Frequently asked questions

Aptient is a network and security engineering firm. We work across four service lines: Network Engineering & Design, Security Engineering, Managed Infrastructure, and Consulting & Advisory. Our principal engineers have architected some of the world's largest carrier backbones, critical DNS infrastructure, and global multicast CDNs. We design, build, secure, and operate the kind of infrastructure where failure is not an option.

Carriers, internet exchanges, cloud providers, global CDNs, streaming content providers, some of the largest gaming companies in the world, data centre operators, managed service providers, private equity firms conducting technical due diligence, and mid-market enterprises with infrastructure that outgrew their internal team. If the network is critical to the business, we're the right call.

Aptient is Australian-headquartered with engineers across multiple time zones. We deliver globally — carrier-grade network engineering doesn't stop at borders. We're engaged on projects across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.

We are engineers, not analysts or resellers. The person reviewing your architecture has built the equivalent — or larger — in production. We have no vendor partnerships and receive no referral incentives, which means our recommendations are based entirely on what fits your problem. We can produce a board-ready report or get into the protocol-level details of a specific design challenge — sometimes in the same engagement.

No. We hold no vendor partnerships, receive no reseller margins, and carry no certification targets that would skew our advice. Our only obligation in any engagement is to give you the right answer. This is one of the things our clients consistently cite as the reason they work with us.

With a conversation. We ask what you're trying to achieve and what's getting in the way. From there we'll propose a scope — fixed deliverable, time-and-materials, or ongoing advisory — that fits the actual problem. We don't sell retainers to clients who need a one-off engagement, and we don't propose a short piece of work when the situation calls for a programme.

Both. Fixed-price suits clearly scoped deliverables: architecture designs, audits, written reports, and defined programme phases. Time-and-materials suits evolving engagements, ongoing advisory relationships, and managed infrastructure where scope changes over time. We'll tell you which model is more appropriate for your situation.

From growing MSPs and mid-market enterprises through to global carriers and hyperscalers. The engineering standard is the same regardless of size. We've turned down work that wasn't a good fit and we'll tell you honestly if something is outside our wheelhouse — though the occasions where that applies are rare.

Yes, and it's standard practice. We routinely work under mutual NDA, particularly for due diligence assignments, acquisition assessments, and sensitive infrastructure programmes. If you'd like an NDA in place before the first conversation, we can accommodate that.

Yes — this is one of the most common engagement structures. We can augment your team for specific expertise gaps (BGP policy, security architecture, zero trust design), provide capacity when your team is stretched, or operate as a peer-review layer on major changes. We're not trying to replace internal teams; we're trying to make them better.

Across routing and switching: Cisco (IOS-XR, NX-OS, IOS-XE), Juniper (Junos), Arista (EOS), and Nokia (SR OS). Across security: Palo Alto Networks, Juniper SRX, Fortinet, Cisco ASA/FTD, Check Point, and SonicWall. We maintain a live multi-vendor lab and are not restricted to this list — the specific platform matters less than the problem being solved.

No. We work across physical, virtual, and cloud-native environments. BGP routing policy, SD-WAN overlay design, EVPN/VXLAN data centre fabrics, and zero trust architecture are as much in scope as physical switch and router configuration. The discipline is network engineering — the substrate varies.

Yes. Our principal engineers hold JNCIE-SP, JNCIE-ENT, Palo Alto PCNSE, and other senior-level credentials. We regard certifications as a floor rather than a ceiling — we hold them because the work demands it, not to display them on a website.

This is a routine part of our work. We deliver zero-downtime cutovers on production networks where the margin for error is measured in milliseconds. That includes major migrations at carriers, architecture-change programmes at enterprises, and technology refreshes that can't tolerate a maintenance window. Full rollback plans and post-change verification are standard.

24x7x365 monitoring with proactive alerting, P1 incident response, change management (RFC process, peer review, rollback planning), configuration management, capacity planning, vendor and carrier coordination, named account engineers, and regular service reporting. The full detail is on the Managed Infrastructure service page.

Yes. We're technology-agnostic and have no interest in replacing infrastructure just because we didn't build it. If you have a well-designed network built on Cisco, Juniper, Arista, or anything else, we can manage it. The only prerequisite is that we get a full understanding of the architecture before we take it on — we don't manage infrastructure we don't fully understand.

Three tiers: Standard, Enhanced, and Critical. Response times, escalation paths, on-call arrangements, and reporting cadence differ per tier. All managed engagements are scoped individually — contact us and we'll walk through what each tier covers in the context of your environment.

Yes. Every engineer on a managed account understands the architecture at the design level and has the authority to act without bureaucracy. This is not a tier-one NOC working from a runbook. If an incident requires a meaningful change to resolve it, the engineer on the call can make that decision and execute it.

Architecture review and audit, RFP and vendor selection, programme management, technology roadmapping, due diligence (M&A, acquisition, divestiture), network design standards, training and knowledge transfer, board and executive reporting, and capacity and investment planning. The full list is on the Consulting & Advisory service page.

Yes. Translating network complexity and technical risk into business language is one of the specific things we do. We've produced reports for private equity investment committees, board risk committees, and C-suite technology reviews. The same engineer who understands the protocol-level detail also understands how to communicate it to a non-technical audience.

Yes. Technical due diligence on network and infrastructure estates is a specific workstream we deliver regularly. We can assess architecture quality, identify technical debt and risk, estimate remediation cost, and produce a structured report within your due diligence window. We work under NDA and to your timeline.