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Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

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Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#21

Post by brk »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
rman666 wrote: post #11

The power of HN is that you have many resources to call on at once. Might it be a better idea to troubleshoot using the knowledge and tools available to you through the people on HN?

And 'greener' to boot. If that matters to you anyway (and it probably should), then flying in people just to troubleshoot your network seems a bit excessive. Other than physical cabling and things like that this seems to be one job where you could do most if not all of the work remotely anyway (hard to tell without a lot more background info).

I would have guessed the opposite. It depends on what you are walking in to.

These are some pics from a hotel LAN at a place in Tortola I was at about this time last year: http://www.karas.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2505 Not dissimilar to the OP case here, they were having "network issues" (this was not the reason for my business there, it became a side project), and their LAN was the result of someone who knew some fundamentals but was not a network guy by any means. I could tell more from 30 seconds of looking at this stuff than what they could ever describe to me (even if they had sent pictures).

A network that spans an 18 acre campus could vary from simple to mildly complex. The terrain and budget could suggest that alternative technologies might be more appropriate (PtP Wifi, Mesh, etc.) for some of the links being served by the fiber. Perhaps there are aspects of the fiber install that would indicate future potential failures and/or inabilities to recover from those failures.

A savvy network guy could assess and communicate this, but if they HAD a savvy network guy, this whole thread would have never existed.

So, IMO, an in-person trip is probably the most resourceful way to handle this. My guess would be a 3-4 day initial session, from which some recommendations could be made. After that it could be determined if they have the time/skills to implement the recommendations, or if the implementation should also be outsourced as well.

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#22

Post by thaumaturgy »

tibbon wrote: post #4

Makes me wish for once I'd actually finished those Cisco networking classes.

Heh!

Funny story: so, my junior tech, who at some point had taken some Cisco course or another, had been tasked with finishing up some gigabit connections between two buildings.

In the main building, the network cabinet has two unmanaged Netgear Prosafe switches; one 10/100, and one gigabit.

Without thinking about it, he plugged some of the cables for the other building into one switch, and some into the other.

Both sets of cables ran to the other building, and then into another Netgear unmanaged switch. (There were multiple cables primarily for redundancy.)

So naturally the next day the network just starts going wild. He's tied a gigabit-size loop into the network, and the unmanaged switches are helpfully forwarding traffic back and forth to eachother, even though they're really not supposed to do that.

He's totally stumped. I get called in, sit down for a few minutes with tcpdump, and watch the traffic for a few devices on the network. Didn't take very long before I had a rough idea of what had happened, opened up the network cabinet, and found the misplaced connections.

So much for Cisco courses!

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#23

Post by jacquesm »

brk wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 'greener' to boot. If that matters to you anyway (and it probably should), then flying in people just to troubleshoot your network seems a bit excessive. Other than physical cabling and things like that this seems to be one job where you could do most if not all of the work remotely anyway (hard to tell without a lot more background info).

I would have guessed the opposite. It depends on what you are walking in to. These are some pics from a hotel LAN at a place in Tortola I was at about this time last year: http://www.karas.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2505 Not dissimilar to the OP case here, they were having "network issues" (this was not the reason for my business there, it became a side project), and their LAN was the result of someone who knew…

Good points, a 'guru' on the spot can save (a lot) of time.

I've had to do some remote debugging of trouble and I found that it is quite taxing to 'talk someone through' the steps but eventually it did work.

It probably depends on how 'hands on' the issues are, if they're configuration issues or so then remote is probably ok, if they're related to physical stuff then onsite is probably much better.

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#24

Post by smaher »

I volunteered at the Island School 4 years ago. I can attest that it is a beautiful remote spot. I was there helping out with their summer camp for middle schoolers and also working on some construction projects around the campus. I'd go back if I had the networking experience. Depending on my mood I found it peaceful or lonely as it is very isolated and I saw only 50 people total in the 1 month I was there. Other thoughts on my experience:

Pros - Warm tropical weather, great location right on a beach, great food cooked by locals everyday, friendly staff and students, interesting sustainability projects, pretty good library, great sailing, diving, and kayaking

Cons - No hot water (we did morning exercise that made this more manageable), lots of mosquitoes (I did get used to them after a week or so), the island (Eleuthera) is fairly small so not too many places to go and explore

EDIT: For those more visually inclined, here are my pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_maher/tags/thebahamas

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#26

Post by count »

markessien wrote: post #2

The question is - can a network guru leave whatever company he is working at for a few months, and then come back with no problems?

I doubt they need a couple months of work? It sounds more like a week or so to get them pointed in the right direction.

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#27

Post by anamax »

markessien wrote: post #2

The question is - can a network guru leave whatever company he is working at for a few months, and then come back with no problems?

Why would the requested project take a couple of months? It sounded like a week or two at most, which makes it a "free" vacation.

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#28

Post by jeremymcanally »

brk wrote: post #9
tibbon wrote: post #4

Makes me wish for once I'd actually finished those Cisco networking classes.

I grok your point, but will make a mild counter argument. Networking classes alone would not give you any value in this case. In fact, they'd give you negative value because the real world never works like the text book, and offering advice that you yourself have not applied in practice is bad form. I never finished Cisco networking classes either. I never really started them in the first place. I did however help de…

If you take the official network classes from Cisco then you do spend a lot more time on real equipment than buried in a book.

// finished 4 semesters of CCNA instruction only to be too poor to afford the testing. :)

Re: Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday?

#30

Post by gsiener »

An overwhelming response, thanks for reaching out. I'll get back to your emails in the next 24 hrs but to answer the most common questions: - I'm expecting this to be ~1 week long trip. Spend some time checking out what we have, make some recommendations and have some fun.
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