It's a Network Thing... They Don't Understand...

[icecream-guy]

I was like this is a 160,000sq foot facility, you have over 200 employees, and you expect only 10-15 people will use the wireless at a time? 

Someone is in for a rude awakening on BYoD to work day  (everyday)

I can hear your phone ringing now with IRATE customer wondering why the wifi is soooooo slooooooow.....and constantly dropping..

[deanwebb]

Reviving topic...

Talked about static routes with my son last night. I'm proud of that boy. He was pleased with how he'd done his CCNA lab on that topic. My wife's eyes kinda glazed over, but, hey, it's a network thang, y'all...

[icecream-guy]

We just had out first transition meeting with the senior management for our data center closing in 16 months. a cursory overview of services and a DDD of March 2018. we've been attempting to move services for probably the last year or so. But things weren't going as they had hoped.

[deanwebb]

Ate a big breakfast today because I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to take a lunch.

I was right.

[icecream-guy]

Ate a big breakfast today because I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to take a lunch.

I was right.

should I have posted in the current frustrations thread?  but it's a network thing....they just don't understand.....
should have started like 5 years ago.

[deanwebb]

I think it's appropriate here, as well. I'm currently frustrated by what they just don't understand.

[icecream-guy]

I think it's appropriate here, as well. I'm currently frustrated by what they just don't understand.

Depth, scope, and complexity of services we provide to our customers, that, and the amount of time it takes to coordinate with those customers (ones that don't really understand their network) to migrate their service out of the data center.
If you sat here for a day or two, did some network discovery you be like: 

[deanwebb]

Same here...

And then there's the guy who is over the technology but who really doesn't quite *get* it. For example, NAC. We are officially notifying sites when we are monitoring and enforcing on their wired network. We're also providing RADIUS services for the wireless - which means automatic monitoring *and* enforcement for those guys with 802.1X. The catch is, we don't notify for those.

So we get a guy at a site with wireless active, wondering why it is that the NAC system account is logging on to endpoints there. He's all and calls the guy over the technology who's all like  we're not enforcing in that site yet so he calls me and I say, well, wireless guys get enforced and then he's all



because we're supposed to notify a site when we do enforcement, but, I'm all like  and then he's all whoa, slow down dude give me the  version and I say that, in order for devices to get on wireless, they pass through 802.1X enforcement, so, yeah, we be all up in their Windows, collecting their datas. No warning necessary, because that's how we roll. Tell the guy bugging you to just  and we'll be all cool.

And then he's like, well... can we just turn off the logging on part?

And that's when I'm all because that's just how the product works, man. It's not a problem in any of the other 200 sites where we're doing the stuff, so, no, we can't. And by can't, I mean we won't.

Now, if he had more technical knowledge about the NAC stuff, he'd have been able to head off the question before it got to me. I know he's got lots of stuff on his plate, I've seen his triple-scheduled calendar... but I do wish that we'd have had some time for him to directly work with the system and not just be responsible over it. Kinda like a guy that's a whiz at keeping a F-16 fighter in good shape may not know what's best for an M-1 tank, if he hasn't got a lot of hands-on experience with it.

[jason.copas]

I went round and round with our help desk staff because a VIP was having issues copying a multi-gig file from his local workstation to his home drive.  They were convinced that because it worked fine while connected to a workbench switch in their office it *had* to be the network.  Keep in mind that *THEY* are responsible for everything past the port on the wall, including the patches.  We kicked the ticket back and forth a few times as I told them to check/change the patch cables and VOIP phone the computer was daisy chained off of.  Finally I broke down and logged into the web interface on the phone.  Phone to Switch auto-negotiated at 100Mbps (10/100 PoE switch) and Phone to Computer auto-negotiated at 1Gbps.  So I asked them if they had even gone down and looked at the guys setup, changed cables, tried removing the VOIP and checking the connection.  Nope, it HAD to be a network issue...

So I got to explain to them how you can't squeeze a 1Gbps through a 100Mbps link.  Glazed look, and "So how do we fix it?"  I realize that help desk is entry level, but shouldn't they be able to think their way through that one on their own???  Their team lead has been doing help desk here for more than six years and can't find the network adapter speed settings?  Or even be bothered to entertain the idea that working on the workbench switch doesn't mean the device is working *correctly*.

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[deanwebb]

Oh man, we totally need more people with more skills in this line of work...

[LynK]

@jason,

Please do not take this the wrong way, but why did you wait so long before helping them? I take the approach to train all of our help desk. I teach them speed/duplex, I team them these things because in the long run, it WILL make my life 1000% easier when they know how to check a static IP entry and why a computer will not connect when you move it.

At my old job a lot of the engineers/admins treated our helpdesk like dirt. I was the only one nice to them and trained them. So they took the extra initiative to look at things twice before reaching out to me. It was quite nice.

[NetworkGroover]

Agree with LynK.  Empower your people and understand you're one big team.  Take the time to train/educate (it doesn't take long in small doses), and it pays off in spades.

[jason.copas]

You are making an assumptions that they want to learn, or care about the customers.  That is a bad assumption. 

I quit trying to teach/help them because the only thing it got me was them farming more of their work to me.  Under our current contract they no longer have a local manager and have quit doing a large majority of their duties.  They have completely stopped providing ANY desk side support or troubleshooting.  All​ they do now is re-image peoples drives, and if that doesn't fix it they blame it on the network or the servers.

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[icecream-guy]

You are making an assumptions that they want to learn, or care about the customers.  That is a bad assumption. 

I quit trying to teach/help them because the only thing it got me was them farming more of their work to me.  Under our current contract they no longer have a local manager and have quit doing a large majority of their duties.  They have completely stopped providing ANY desk side support or troubleshooting.  All​ they do now is re-image peoples drives, and if that doesn't fix it they blame it on the network or the servers.

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I hear ya, I can't get our help desk team to tell us BEFORE they swap out someone's PC, instead of after.  they just don't grasp how difficult it is to find port after it's been err-disabled via port-secuirty and wonder why the PC isn't working like the old one. if they told us the MAC address of the old computer before they replaced it we could easily find the pc and make port-security adjustments.

[jason.copas]

I've had similar issues with our printer LCR's, only our guys were tripping the DHCP snooping database instead of port-security.

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