My frustrations as a network engineer

[007networkpro]

I'm an IP/MPLS engineer working for an ISP. I configure and troubleshoot MPLS services (L2 - L3) for business customers. My customers are sometimes very small networks (just a few sites) to pretty big (hundreds of sites).

As everyone noticed who works in this business there has been an explosion of services running over the WAN. Everything from cloudstuff, thin clients (citrix, ...), voip, "insert buzzword of the week here"

What I noticed even more that with these added complexity, the knowledge and networking troubleshooting skills on the customer side are pretty poor. More then 50% of time I'm basically troubleshooting stuff on the LAN of the customers (not my job but well, if something is not working, it's the network taht is always blamed first). I pretty much do everything from getting their routers connected (they choose to have unmanaged), troubleshooting voip (consumes most of my time nowadays), performance (99% of the people I deal with have no idea how to optimize tcp for LFN and just complain that the network is slow), the concepts of qos (I probably explained 1 zillion times that qos is something that kicks in when there is congestion in a network). Iperf and wireshark are unknown to lots of "engineers" I deal with. And it's not only the customers ICT, it is also their integrators (don't get me started about that).

Sometimes I wish I was a barista at starbucks

end-of-rant

I was a barista. Now I'm a network engineer for a company that provides Wi-Fi service for hotels. I miss the barista life...

 

[imagoon]

Any recommendations on how to deal with frustrations that start wreck your personality? It has been starting to occur to me that my personality at time can be difficult to deal with (admitting this is step one) and I think it stems from my frustrations over all. Is this the bane of IT / "Support?"

 

[spidey07]

Any recommendations on how to deal with frustrations that start wreck your personality? It has been starting to occur to me that my personality at time can be difficult to deal with (admitting this is step one) and I think it stems from my frustrations over all. Is this the bane of IT / "Support?"

A wise man once told me - "Only you can choose your attitude, not outside forces or influences"

Served me well.

 

[imagoon]

A wise man once told me - "Only you can choose your attitude, not outside forces or influences"

Served me well.

Good point. Without making this Doctor Phil, I will say I have generally had bad luck keeping work out of my daily life since I spend so much time doing it. I know a lot of people mention hobbies and the like. I also do believe my at work attitude has been poor. Excuses aside of course.

 

[mammador]

Maybe move into network administration, instead of helpdesk.

Solely configuring switches, routers and the like may be more less stressful.

 

[imagoon]

Maybe move into network administration, instead of helpdesk.

Solely configuring switches, routers and the like may be more less stressful.

Way to long to post [and I am not sure I want the almighty google to some how figure it out lol] but I think the main frustration is I was hired as a netadmin that was doing support to learn the company products. Over a year later I am still in support and have had 3 interjob postings "mysteriously vanish."

My goal is to get back to what I was doing I think and go from there.


"Change is in the wind."

 

[spidey07]

Maybe move into network administration, instead of helpdesk.

Solely configuring switches, routers and the like may be more less stressful.

It only gets MORE stressful. Because then you have to play "network lawyer" because it's ALWAYS a network problem.

Can't connect to database? Must be a network problem
App running slow? Must be a network problem
Web authentication doesn't work intermittently? Must be a network problem

And yet, amazingly, IT IS NEVER A NETWORK PROBLEM! Network's don't just up and decide to not work, if built properly they run perfect 24x7x365. I've been called into very large clients, with huge networks to figure out "what's wrong with the network" because a particular application is having intermittent trouble. After days of interviewing them, running traces, checking all paths I can point out exactly WHERE the DB server told the APP server "bad query" which threw the error on the web front end.

It's your shitty app that's the problem, not the network.

 

[imagoon]

I prefer the stress of Netadmin to CSR any day though.

Different type of stress is easier to deal with maybe?

 

[ScottMac]

I prefer the stress of Netadmin to CSR any day though.

Different type of stress is easier to deal with maybe?

Network-related problems tend to fall into the "usual suspects" categories ... CSR has as many headaches as there are customers to support, all different. I suppose if you're a "people person" you'd do better as a CSR than hardware / application / server support.

 

[Railgun]

But keep in mind, depending on the company in which you work, you`re still playing customer support in a manner of speaking. Every one or thing that has some presence on your network is your customer. It doesn`t have to be external customers in the traditional sense.

As spidey says, it`s ALWAYS (never) a network problem. Even if it`s painfully obvious it`s not, you`re going to be involved, taking fire from those that don`t quite understand how things work. It`s far worse when you have Windows admins involved. At least, in my experience.

 

[imagoon]

But keep in mind, depending on the company in which you work, you`re still playing customer support in a manner of speaking. Every one or thing that has some presence on your network is your customer. It doesn`t have to be external customers in the traditional sense.

As spidey says, it`s ALWAYS (never) a network problem. Even if it`s painfully obvious it`s not, you`re going to be involved, taking fire from those that don`t quite understand how things work. It`s far worse when you have Windows admins involved. At least, in my experience.

Oh yeah I know. I have done both sides. At this point I am a CSR longing for my "network problems" lol. There is a long story that goes with this of course and is why I am working on making a change.

 

[macssuck]

I'm late to the party but have enjoyed this thread.
I can only think of a couple times when the network was at fault in 12+ years.
One company was using point to point unlicensed wireless links for their WAN and had all kinds of interference from other wireless.

 

[spidey07]

New guy at work...says "hey my solution saves the client money!"

Son - we are paid to provide the utmost quality solutions to our customers, this is what we do...quality.

"but why are you doing so much redundancy? We can save them money by half assing it like I did at my last job"

Son...you have much to learn about quality

These are the guys who say "let's build our own servers and run linux as our solution!!!!"

How did you get hired again and why the fuck are you even talking to me?

 

[Railgun]

Sounds like he should go back to the ISP he came from.

 

[imagoon]

Come on spidey! We can save $.02 a cable crimping our own!

 

[ScottMac]

Come on spidey! We can save $.02 a cable crimping our own!

You can save Waaaaay more'n that by recycling old cables. Just buy a $20K meter, find the fault, cut it out and re-crimp the ends ... and if you use unrated PBX RJ45's you can save again ... Lots of savings for "thinking" folks ... ;-}

Probably pay for itself in ten or twenty years ...

 

[imagoon]

You can save Waaaaay more'n that by recycling old cables. Just buy a $20K meter, find the fault, cut it out and re-crimp the ends ... and if you use unrated PBX RJ45's you can save again ... Lots of savings for "thinking" folks ... ;-}

Probably pay for itself in ten or twenty years ...

Think we can repurpose all that ThickNet with a soldering iron?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Think we can repurpose all that ThickNet with a soldering iron?

You just blew my mind.

 

[ScottMac]

Think we can repurpose all that ThickNet with a soldering iron?

"But it's so hard to crimp an RJ45 on to a real Ethernet Cable, and there ain't enough conductors ..."

I have my share of Vampire Tap wounds!!! (those aren't exclamation points ....it's the tap leaving a hole in my finger / thumb / hand)

Maybe we could strip the core out of the old yellow stuff and use it as a garden hose or, maybe, if it was tapped enough, a sprinkler line.

 

[Pheran]

Some of these are good:

Smug Cisco Guy

 

[Muse]

Heh, I get paid to come in after all these folks and clean up their mess. It's a great gig. Most of my clients are service providers and fortune 100 companies.

Networking is the "voodoo" of IT, black magic. Thing is it really isn't that hard.

I was the database admin/programmer for one company and the other IT folks there told me "you just do it, you pick it up" concerning networks, their problems and issues. Of course, their network issues weren't terribly complicated, I don't think. They had MS Server and maybe 80 workstations at the corporate main office.

The shear plethora of acronyms in the networking arena is hell of intimidating. I hit a Wikipedia page today that was simply staggering. I'd think that someone who really knows their way around it could make a really good living considering how misunderstood it is.

 

[Muse]

duplicate

 

[spidey07]

Folks switching from eigrp to ospf. Well because they want to make things much more complicated and worse.

This is generally what inexperienced guys want to do. Hey, they did something revolutionary! But can't provide a single reason why.

 

[Zargon]

I have little experinece with EIGRP, I just gleamed a intro to it and dont see how its incredible simpler than OSPF?

not that I am in love with OSPF

 

[alkemyst]

I don't think EIGRP is simpler. In someways it's inferior. Also in non-cisco environments OSPF is usually required.