Comment · Thu, September 27, 2012
I have wanted to ask this for sometime now so here it is. Reddit what are some high paying, high demand jobs, that are highly obscure?
Original post in this thread
Wodeath · 652 points
Almost no one knows what field I'm going in to it's NDT for anyone who feels like looking it up. It's used for almost everything and extremely important yet almost no one knows about what we do.
P.S If anyone says anything about DWH in most states we can only recommend companies fix or replace parts they don't have to listen to us.
Edit: NDT stands for Non-destructive testing as posted below it is going out and checking for metal defects, corrosion, weld defects on in-service pipelines, aircraft etc. You would also be doing inspection in fab shops it's a huge field with a ton of branches you can go out on. And yes DWH did stand for Deepwater Horizon.
What they were answering
[deleted] · 1 points
We maintain a few Avaya systems. The equipment is nice, but it is also pretty expensive. When the customer makes a change it will probably be to Asterisk though. Mostly because the customer is also operating a land mobile radio systems that covers half the state and Asterisk is so much easier to interface with those types of systems. I don't think Avaya has a way to tie their dispatch centers directly into their trunked radio system so we have to use expensive endpoints manufactured by the company that makes their consoles to link those two networks. With Asterisk, we can just place a cheap router or terminal at the wireless site that runs a custom script that can control their repeaters just like a SIP phone. If we upgraded their trunked LMR equipment to a system that could do those kinds of things natively it would cost them millions. It would cost them hundreds of thousands to extend their dispatch equipment across the network to give them wireline control of all of their repeater systems. With Asterisk, we can literally do it for a few thousand dollars. That's not to say that there may be a way to do what we want with Avaya, but I don't think anyone at my company would even know where to start.
Anyway you look at it though and IP networks are here to stay. Learing how to use them for communications, control, and SCADA appications would be a wise thing for anyone who is go…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
I came from the data side of things. I started out doing IP networking and data security; Extreme switches, Juniper routers, Meru wireless, etc. I know IP networks are here to stay. However, I also know that they were not designed for streams of information like voice. The big problem I see with the industry today is that data companies descended on the voice side of things with no idea how to leverage TDM. Then they started marketing that IP was the future and TDM was old, when in it was mainly due to their inability to produce TDM equipment that forced it's use. TDM was designed specifically for voice, so we do not run into the inherent issues that IP networks have. The problem is people thinking that going all IP is the way to go, when that is not always the case. Digital endpoints can be leveraged for much of what a customer needs, with lower cost and a higher feature set. Then IP networks can be leveraged for other features that make sense. The power that the IP Office has is that I can leverage analog, digital, H.323, and SIP trunks and endpoints where each make the most sense, without being forced to a specific technology due to the fact that the manufacturer does not know how to do TDM. I am a data networking guy at heart, but I spend much of my time explaining when not to use it, just as much as I spend my time explaining how.
Out of curiosity, how is the Asterisk equipment interfacing with the radio networks? Is the system/switch itself interfacing, or are you endpoints talking directly to it? What endpoints are your using?