Mastering Networking Technologies
Barkha Vijay Shete, MS’25, telecommunication systems, is a recent alumni of Northeastern. She has taken the incredible skills and tools she obtained through unique and advanced coursework and an amazing co-op opportunity to excel in her role post-graduation.
Barkha Vijay Shete graduated with her master of science in telecommunications networks in August 2025. She earned her bachelor’s degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering in 2018. Shortly after graduation, she was campus-selected by Tata Communications as a network engineer, where she spent 2.5 years gaining extensive experience in network architecture, design and lifecycle management. This role provided her with hands-on exposure to traditional telecommunications systems and insight into how large-scale service providers manage global connectivity.
Following her tenure at Tata Communications, Shete joined Vodafone Global in Pune, India, as an assistant network manager, working on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and managing the wide-area network architectures of over 50 enterprise clients. This experience not only strengthened her technical expertise in WAN solutions but also deepened her understanding of the industry’s shift toward next-generation, software-driven network infrastructures.
Shete’s decision to join Northeastern University was driven by her recognition of the need to bridge the gap between traditional telecommunications architectures and emerging cloud-native, software-driven approaches. To strengthen her expertise and adapt to these evolving paradigms, she pursued a master’s in telecommunications networks. She chose Northeastern for its flexible curriculum, rigorous coursework and strong emphasis on skill development. The College of Engineering provided her with opportunities to explore networking and cloud technologies in depth while balancing theoretical knowledge with hands-on projects and experiential learning.
Several courses stood out to Shete and had a profound impact on her learning journey at Northeastern. Courses such as “Linux”, “Internet Protocols and Architecture”, “Internet of Things (IoT)” and “Cloud Computing” provided both breadth and depth ranging from mastering the fundamentals of system operations to exploring how modern telecommunications integrates with IoT devices and distributed cloud systems. These courses equipped her with the skills to think beyond traditional networks and adopt a systems-level perspective.
Shete was also fortunate to learn from exceptional professors, including Professor Rolando Herrero and Adjunct Professor Rajiv Shridhar, whose teaching encouraged her to integrate her industry experience with academic concepts, making complex technologies more accessible. She was particularly inspired by Professor Shridhar’s approach to teaching protocols and network design, which drew on real-world experiences such as setting up Northeastern’s own networks. His insights into routing, virtualization and SDN provided practical perspectives that deepened her understanding of modern network operations.
The curriculum at Northeastern spanned a wide range of domains with strong industry relevance, including cloud architecture, enterprise network infrastructure, data center security and wireless technologies such as 5G. As a telecommunications networks student, Shete had the opportunity to explore not only protocol-level fundamentals but also advanced areas such as Python and Java programming, Linux administration, storage networking and data center switching. The combination of lab assignments, hands-on projects and practical simulations enabled her to apply theoretical knowledge directly to real-world problems, building both technical competence and confidence across multiple emerging technologies.
Shete secured a co-op as network intern at Charles River Development, a State Street Company. During her placement, she gained extensive hands-on experience in data center network management, security operations and infrastructure upgrades. Her responsibilities included configuring and troubleshooting firewalls, VPNs, VLANs and Network Access Control systems, as well as managing firmware upgrades and licensing for switches and other equipment. She also contributed to cloud connectivity projects, integrating Microsoft Azure using GRE and IPSec tunneling protocols. She joined State Street (Charles River Development) as a full-time network engineer in September 2025.
These tasks allowed her to implement secure, scalable network designs, resolve real-time issues in production environments and directly support the stability of enterprise systems. In addition, she supported data center operations such as switch deployments, firmware updates and wireless access point replacements, collaborating closely with vendors like Cisco and Extreme Networks. This experience strengthened her expertise in enterprise security, cloud networking and large-scale infrastructure operations, while demonstrating her ability to independently manage critical systems in a production environment.
Shete shares that her approach to securing the co-op combined both strategic applications and proactive networking. She regularly applied through NUworks, LinkedIn and company career portals, focusing on organizations aligned with her interests in cloud networking and security. She also reached out to Northeastern alumni and seniors for feedback to refine her applications. Networking with recruiters and industry professionals on LinkedIn provided valuable insights into employer expectations and industry requirements. Through this combination of targeted applications and outreach, she successfully obtained interviews and ultimately secured a role aligned with her career goals in network engineering.
Shete expresses her gratitude to Professors Laura Meyer and Jessica Fisher, who were instrumental in guiding her toward experiential learning opportunities. With their encouragement, she successfully completed her co-op, and their consistent support helped her grow in confidence while approaching applications and interviews strategically.
Shete reflects that several technical skills and courses at Northeastern directly contributed to her success during her internships and co-op experiences. Courses such as “Internet Protocols and Architecture” and “Telecom Network Infrastructure” built a strong foundation in routing, switching and protocol behavior. Advanced coursework in “MPLS Traffic Engineering”, “Cloud Computing”, “Network Security” and “Network Storage” provided hands-on exposure to designing scalable and secure infrastructures.
In her own words, Shete summarizes:
“Northeastern’s emphasis on blending academic rigor with experiential learning equipped me with both the theoretical depth and practical skill set needed to deliver real-world, enterprise-ready solutions.”
Transitioning Co-op to Full-Time
After completing her co-op in December 2024, Shete received a full-time offer as a network engineer from State Street by May 2025, joining the company in September 2025. Leadership, including the CEO, was impressed by her contributions and presentations during her co-op. Her project outcomes and presentations were recognized internally within the company. She stood out by taking ownership of projects, staying proactive and applying classroom knowledge to real production systems. By seeking feedback, going beyond assigned tasks and demonstrating initiative, she built trust with her team and gained visibility across the company. Treating the co-op as a full-time role allowed her to showcase both technical skill and professional maturity, making her transition seamless and rewarding.
In her current role as a Network Engineer, Shete manages data center networking and security while supporting infrastructure modernization initiatives. This includes: enterprise data center operations which involves deploying and maintaining switches, performing firmware upgrades, and supporting wireless access point replacements in collaboration with vendors such as Cisco and Extreme Networks. Also, network security, configuring and managing Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewalls, including NAT rules, security policies, and rule hierarchies. Additionally, implementing Zero Trust Security frameworks with Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). She also works with secure connectivity, involving designing and managing VPNs and VLANs, deploying RADIUS-based Network Access Control integrated with Active Directory, and ensuring endpoint compliance. As well as cloud metworking where she works on Configuring and validating GRE and IPSec tunnels for Microsoft Azure integration, enabling secure and scalable cloud connectivity.
These responsibilities have strengthened her expertise in enterprise-scale infrastructure, security operations, and hybrid cloud connectivity, while giving her confidence in independently managing critical production systems.
To conclude, Shete advises students aiming for full-time roles to build a strong foundation in a domain they are passionate about, whether telecommunications, cloud networking, or security. She recommends experimenting in labs, taking on side projects, and applying concepts to real-world use cases. Northeastern provides excellent resources to explore and test ideas, and she encourages students to make the most of them.
Projects and Innovations
Shete undertook a project to design and implement a highly available and secure enterprise network architecture for approximately 24 client environments. The goal was to ensure uninterrupted bandwidth, zero packet loss, and seamless failover between primary and secondary links, while maintaining a robust security posture. To achieve this, she built a lab environment simulating production conditions, integrating concepts from Internet Protocols, enterprise routing and Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
The core security layer was implemented using Palo Alto Next-Generation Firewalls deployed on a cloud-based infrastructure, providing centralized policy management and application-level visibility. The network design incorporated redundant WAN circuits, load balancing mechanisms and point-to-point GRE tunnels for secure site-to-site connectivity. VLAN segmentation separated traffic domains, while trunks optimized bandwidth utilization across multiple links. The result was a resilient, secure and cost-efficient design that could be scaled and deployed into production under standard business constraints.
One of the main challenges of the project was balancing cost-efficiency with redundancy and performance. Procuring multiple circuits while staying within budget required careful testing across cloud platforms and thoughtful resource planning. Shete optimized the design by implementing redundant circuits with automated failovers to ensure high availability and fine-tuning firewall rules and policies to maximize security without overconsuming resources. As well as using GRE/IPSec tunnels for secure connectivity across internet links instead of relying solely on expensive MPLS services. Shete also Leveraged trunk ports and VLAN segmentation to efficiently handle multi-tenant traffic within the same infrastructure.
Through iterative testing, she delivered a cost-conscious yet highly reliable design, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity and secure data transfer for client operations.
The final architecture provided several key benefits: it offered a secure SDN-based environment capable of supporting data transfers, VoIP services and enterprise applications without compromising performance. It ensured end-to-end encryption through GRE/IPSec tunnels, maintained resilience with redundant circuits, and achieved significant cost savings compared to traditional MPLS solutions. This project showcased how enterprises can leverage virtualized infrastructure and policy-driven network architectures to achieve scalable, cost-optimized, and secure connectivity while preserving data integrity and business continuity.
Outside the Classroom
Shete actively participated in internal networking workshops and peer-led technical events at Northeastern, where she applied core concepts from “Internet Protocols” and “Architecture and Telecom Network Infrastructure”. These sessions emphasized protocol behavior, routing design, and packet-level analysis, and involved hands-on exercises in dynamic routing, subnetting and logical topology configuration. She also explored SONET and OTN framing, multiplexing, protection switching and traffic engineering, gaining a deeper understanding of how carrier-grade networks deliver high availability and reliable services at scale.
In one project, she helped design a carrier-grade transport network capable of handling large-scale voice and data traffic with high availability. By simulating SONET rings and OTN-based multiplexing, her team implemented bidirectional line-switched rings, optical channel multiplexing and traffic engineering techniques to ensure protection switching and redundancy while keeping costs and complexity manageable. Another exercise involved analyzing SONET/SDH framing structures and bandwidth allocation, modeling payload synchronization across channels and highlighting the importance of error monitoring and restoration mechanisms.
These experiences strengthened her ability to approach complex networking problems with an engineering mindset, emphasizing scalable, resilient and secure designs. Northeastern’s combination of rigorous academics and practical guidance equipped her to perform well in competitions and mirror real-world enterprise and service provider environments.
Shete also served as a graduate teaching assistant for “Internet Protocols & Architecture”, mentoring students and assisting the lab design.
Future Perspective
Shete is currently focusing on infrastructure automation, Zero Trust frameworks and multi-cloud networking. She is particularly interested in network function virtualization, enabling flexible deployment of routing, firewall and load balancing services without dedicated hardware, and in automation frameworks using Python, REST APIs, and Ansible for policy-driven, intent-based operations. She also sees a strong future for artificial intelligence in networking, applying machine learning for anomaly detection, predictive maintenance and closed-loop optimization. Ultimately, she hopes to contribute to building elastic, automated and intelligent infrastructures that scale seamlessly across cloud and enterprise environments while maintaining resilience and security.
Her time at Northeastern taught her to view networking not just as a set of protocols, but as an evolving ecosystem of architectures and services. She gained a strong foundation in enterprise and service provider network deployment, learning design principles that balance scalability, resiliency and performance. The program strengthened her understanding of routing protocols, packet forwarding, and traffic engineering, while also providing exposure to advanced domains such as MPLS traffic engineering, DWDM-based optical transport and large-scale routing with IS-IS and BGP. She also studied resiliency techniques like fast reroute and path restoration, gaining insight into how provider and enterprise backbones ensure high availability and service continuity.
Shete reflects that she approached every course project as more than an academic exercise, mapping concepts to industry experience, analyzing real-world deployments and exploring how protocols, topologies and architectures could be optimized for future use cases. She often went the extra mile by discussing these insights with peers and faculty or translating them into potential workplace solutions, such as traffic engineering strategies or policy-driven designs for improved scalability. This practice of learning, validating and reimagining each concept in both academic and practical contexts became a cornerstone of her approach to mastering networking technologies.