Time Machine

Network support specialists

Name: Computer Network Support Specialists: employment and wages since 1990
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Official title Computer Network Support Specialists (SOC 15-1231)

Also called Network technician, LAN support specialist, WAN support technician, Network operations technician, IT network support

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 146,190 US network support specialists, with median pay of $76,220 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was 176,200, in May 2021. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 75,000 from 1990, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for network support specialists: Software-defined networking + cloud networking, 2010 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 1.2% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

53.8% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Network support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1231

Chicago

Future History. "Network support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1231.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_15_1231, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Network support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1231}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

2000now

2026

Known then as LAN Administrator / Network Technician (early enterprise LAN era)

Known then as Network Support Specialist / CNE (Certified Novell Engineer era)

Known then as Network Support Specialist / Network Operations Technician (post-SOC-2000)

Known then as Network Support Specialist / NOC Analyst (cloud transition era)

Known then as Computer Network Support Specialist (BLS SOC 15-1231, AIOps era)

Known today as Computer Network Support Specialist (BLS SOC 15-1231, AIOps era)

Projected to still be called Computer Network Support Specialist (BLS SOC 15-1231, AIOps era)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

146K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$76,220

Est.

≈ $74,266 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1983

Novell releases NetWare in 1983, giving enterprise IT departments their first widely adopted network operating system for connecting IBM-compatible PCs. The product requires a dedicated technician to configure the file server, manage the bindery directory, and troubleshoot the coaxial Ethernet cabling. This is the moment the computer network support specialist emerges as a recognizable job role rather than an incidental duty of whoever in the office knows the most about computers.

Beat · 1992

By 1992, Ethernet is the de facto LAN standard in US enterprises, having displaced Token Ring, ARCnet, and AppleTalk in most new installations. The twisted-pair 10BASE-T Ethernet standard (IEEE 802.3i, 1990) had dramatically reduced installation complexity compared to coaxial cable, making it practical for building-wide deployments. The consequence is a surge in the number of networks requiring ongoing support: structured cabling, patch panels, managed hubs, and the first generation of managed switches are all entering enterprise networks at scale.

Beat · 1993

Cisco launches the CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) in 1993 -- the first specialist certification for internet-protocol routing. The CCIE is deliberately difficult: a two-day lab exam that tests hands-on IOS configuration under time pressure. It creates the top of a credential hierarchy that eventually includes the CCNA (entry-level) and CCNP (professional), establishing network support as a profession with a formal training-to-certification pipeline comparable to accounting or engineering.

Beat · 1995

April 1995: the NSFnet backbone is decommissioned and the internet transitions fully to commercial operators (Sprint, MCI, AT&T). Every enterprise IT department that had previously treated the internet as an academic curiosity now faces a practical requirement: connecting the corporate LAN to the public internet securely. Firewalls, proxy servers, DNS configuration, and internet gateway management become core network support tasks almost overnight. The demand for Cisco-trained network support specialists surges.

Beat · 2001

The dot-com collapse from 2001-2003 eliminates a significant share of network support positions. Cisco Systems' revenue falls from $18.9 billion (2000) to $8.5 billion (2003) as enterprise IT spending is cut sharply and the startup-driven hiring boom reverses. Many CCNA and CCNP holders who had moved quickly into well-paying network support roles during the late-1990s buildout find themselves in a glutted job market. University enrollment in computer-related degrees drops noticeably. The profession contracts but does not collapse: every surviving enterprise still needs someone to keep the network running.

Beat · 2006

Amazon Web Services launches Amazon S3 (March 2006) and EC2 (August 2006), making scalable cloud infrastructure commercially available for the first time. Within five years, AWS, Microsoft Azure (2010), and Google Cloud (2011) will have established cloud networking as a mainstream alternative to on-premises LAN/WAN infrastructure. For network support specialists, the cloud era is not an immediate disruption -- it arrives slowly, then accelerates -- but it marks the beginning of the structural shift that compresses on-premises networking headcount over the following decade.

Beat · 2012

Google's B4 SD-WAN deployment in 2012 -- connecting 12 Google data centers over a software-defined WAN -- is the first large-scale production demonstration that software-defined networking works outside a research environment. Over the following four years, SD-WAN products from Velocloud, Silver Peak, Viptela (acquired by Cisco 2017), and Cisco Meraki bring the same principles to enterprise branch offices. The network support specialist who had spent a career configuring Cisco IOS command-line now faces a new set of skills: SD-WAN policy orchestration, API-driven network configuration, and the Python scripting needed to work with infrastructure-as-code tools.

Beat · 2025

October 2025: SolarWinds launches its AI Agent for network observability, capable of predicting potential network issues before they surface and automatically creating and routing ITSM tickets. The same year, Cisco ThousandEyes AI Assistant becomes generally available, enabling natural-language queries to network and application performance data. These releases mark a threshold: AIOps tools are no longer experimental features but production-grade products used in large enterprises to reduce human monitoring hours. The network support specialist who relies primarily on reading SNMP alerts and reactive troubleshooting is under structural pressure; the one who can govern, interpret, and extend AIOps platforms remains scarce.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1983

The Computer Network Support Specialist came into being in the early 1980s, not from a university curriculum or a government classification, but from a practical crisis: enterprises had begun connecting their personal computers together, and nobody knew how to keep the resulting tangle of cable, protocol, and software running. Novell released NetWare in 1983, giving corporate IT departments their first widely adopted network operating system. The product was capable but demanding: someone had to configure bindery services, manage user accounts on the file server, terminate the thick coaxial cable correctly, and troubleshoot the arcane error messages that appeared when a workstation lost its connection to the server. By the mid-1980s, Novell had formalized this work into a certification program -- the CNE (Certified Novell Engineer) -- and corporate IT departments were hiring a new breed of specialist whose job title might be "LAN Administrator," "Network Technician," or simply "the network guy." The role grew explosively through the late 1980s as Ethernet replaced proprietary topologies (Token Ring, ARCnet, AppleTalk) and as the number of connected desktop computers in American offices multiplied from tens of thousands to millions. When the internet emerged from academic and government networks in the early 1990s, connecting the corporate LAN to the outside world added a new layer of routing, firewall, and DNS configuration that required deeper expertise still. By 1993, when Cisco launched its CCIE certification and the internet was opening to commercial traffic, the network support specialist had evolved from cable janitor into a recognized technical profession with its own credential hierarchy and a salary premium over generalist IT help-desk work.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace network support specialists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+1.2%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 15-1231 (Computer network support specialists): 152.5 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 154.4 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.9 thousand (+1.2%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (2.5% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

53.8%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 15-1231.00 Computer Network Support Specialists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.538, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.231 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.846; GPT-4-rated β 0.635. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for network support specialists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCreate and maintain network documentation including topology diagrams, runbooks, and incident post-mortems, increasingly using AI-generated first drafts that the specialist reviews and corrects against actual infrastructure state.

Create and maintain network documentation including topology diagrams, runbooks, and incident post-mortems, increasingly using AI-generated first drafts that the specialist reviews and corrects against actual infrastructure state.^[1],[6]

Tools picking this up

SolarWinds Observability (SolarWinds AI Agent) ↗

Where your edge is

Review AI-generated documentation against live infrastructure rather than treating it as authoritative; accuracy of auto-discovered topology diagrams degrades in multi-vendor or legacy environments.

AI is sitting alongside you hereSupport end users with network connectivity problems via phone, chat, or desk-side visit, leveraging AI-powered knowledge bases and ticket-routing assistants to diagnose common issues faster while reserving judgment for ambiguous cases.

Support end users with network connectivity problems via phone, chat, or desk-side visit, leveraging AI-powered knowledge bases and ticket-routing assistants to diagnose common issues faster while reserving judgment for ambiguous cases.^[1],[2]

Tools picking this up

SolarWinds Observability (SolarWinds AI Agent) ↗

Where your edge is

AI handles tier-1 triage and knowledge retrieval well; specialize in tier-2/3 escalations that require cross-system reasoning, physical layer inspection, or vendor engagement to stay indispensable.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor network performance dashboards in real time, interpreting AI-surfaced capacity alerts and SLE (service-level expectation) violations for throughput, switch health, and successful-connect rates to prioritize where to intervene.

Monitor network performance dashboards in real time, interpreting AI-surfaced capacity alerts and SLE (service-level expectation) violations for throughput, switch health, and successful-connect rates to prioritize where to intervene.^[1],[7]

Tools picking this up

SolarWinds Observability (SolarWinds AI Agent) ↗Juniper Mist AI (Marvis VNA) ↗

Where your edge is

Develop skills in reading AIOps platform outputs contextually: learn which alert classes have low false-positive rates and which require human verification before escalation.

Where network support specialists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Information Security Analysts
US median pay
$129,180 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+21%
Computer Network Architects
US median pay
$134,050 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+7.7%
Network and Computer Systems Administrators
US median pay
$99,130 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-4.1%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Information Security Analysts

Information Security Analysts command substantially higher CRI because security work requires deeper judgment, adversarial thinking, and regulatory knowledge that AI augments rather than replaces. Network support specialists already understand firewall rules, VPN configuration, and intrusion detection systems -- the pivot requires learning threat intelligence, vulnerability management, and compliance frameworks.

What you'd add

· Threat intelligence and vulnerability management (CVE triage, CVSS scoring)
· SIEM and SOAR platform operations (Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel)
· Security frameworks: NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC 2
· CompTIA Security+ then CISSP or CEH certification track
· Penetration testing fundamentals (Kali Linux, Burp Suite)

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of network support specialists changed since 1983?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Novell NetWare + 10BASE2 coaxial Ethernet (the LAN era)
The first generation of network support specialists built their craft around Novell NetWare (first released 1983) and thick or thin coaxial Ethernet cabling. A network problem meant physically walking cable runs, checking BNC connectors, and re-terminating segments -- the job had a hands-on, almost mechanical quality. NetWare's bindery-based directory system required manual user account management, print queue configuration, and server console commands that demanded specialist knowledge unavailable to ordinary PC users. By 1988, IDC reported NetWare held 53% of the network operating system market. The CNE certification, launched in the late 1980s, was the first credential that formally defined what a network support professional needed to know, and it became a hiring prerequisite at hundreds of large enterprises.
Effect on the work
Novell NetWare created the network support specialist role by making enterprise networking complex enough to require a dedicated technician but standardized enough for the role to be taught and certified. Before NetWare, network support was either handled by the minicomputer vendor or done ad hoc by whoever was most technically inclined. After NetWare, it was a distinct job.
Cisco IOS routers + TCP/IP internetworking (CCIE era, internet connectivity boom)
In 1993, Cisco launched the CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) certification -- the first specialist credential for internet-protocol routing rather than LAN file-sharing. The significance was architectural: enterprises were no longer just building isolated LANs but connecting those LANs to the internet and to each other via TCP/IP routers. Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) became the dominant platform for enterprise routing and switching, and knowing IOS command syntax became the core skill of the advanced network support specialist. The internet's commercial opening after the 1995 NSFnet decommission sent demand for Cisco-certified professionals soaring. The CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) was introduced around 1998-1999 as an entry-level credential, and the pipeline of Cisco-trained technicians grew rapidly through the dot-com boom.
Effect on the work
Cisco certifications created a formal career ladder for network support: entry-level (CCNA), professional (CCNP), and expert (CCIE). The dot-com collapse in 2001 eliminated tens of thousands of these positions as abruptly as it had created them.
Managed switches + 802.11 Wi-Fi (post-crash consolidation, wireless proliferation)
After the dot-com collapse, network support roles stabilized around a more modest but durable set of tasks: maintaining managed Ethernet switches (Cisco Catalyst, HP ProCurve), deploying and troubleshooting the 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi that proliferated through offices after the 802.11b standard's 1999 ratification, and managing the VPN infrastructure that remote workers increasingly depended on. The network monitoring toolkit expanded -- HP OpenView, SolarWinds (founded 1999), and Nagios provided the first generation of dashboard-based network visibility.
Effect on the work
Wi-Fi deployment created sustained demand for network support specialists outside traditional enterprise IT: hospitality, healthcare, retail, and education became major employers of networking professionals who had previously concentrated in financial services and technology companies.
Software-defined networking + cloud networking (AWS VPC 2009, OpenFlow 2008, SDN mainstream by 2013)
Software-defined networking (SDN) emerged from research around 2008-2011 (OpenFlow API 2008, Open Networking Foundation founded 2011) and Google's B4 deployment in 2012 proved the concept at production scale. By the mid-2010s, SD-WAN products from Velocloud, Silver Peak, and Cisco Meraki were replacing traditional MPLS circuits at enterprise branch offices, and AWS VPC, Azure Virtual Network, and Google Cloud had established cloud-based networking as a mainstream option for workloads previously hosted on-premises. For the network support specialist, this era meant learning a new conceptual model: instead of configuring each switch and router individually via IOS command line, policies were defined centrally and pushed to devices. The physical layer became less important; the policy layer became everything.
Effect on the work
SDN and cloud networking began the structural employment shift that continues today: the total number of physical network devices requiring hands-on support grew more slowly than in previous decades, and the per-device administrative overhead fell as automation replaced manual box-by-box configuration. Overall headcount did not collapse -- new cloud environments still needed network architects and support specialists -- but the ratio of technicians to managed endpoints declined.
AIOps platforms + agentic network intelligence (Juniper Mist, Cisco ThousandEyes AI Assistant, Dynatrace Davis AI)
The current era is defined by AIOps: AI-driven operations platforms that absorb the tier-1 monitoring and anomaly-detection work that previously occupied most of a junior network support specialist's day. Juniper Mist AI (Wired Assurance / Marvis VNA) autonomously identifies and remediates misconfigured switch ports. Cisco ThousandEyes AI Assistant (generally available 2025) accepts natural-language queries against network performance data. Dynatrace's Davis AI performs causal root-cause analysis and delivers remediation recommendations in plain English. SolarWinds launched its AI Agent in October 2025, predicting issues before they surface and automating ITSM ticket creation. For the network support specialist, these tools are amplifiers rather than replacements at the upper tiers -- a skilled analyst with ThousandEyes and Davis AI can close incidents faster and with greater confidence than before -- but they are genuine substitutes for the routine pattern-matching work at tier 1, suppressing demand for entry-level positions.
Effect on the work
SolarWinds reported that organizations using its GenAI-enabled observability tools saved 323,343 collective labor hours between August 2024 and July 2025. TechTarget's 2026 networking job market survey found that AI and automation capabilities are now baseline expectations for hiring, not differentiators -- and that the wage premium for specialists who can interpret and govern AIOps outputs is widening relative to those who simply react to alerts.

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Computer Network Support Specialists employment and pay by year

On record since1983

Latest US employment146,190 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$76,220 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+1.2% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 10 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1990	75,000	n/a	Est., Ethernet Researched context	Report
1995	180,000	$35,000	Est., History of the Internet (employment) Researched contextEst., Novell NetWare (pay) Researched context	Report
1999	285,000	n/a	Est., Dot-com bubble Researched context	Report
2019	185,430	$63,460	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	184,220	$65,450	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	176,200	$62,760	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	168,920	$68,050	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	158,720	$71,530	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	146,450	$73,340	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	146,190	$76,220	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where network support specialists go next

Information Security Analysts

Novell NetWare + 10BASE2 coaxial Ethernet (the LAN era)Novell NetWare + 10BASE2 coaxial Ethern…1983–1993

Cisco IOS routers + TCP/IP internetworking (CCIE era, internet connectivity boom)Cisco IOS routers + TCP/IP internetwork…1993–2001

Managed switches + 802.11 Wi-Fi (post-crash consolidation, wireless proliferation)Managed switches + 802.11 Wi-Fi2001–2010

Software-defined networking + cloud networking (AWS VPC 2009, OpenFlow 2008, SDN mainstream by 2013)Software-defined networking + cloud net…2010–2020

AIOps platforms + agentic network intelligence (Juniper Mist, Cisco ThousandEyes AI Assistant, Dynatrace Davis AI)AIOps platforms + agentic network intel…2020–present

Computer Network Support Specialists employment and pay by year

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