Top 12 Network Support Technician Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's digitally-driven world, the role of a network support technician is pivotal to keep infrastructure humming through outages, upgrades, and the odd mystery packet storm. To stand out, show a sharp mix of hands-on technical depth, crisp troubleshooting, and human-friendly communication. Put the story of how you make networks fast, secure, and stable right up front.

Network Support Technician Skills

1. Cisco IOS
2. Juniper Junos
3. TCP/IP
4. VLAN Configuration
5. Wireshark
6. BGP Routing
7. OSPF Protocol
8. MPLS Networks
9. IPv6 Implementation
10. SNMP Monitoring
11. Firewall Management
12. VPN Setup

1. Cisco IOS

Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) powers most Cisco routers and switches. It’s the backbone software for routing, switching, security features, and the everyday commands you use to configure, manage, and troubleshoot Cisco gear.

Why It's Important

It’s the control plane for Cisco devices. Your ability to shape traffic, lock down access, and solve issues at speed depends on knowing IOS inside-out.

How to Improve Cisco IOS Skills

Pragmatic steps that pay off quickly:

1. Update IOS: Keep images current to gain fixes and harden against known vulnerabilities.

2. Harden Access: Prefer SSH over Telnet, enforce strong AAA, use role-based CLI views, disable unused services, and apply tight ACLs.

3. Instrument Logging: Send logs to a central syslog/SIEM, use buffered logging locally, and set meaningful timestamps and severities.

4. Prioritize Traffic: Apply QoS where it matters. Classify, mark, and queue so real-time and business-critical flows don’t starve.

5. Back Up Configs: Automate configuration backups and versioning. Test restore procedures, not just backups.

6. Segment the LAN: Use VLANs and private VLANs to isolate, contain broadcast noise, and reinforce security.

7. Enable L2 Protections: IP Source Guard, DHCP Snooping, and Dynamic ARP Inspection blunt common L2 attacks.

8. Monitor Performance: Track interface errors, drops, CPU, memory, and flow data with SNMP/NetFlow/sFlow. Alert on thresholds.

Small, steady improvements here translate into fewer surprises and faster mean time to resolution.

How to Display Cisco IOS Skills on Your Resume

2. Juniper Junos

Junos is the unified operating system across Juniper routers, switches, and security platforms. One CLI philosophy, one configuration style, powerful commit/rollback, and clean separation of control and forwarding.

Why It's Important

Consistency. You learn it once, you run it everywhere. That makes changes safer and troubleshooting calmer.

How to Improve Juniper Junos Skills

1. Nail the Fundamentals: Master the CLI, hierarchy, candidate config, commit confirmed, and rollback. Spend time in the lab.

2. Use the Learning Portal: Leverage Juniper’s Learning Portal and Open Learning courses for structured paths.

3. Lab with vMX/vQFX: Build topologies in EVE-NG or GNS3. Break things on purpose. Fix them.

4. Certify: JNCIA-Junos first, then specialize (JNCIS/JNCIP) for routing, switching, or security.

5. Community and Docs: The Juniper community, Day One guides, and official docs are gold for real-world patterns.

6. Automate: Learn PyEZ, Ansible, Jinja2, and commit scripts. Use RPCs and JSON/XML to build reliable workflows.

Focus on repeatable change and clean rollbacks; you’ll avoid late-night rollovers.

How to Display Juniper Junos Skills on Your Resume

3. TCP/IP

TCP/IP is the protocol suite that moves bytes reliably (TCP) and routes them everywhere (IP). Everything else rides on top of it.

Why It's Important

It’s the common language across devices and vendors. Understand the handshake, the timers, the flags, and you can reason about almost any network problem.

How to Improve TCP/IP Skills

1. Right-Size TCP: Tune receive windows where needed, consider BBR on Linux for lossy long fat networks, and mind MSS/MTU to avoid painful fragmentation.

2. Offload Smartly: Enable NIC offloads (checksum, segmentation) where they help; disable selectively when they cause odd edge cases.

3. QoS Where It Counts: Mark and queue critical flows. Protect low-latency traffic from bulk transfers.

4. Measure, Then Fix: Use Wireshark and flow data to spot retransmits, out-of-order, bufferbloat, or asymmetric paths.

5. Keep Gear Current: Modern firmware and line cards handle larger tables, faster paths, and better congestion control.

6. Adopt IPv6: Larger address space, improved neighbor discovery, and cleaner routing. Dual-stack until you’re ready to cut over.

7. Secure the Edges: Prune exposed services, use VPNs for untrusted networks, and limit blast radius with ACLs and sane defaults.

How to Display TCP/IP Skills on Your Resume

4. VLAN Configuration

VLANs carve one physical network into many logical ones. Smaller broadcast domains, cleaner segmentation, lanes for voice, management, and user traffic without extra cabling.

Why It's Important

Security through isolation, performance through containment, and tidy operational boundaries. VLANs make big networks manageable.

How to Improve VLAN Configuration Skills

1. Plan First: Document VLAN IDs, names, IP subnets, and purposes. Avoid ad-hoc sprawl.

2. Standardize: Consistent naming and ID ranges cut mistakes during handoffs and audits.

3. Trunks and Pruning: Tag only what you must across trunks. Prune aggressively to limit L2 blast radius.

4. Secure the Edge: Disable unused ports, enable port security, guard against rogue DHCP and ARP poisoning with DHCP Snooping and DAI.

5. Voice/Data Design: Use dedicated voice VLANs and QoS marking for stable call quality.

6. Control Inter-VLAN: Filter with ACLs or firewalls at the routing boundary; default deny, allow by need.

7. Audit Often: Remove stale VLANs, update diagrams, and verify that trunks carry only necessary tags.

8. Use Tools: Employ your NMS to visualize VLAN membership and spot mis-tags quickly.

How to Display VLAN Configuration Skills on Your Resume

5. Wireshark

Wireshark captures packets and reveals what’s really happening on the wire. Conversations, flags, retransmits, strange options—visible and traceable.

Why It's Important

You can guess or you can see. With captures, root cause is measurable and defensible, not a hunch.

How to Improve Wireshark Skills

1. Protocol Fluency: Learn the headers you troubleshoot most. DNS, TLS, HTTP/2, SIP, SMB, BGP—patterns jump out once you know them.

2. Display and Capture Filters: Filter ruthlessly. Isolate hosts, ports, conversations, or error conditions to cut the noise.

3. Profiles: Build task-focused profiles with custom columns, colors, and time display for different environments.

4. Command Line: Use TShark for automation, scheduled captures, and parsing at scale.

5. Decrypt When Permitted: Use keys in lab settings to inspect encrypted traffic flows and validate handshake behavior.

6. Practice with PCAPs: Work through sample captures and real incident data (scrubbed). Speed comes from reps.

7. Stay Current: New protocols, extensions, and dissectors land often. Update and read the release notes.

How to Display Wireshark Skills on Your Resume

6. BGP Routing

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) stitches together autonomous systems. It’s policy-first routing: you decide what to announce, accept, prefer, and avoid.

Why It's Important

Internet reachability, multi-homing, clever traffic engineering, and resilient WANs all hinge on BGP doing what you intend.

How to Improve BGP Routing Skills

1. Design for Failure: Dual providers, diverse paths, graceful restart, and sensible hold timers. Protect your edges.

2. Filter Everything: Use prefix lists, route-maps, and communities to control advertisements and acceptance. Enforce max-prefix to stop leaks.

3. Engineer Paths: AS-path prepending, local preference, MED, and communities shape inbound and outbound flows.

4. Validate at the Source: Adopt RPKI route origin validation and IRR-based filtering. Reduce the blast radius of mis-announcements.

5. Monitor Continuously: Track session flaps, path changes, and prefix reachability. Keep an eye on convergence after maintenance.

6. Keep Policies Simple: Fewer, clearer policies beat sprawling, conflicting knobs. Document intent right in the config comments.

How to Display BGP Routing Skills on Your Resume

7. OSPF Protocol

OSPF finds shortest paths inside your domain using link-state math. Areas, LSAs, costs—efficient and fast when designed well.

Why It's Important

It scales large internal networks, converges quickly, and gives you fine control over what routes go where.

How to Improve OSPF Protocol Skills

1. Design with Areas: Contain SPF churn by splitting into areas. Keep area 0 healthy and simple.

2. Summarize at Borders: Summarize routes on ABRs to shrink tables and reduce recalculations.

3. Tune the Timers: Adjust hello/dead intervals by link type. Consider BFD for sub-second detection on critical links.

4. Authenticate: Use MD5 or HMAC-SHA on OSPFv2 where supported; for OSPFv3, use IPsec or the authentication trailer. Avoid plain-text auth.

5. Control Flooding: Use stub, totally stubby, or NSSA where appropriate to limit external LSAs.

6. Set Costs Intentionally: Shape path selection with interface costs rather than hoping bandwidth heuristics align with reality.

7. Harden and Simplify: Make access interfaces passive, limit neighbors deliberately, and keep DR/BDR elections predictable on multi-access segments.

8. Watch the Health: Track neighbor states, LSA counts, SPF events, and CPU. Baseline first, alert on drift.

How to Display OSPF Protocol Skills on Your Resume

8. MPLS Networks

MPLS forwards by labels, not lengthy lookups. It speeds transit, enables traffic engineering, and underpins many carrier and enterprise WAN designs.

Why It's Important

Predictable performance, VPN separation at scale, and the ability to steer traffic along engineered paths. Your apps notice the difference.

How to Improve MPLS Networks Skills

1. Engineer the Core: Use MPLS TE or SR-MPLS where available to balance load and meet latency targets.

2. QoS End-to-End: Map markings consistently, reserve bandwidth where required, and verify behavior hop-by-hop.

3. Fail Fast: Enable Fast Reroute and validate backup paths. Measure convergence, don’t assume it.

4. Harden Control Planes: Protect LDP/RSVP with authentication where supported, apply CoPP/CPPr, and limit who can talk to your routers.

5. Observe the LSPs: Monitor label distributions, LSP state, and path changes. Test with synthetic probes regularly.

6. Secure the Edge: For L3VPNs over untrusted underlays, pair with IPsec to encrypt sensitive traffic.

How to Display MPLS Networks Skills on Your Resume

9. IPv6 Implementation

IPv6 brings a vast address space, new neighbor discovery, and updated ways to number and secure networks. Rollout demands planning, not guesswork.

Why It's Important

IPv4 exhaustion is fact, not forecast. Modern services, IoT scale, and cleaner routing depend on IPv6 done right.

How to Improve IPv6 Implementation Skills

1. Dual-Stack First: Run IPv4 and IPv6 together to validate apps, monitoring, and security before sunsetting legacy dependencies.

2. Address Planning: Allocate by function and site, leave room to grow, and use nibble boundaries for tidy DNS.

3. Upgrade the Stack: Ensure routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and agents fully support IPv6 features and counters.

4. Secure the First Hop: Enable RA Guard, DHCPv6 Guard, ND inspection, and IPv6 ACLs. Don’t mirror IPv4 policies blindly.

5. Modern DNS: Provide AAAA records, validate resolver behavior, and watch EDNS0/TCP fallback paths.

6. Migrate Thoughtfully: Use NAT64/DNS64 or proxies where needed. Avoid partial rollouts that strand users.

7. Train and Test: Teach the team the differences. Capture traffic, trace routes, and monitor parity with IPv4.

How to Display IPv6 Implementation Skills on Your Resume

10. SNMP Monitoring

SNMP lets you poll devices for health and receive traps when something breaks. It’s the classic way to keep score on ports, CPUs, temperatures, and more.

Why It's Important

Without visibility, you’re guessing. With metrics and alerts, you act before users notice.

How to Improve SNMP Monitoring Skills

1. Use SNMPv3: Authentication and encryption matter. Phase out v1/v2c except in isolated, legacy corners.

2. Tune the Cadence: Balance polling intervals and timeouts to avoid noise and missed events.

3. Traps and Informs: Configure event-driven alerts for link flaps, PSU failures, and temperature spikes. Route them to your SIEM.

4. Manage MIBs: Keep vendor MIBs updated so OIDs resolve cleanly and dashboards stay accurate.

5. Baseline, Then Alert: Learn normal per-device. Alert on deltas, not just static thresholds.

6. Segment Access: Limit who can query devices, and where from. Log queries for audit.

7. Look Ahead: Explore streaming telemetry and model-driven ops (NETCONF/RESTCONF/YANG) for higher-fidelity data.

How to Display SNMP Monitoring Skills on Your Resume

11. Firewall Management

Firewalls shape and inspect traffic at the borders and between segments. Good policy keeps bad traffic out and sensitive data in.

Why It's Important

They’re your gatekeepers. Misconfigurations open doors. Careful management closes them without blocking business.

How to Improve Firewall Management Skills

1. Patch Relentlessly: Keep software and signatures current. Close known holes before they find you.

2. Curate the Rules: Remove stale entries, collapse duplicates, and document intent. Institute rule recertification with owners.

3. Harden Defaults: Deny by default, allow by necessity. Use zones, objects, and least privilege.

4. Segment the Network: Break flat networks. Enforce security policies between tiers and tenants.

5. Inspect and Log: Turn on relevant inspection (app, TLS, IPS) where privacy and policy allow. Stream logs to a SIEM and review them.

6. Automate Safely: Use policy-as-code and change windows with approvals. Pre-checks and post-change validation reduce risk.

7. Back Up and Test: Version configs and test restores. Have a rollback plan before major changes.

8. Drill Incidents: Practice incident response. Know how to isolate segments fast without burning the whole network down.

How to Display Firewall Management Skills on Your Resume

12. VPN Setup

VPNs create encrypted tunnels across untrusted networks so remote users and sites can talk like they’re local—securely.

Why It's Important

Remote work, branch connectivity, and third-party access all depend on strong, stable, private tunnels.

How to Improve VPN Setup Skills

1. Pick the Right Stack: IPsec/IKEv2 for site-to-site, SSL/TLS VPN for remote access, and WireGuard or OpenVPN where simplicity or portability shines.

2. Harden the Config: Use modern ciphers, perfect forward secrecy, and certificate-based auth. Short-lived credentials via SSO/MFA raise the bar.

3. Segment Access: Map users to groups and groups to least-privilege policies. No flat tunnels.

4. Enforce MFA: Pair with a second factor everywhere possible.

5. Split Tunneling On Purpose: Enable only when required, and restrict destinations to reduce risk and bandwidth load.

6. Secure the Server: Place behind a firewall, rate-limit auth, and monitor for brute-force attempts. pfSense and similar platforms work well for many deployments.

7. Stability and QoS: Prioritize VPN traffic across WAN links. Monitor latency, jitter, and packet loss.

8. Client Hygiene: Enable kill switches and DNS leak protection, push secure DNS, and validate posture before granting access.

9. Test and Observe: Validate throughput with and without encryption, check failover paths, and log everything meaningful.

10. Document Everything: Topology, crypto suites, profiles, and emergency procedures. Future-you will thank present-you.

How to Display VPN Setup Skills on Your Resume