where you don’t.
How to Improve BGP Skills
Tighten policy: Filter prefixes, set sensible local-pref and MEDs, and keep route-maps readable. Only announce what you must.
Harden sessions: Enforce max-prefix limits, use MD5/TCP-AO where supported, enable GTSM (TTL security), and validate origins with RPKI.
Use communities: Tag routes for traffic engineering and partner signaling; document your community scheme.
Design for scale: Use route reflectors cleanly, consider add-path and diverse peering, and avoid full-table churn on weak devices.
Converge smoothly: Enable graceful restart/LLGR and tune dampening carefully to avoid flap storms.
Watch the control plane: Track session health, route leaks, hijacks, and unexpected path changes with alerting.
Keep learning: Follow operational best practices from the community and test changes in a lab first.
BGP rewards precision. Sloppiness gets noticed—usually by your pager.
How to Display BGP Skills on Your Resume
6. OSPF
OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) is a link-state IGP used to find efficient paths within an autonomous system. It scales well and converges quickly when designed with care.
Why It's Important
OSPF keeps internal routes fresh and accurate. When topology shifts, OSPF adapts, moving packets along the best new path.
How to Improve OSPF Skills
Design hierarchically: Keep a clean backbone (area 0) and limit area size to constrain LSDB growth.
Use area types wisely: Stub, totally stubby, and NSSA areas can reduce churn and noise.
Tune timers carefully: Adjust hello and dead intervals only after testing; too aggressive can backfire.
Shape path cost: Modify interface costs to nudge traffic onto preferred links.
Go passive where needed: Mark non-routing interfaces passive to cut unnecessary adjacencies and chatter.
Summarize: Aggregate at ABRs/ASBRs to shrink routing tables and stabilize reconvergence.
Authenticate: Use OSPFv2 authentication (pref. cryptographic) and OSPFv3 IPsec for integrity.
Monitor health: Watch adjacency states, SPF runs, LSDB size, and interface errors.
A tidy OSPF design is quiet—until it needs to roar.
How to Display OSPF Skills on Your Resume
7. Wireshark
Wireshark captures and dissects packets so you can see what’s really happening on the wire or over the air.
Why It's Important
When logs are vague and dashboards misleading, packet truth wins. Wireshark exposes latency, loss, resets, misconfigurations—fast.
How to Improve Wireshark Skills
Filter like a pro: Master display and capture filters to zero in on the signal, not the noise.
Build profiles: Custom columns, coloring rules, and layouts speed investigations.
Use the experts: Lean on Expert Info, flow graphs, I/O graphs, and Conversations/Endpoints.
Decrypt when allowed: With proper keys and approvals, analyze TLS handshakes and app flows.
Practice on pcaps: Re-create incidents, label findings, and compare known-good traces.
Automate: Use tshark for batch parsing and repeatable checks.
Stay current: New protocol dissectors and features arrive often—keep it updated.
Packets don’t lie. Learn to listen.
How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume
8. IPv6
IPv6 expands the address space to 128 bits and modernizes IP with better auto-configuration, cleaner multicast, and improved extensibility.
Why It's Important
IPv4 exhaustion is real. IPv6 enables growth, simplifies addressing at scale, and removes painful NAT contortions in many designs.
How to Improve IPv6 Skills
Plan addresses: Allocate hierarchical blocks (for example, per site or function), document clearly, and prefer predictable schemas.
Choose host config: Decide SLAAC, DHCPv6, or both; be consistent and align DNS updates accordingly.
Harden first hop: Enable RA Guard, DHCPv6 Guard, source-guard features, and IPv6 ACLs.
Operate dual-stack: Run IPv4 and IPv6 together while you gain experience; adopt v6-only segments with NAT64/DNS64 where sensible.
Parity with IPv4: Mirror QoS, routing policies, and monitoring for IPv6 so behavior is predictable.
Train and test: Ensure tools and people are IPv6-capable; watch ND tables, neighbor cache, and v6-specific counters.
Verify vendor support: Confirm features and performance on routers, switches, firewalls, and apps.
Roll it out carefully; reap the simplicity later.
How to Display IPv6 Skills on Your Resume
9. SNMP
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) gathers metrics and events from network gear for monitoring and control.
Why It's Important
It’s the backbone of many NMS platforms. With good models and alerts, SNMP turns silent failures into actionable tickets.
How to Improve SNMP Skills
Prefer SNMPv3: Use authentication and encryption; drop v1/v2c where possible.
Balance polling: Tune intervals and timeouts to avoid device strain while keeping data fresh.
Think traps and informs: Send critical events immediately, and tune thresholds to dodge alert storms.
Use the right MIBs: Keep device MIB support aligned with software versions; poll meaningful OIDs, not everything.
Secure access: Restrict SNMP to a management VRF/VLAN, enforce ACLs, and rate-limit.
Segment management: Isolate management traffic and encrypt where feasible.
Look ahead: Adopt streaming telemetry (gNMI/NETCONF) for high-scale, high-frequency data while retaining SNMP for legacy.
Keep skills sharp: Refresh knowledge and document standards for consistent deployments.
Less noise, more signal. That’s the goal.
How to Display SNMP Skills on Your Resume
10. VPN
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) creates an encrypted tunnel over untrusted networks, enabling secure remote and site-to-site connectivity.
Why It's Important
It’s how remote workers connect safely and how branches tie into headquarters without exposing traffic to prying eyes.
How to Improve VPN Skills
Pick the right protocol: Use IPsec with IKEv2 for site-to-site, SSL/TLS or IKEv2 for remote access, and consider WireGuard for lean clients where appropriate.
Place gateways smartly: Locate concentrators near users and apps to reduce latency.
Tune split tunneling: Decide app-based or destination-based split tunneling vs. full-tunnel based on security policy and performance.
Harden crypto: Strong suites, PFS, short-lived keys, and strict certificate hygiene. Add MFA for users.
Keep software fresh: Patch clients and gateways routinely; retire weak ciphers and protocols.
Monitor: Track tunnel counts, throughput, latency, and failure rates; alert on anomalies.
Enforce posture: Use device health checks, DNS policies, and always-on settings for managed endpoints.
Fast, secure, predictable tunnels—no surprises.
How to Display VPN Skills on Your Resume
11. Firewall
A firewall inspects and enforces policy on traffic between trust zones, blocking the bad and permitting the intended.
Why It's Important
It’s the gate and the guardrail. Done right, it limits blast radius and stops common threats before they start.
How to Improve Firewall Skills
Patch fast: Keep firmware and signatures updated; close known holes early.
Least privilege: Default deny, allow only what’s required, and recertify rules regularly. Kill zombies.
Turn on advanced controls: IPS/IDS, DNS filtering, application-ID, TLS inspection where policy allows, and anti-malware sandboxing.
Segment: Use VLANs, VRFs, and policy-based microsegmentation to restrict lateral movement.
Log with intent: Centralize logs to a SIEM, tune noisy events, and alert on the unusual.
Test defenses: Pen-test and validate rule efficacy; refine based on findings.
Secure management: SSH/HTTPS only, RBAC with MFA, management on a dedicated network, and strict source IPs.
High availability: Deploy active/standby or active/active, sync state where possible, and rehearse failover.
Clarity and cleanliness in rulesets pay off every single day.
How to Display Firewall Skills on Your Resume
12. DNS/DHCP
DNS (Domain Name System) translates names (for example, www.example.com) into IP addresses. DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) automatically assigns IP and related settings to clients. Together they make networks usable.
Why It's Important
Without DNS and DHCP, users guess IPs and devices collide. With them, access is simple and address management stays orderly.
How to Improve DNS/DHCP Skills
Patch routinely: Keep DNS and DHCP servers updated and hardened.
Redundancy first: Anycast and multiple recursive/resolver nodes for DNS; DHCP failover pairs with balanced scopes.
Monitor and log: Track query rates, NXDOMAIN spikes, lease exhaustion, and anomalies.
Secure DNS: Validate and, where appropriate, sign zones with DNSSEC; rate-limit responses and use RPZ to block known-bad domains.
Protect updates: Use TSIG for dynamic DNS; enable DHCP snooping and IP source guard on switches.
Integrate IPAM: Tie DHCP/DNS into IPAM for clean records, audit trails, and automated assignments.
Design views: Use split-horizon DNS for internal vs. external responses; tune TTLs thoughtfully.
IaC for configs: Keep server configs in version control and deploy via automation for consistency.
Stable name resolution and address management make everything else easier.
How to Display DNS/DHCP Skills on Your Resume
