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

deanwebb · January 04, 2015, 07:42:03 PM

It's not that they're idiots... they're just not as well-informed about networking as I am...

People that call in to say that they can't get an application to work, then blank out when I ask for the IP address of the server... but still expect me to solve the problem, and then never mind their reaction when I ask them what TCP ports are involved in the communication!

This thread is for venting. I find that it helps to deal with problems by venting about them. Then I don't have to shout at the end-users. Feel free to add your vents, as they come to you.

vito_corleone · January 04, 2015, 09:13:07 PM

Oooh, I have enough material to keep this thread chugging for months.

mynd · January 04, 2015, 09:32:15 PM

Quote from: vito_corleone on January 04, 2015, 09:13:07 PM
Oooh, I have enough material to keep this thread chugging for months.

oh oh

let's hear it

Ironman · January 04, 2015, 10:12:26 PM

Got a call this morning, turns out we had a circuit down hard and no back up for this particular site. About an hour later I get another call from the "trusted" server guys. Their complaint was that their servers are saying that they lost connection to the corp NTP server. . . . . I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I had to explain to them (AGAIN) that since their circuit is down that their connections to HQ and the Internet will be down.

Bit_Jockey · January 04, 2015, 10:53:55 PM

Quote from: Ironman on January 04, 2015, 10:12:26 PM
Got a call this morning, turns out we had a circuit down hard and no back up for this particular site. About an hour later I get another call from the "trusted" server guys. Their complaint was that their servers are saying that they lost connection to the corp NTP server. . . . . I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I had to explain to them (AGAIN) that since their circuit is down that their connections to HQ and the Internet will be down.

I've seen that dog and pony show before. Half of me wants to string them along an ask them a bunch of basic questions like, are you able to check your email? Can you get to any website on the internet? Maybe its a DNS issue, are you able to ping by IP address, try 127.0.0.1? Then the other (superior) half of me remembers that *most* techs are a bunch of derps and it's better for my health to lie, and tell them I've opened a ticket.

vito_corleone · January 05, 2015, 06:44:42 AM

Quote from: mynd on January 04, 2015, 09:32:15 PM
Quote from: vito_corleone on January 04, 2015, 09:13:07 PM
Oooh, I have enough material to keep this thread chugging for months.
oh oh let's hear it

Most of mine are generic customer-related things. Like:

Why can't you have these 7Ks (which haven't shipped yet) deployed in 5 days?!
We need that obscure new feature! Why are you hesitant to deploy the newest .0 code release!?
I need to maintain 100% uptime while you replace every piece of our hardware during this massive core/DC migration!!!

I'll try to think of specific stories I can post without having to worry about someone stumbling across it at some point.

deanwebb · January 05, 2015, 09:41:20 AM

Gotta love the demands for 100% uptime, no matter what. Or 99.9999% uptime, which is even more annoying. Have an outage with 100% uptime and, oh well, won't make that goal this year... while we're at it, though...

Outage with 99.9999% uptime means you have exactly 17.4 seconds to resolve the outage before the ticket starts escalating. No fun at all.

Atrum · January 05, 2015, 10:24:40 AM

My favorite is when a client says "Is there ANY chance that this will bring the network down" when we're troubleshooting an issue that had their device randomly crashing.

Seittit · January 05, 2015, 10:47:20 AM

Management: "We are spending almost 50k a year in our network monitor solution, can we go a year without it?"

Seittit · January 05, 2015, 10:50:03 AM

Quote from: Atrum on January 05, 2015, 10:24:40 AM

*unrelated sidenote @Atrum: FFIX will be remembered as when Squaresoft began their decent into releasing crap games*

Atrum · January 05, 2015, 12:18:54 PM

Quote from: Seittit on January 05, 2015, 10:50:03 AM
Quote from: Atrum on January 05, 2015, 10:24:40 AM

*unrelated sidenote @Atrum: FFIX will be remembered as when Squaresoft began their decent into releasing crap games*

Ha! I played VII VIII and IX a whole lot. IX was the last for me that really felt like FF. X was OK. I bought X-2, loaded it up and was greeted by a singing pop band Yuna... <sigh>

Ironman · January 05, 2015, 03:43:05 PM

Here's a question I heard on a podcast recently. What group of IT ppl are the worst? (Networking (no way), Security, VoIP, Server, Desktop etc. ? Thoughts?

deanwebb · January 05, 2015, 04:19:59 PM

Developers.

Ironman · January 05, 2015, 05:38:13 PM

Yea, Devs are pretty tough. Server guys always seem to throw me off. I've come across some pretty shaky VOIP folks as well.

vito_corleone · January 05, 2015, 06:59:04 PM

Quote from: Ironman on January 05, 2015, 03:43:05 PM
Here's a question I heard on a podcast recently. What group of IT ppl are the worst? (Networking (no way), Security, VoIP, Server, Desktop etc. ? Thoughts?

Man, that's tough. I'd agree with Devs. I'd also say security guys (

). Not necessarily network security guys, but the CISSP types who use a bunch of buzzwords and have zero clue how things really work.