SpikNeT

10 bad habits network administrators should avoid at all costs

6. Failing to keep skills updated

With the constant pace of change in the tech industry, if an IT professional is not constantly learning, their skills are getting stale, according to Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. "Network administrators who become complacent in their jobs without exploring new ideas, methodologies, or technologies run the risk limiting their career opportunities in the future," Tsai said. "Even if hands-on training with emerging tech is not available on the job, IT pros can combat getting left behind by taking training courses, pursuing certifications, and setting up home labs to gain more knowledge and experience."

7. Using command-line interface to troubleshoot your networking

Network administrators need to get away from logging into the command-line interface (CLI) in their network equipment to manually troubleshoot network performance problems, according to Justin Ryburn, a technical marketing manager at Kentik and former network engineer. "Instead, they should build tools that leverage internal and external APIs and databases to provide them with the performance alerts and information they need," Ryburn said.