Both companies and administrations need to organize themselves in some way regarding their network infrastructures, especially when they need to transfer large amounts of data, something very common nowadays. Like any system, you need a control group that takes care of keeping everything in order and this is where the NOC figure comes in, but what exactly is it?
As we say, all medium-sized companies have a NOC and the one that does not centralizes its networks in a third party that is in charge of managing them, even if the owner of the company does not even know of its existence.
NOC, a key point in the national infrastructure of any country
A NOC (Network Operations Center) is a network operations center, also known by another name within the system administrators of our country as Network Control Center (CCR) .
As its name suggests, it is a site specialized in the control of communication networks, whether they are the Internet, television or satellites, and in general any other type of local or national network.
Obviously there is not just one CCR or NOC, but many strategically distributed throughout the width and length of each country. Some are state-owned, others are private (most), and in almost all areas they are managed by the country’s ISPs (less intelligence and investigative systems).
Its function is to monitor these networks and deal with breakdowns that may arise for any reason, diverting traffic loads as appropriate. This includes failures in the power grid, transport and almost any performance parameter that has to do with the maintenance of these networks.
Different levels of professionals and problems
This class of centers has various types of engineers and technicians who are generally classified in levels. Those with the lowest rank have lower numbers, while the more advanced and veteran have higher levels on the scale.
This hierarchy allows for more efficient staff movement based on the severity of the problem. A power outage due to a power line problem is not the same as a direct NOC attack. Each breakdown is escalated in the shortest possible time to the precise professional to correct and repair the problems, move to the exact point or instead, escalate the problem to a superior if such procedures are not possible.
In any case, and being key positions in a country, these people have a high availability to work , since the staff is quite tight and the control of the systems can involve from a few servers to millions of them.
Special mention to those NOC that are in charge of the surveillance and intelligence tasks of the secret services of a country, which are active 24/7/365 in different shifts to safeguard the integrity of the servers of that country.
In fact, in many Hollywood movies we have all seen NOC, at least like the typical room with PCs and giant screens full of information where everyone runs from one side to the other when there is a really serious problem and supposedly nobody knows what do until the hero arrives.
In reality, this is not the case, but everything is perfectly squared with a series of protocols so that calm is always kept and reaction times are minimal.