Time to gut the network - thoughts?
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
- Post to any number of online forums, ask a local business group.
- So those would be SW or here in your opinion. Where else would you post?
Well the two big dogs of the market are great places to start, of course. Republic of IT is out there, but very small and silent. There are business forums for nearly every industry and general business ones, too. There is Reddit, of course. There is the whole realm of ServerFault and ExpertSexchange places. Obviously, I'd recommend ML a lot, it's a great place for this kind of advice. But there are a lot of places to go to just get a little info as to where to get more info on some IT buying basics.
Even places like Yahoo Answers exist for people with zero idea of where to go.
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
There is Reddit, of course.
Which you have previously said they don't know anything...
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
- You don't always have to know about alternatives.
- Then what is the point of the conversation?
To know when you need to question why you are getting advice. As I covered in the "how to question" part, it's normally about looking into motivation, not researching the alternatives. That you question why you were told to buy Cisco does not imply that you need to know personally what the other options are or were.
And that doesn't jive at all with this statement
If your consultant doesn't know about anything but Cisco, you need a new consultant, period. They aren't doing the job that you are paying them to do if they didn't even consider an alternative. So in this example, questioning the solution verified our worst fears and you are getting screwed (paying for advice that you are not getting.)
Why not? I see no conflict at all? One is about the consultant needing to know alteratives, the other is not. What is there to jive?
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
There is Reddit, of course.
Which you have previously said they don't know anything...
No, it's decently bad, but it will provide some feedback. You only need a little. Remember, getting alternatives is not the same as getting advice. You only need to know that advice is bad, not get alternative advice that is good (at this stage.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
- No one should ever be completely without a backup consultant.
- Again, I'll give you $100 if you can find one random consultant (that you don't know) to recommend something like Ubiquiti
Again, what's with UBNT? It's great, I love them, but how is it relevant to the conversation?
Specifically because they don't market much. That's my point. No one knows about companies who don't market.
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
You only need to know that advice is bad
And again, bad advice has been "because you've heard of their name"
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Specifically because they don't market much. That's my point. No one knows about companies who don't market.
Okay,,, but what does that matter? I've been very, very clear that I never suggested that I'm recommending that you find a product that doesn't market. So I'm unclear why what you state matters unless you are making a new point unrelated to what we've been discussing.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
And again, bad advice has been "because you've heard of their name"
Nope, that's what causes us to question if it might be bad advice. Not what makes it bad.
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Ok I'm done. I'm missing time with my family.
My point was, most of the people hiring consultants don't know what good or bad advice is. Look at SW. It's a perfect example.
I was saying statements like this:
Should have walked them out the door the moment that you found out that they didn't know even the basic underpinnings of networking or phones. What value did they bring if they aren't aware of how either work?
Are kind of ridiculous. If you yourself don't understand how they work, how would you decide they don't. Which is why people on SW are in the situations they are in.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
My point was, most of the people hiring consultants don't know what good or bad advice is. Look at SW. It's a perfect example.
Mine too, which is why I've provided guidance on when to look for red flags even when advice "sounds good" otherwise. And even gave examples of ways to look into it even with zero technical knowledge or resources.
That people don't know when advice is bad is the underpinning of this entire thread. Assuming that they can't tell when it is bad, here is when to question and then, here was how to question.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I was saying statements like this:
Should have walked them out the door the moment that you found out that they didn't know even the basic underpinnings of networking or phones. What value did they bring if they aren't aware of how either work?
Are kind of ridiculous. If you yourself don't understand how they work, how would you decide they don't. Which is why people on SW are in the situations they are in.
That one was different, though. That was that there was an IT person that could easily verify IT advice and could have determined that they were getting actively bad advice. That's a great example to discuss in a different scenario, but is not one caused by marketing (AFAIK.) You could argue, I suppose, that someone is marketing VLANs in this way, and I'll buy that, but I've not seen it personally and think it does not exist.
It's totally true that people are often unaware when bad advice is given. But this conversation (once we went down the marketing route) is about one specific criteria for questioning that. It in no way is the only thing that you do nor is it perfect, it's about improving your chances.
In the situation that you mention here, there is a bigger red flag - the vendor was a VAR and was not even paid to give advice. The sales guy was directly requested to sell them something, and he did. It's not really even advice at all, just a sales pitch. You could say that the resulting info was "advice" but it was from acknowledged sales people. So regardless of if we really call it advice or not... this is the epic "Don't Get Advice from Vendors or VARs" scenario, rather than the marketing one.
Why people on SW normally get into that particular pickle requires them to do the following....
- Get advice from a sales guy instead of getting any IT consultant involved at all.
- Not have internal IT that is prepared to oversee that scenario look into it
- Not have an IT consultant that covers that base instead of the internal IT person.
- Doesn't go on SW or ML and have the sales pitch reviewed before committing to it.
It requires all four steps at a minimum (or somewhere in 2/3 a mistake to be made, which happens of course) to have been missed and since the people are on SW specifically in your example, we can't use the excuse that they didn't know where to post for advice and review
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Currently my HP-2824 switch is acting as a router between my VLANs. Anyone know from experience if the Edgeswitches can do this? The specs claim they can.
Yes they can, any L3 switch can. But consider this as a good time to just remove the VLANs, too.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
4 Edgeswitch ES-48-500w
....
Suggestions of changes? other questions, things I should consider?So these are all PoE? Is that necessary? Have you considered a stacked switch environment instead? I love UBNT EdgeSwitches, but I don't think that they stack as well as some alternatives, even Netgear Prosafe. Moving to a single switch stack is the standard answer for a multi-switch environment.
If possible, I'd flatten the network and stack the switches as the first step. Simplicity is its own reward. Less to manage, better performance.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Even if the Edgeswitch can do this, should I? Or should I install an EdgeRouter to route between my VLANs? I currently don't have any ACLs between VLANs. I have VLANs because of legacy thinking (heck, my phone provider is still practically demanding a VLAN for the VOIP phones).
Put in QoS for your RTP traffic (the REAL voice traffic, not SIP), flatten the network. Get QoS end to end, the place where it matters most (generally the only place that it matters) is on the WAN interface and often VLANs get chopped off before that point. Are you sure that you even have QoS today?
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Put in QoS for your RTP traffic (the REAL voice traffic, not SIP),
Ah you said RDP before and I was so confused.
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Currently my HP-2824 switch is acting as a router between my VLANs. Anyone know from experience if the Edgeswitches can do this? The specs claim they can.
Yes they can, any L3 switch can. But consider this as a good time to just remove the VLANs, too.
Do you ( @Dashrender ) have to have a DMZ for anything? Or are you completely cloud now with your EMR portal?
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Ok I'm done. I'm missing time with my family.
My point was, most of the people hiring consultants don't know what good or bad advice is. Look at SW. It's a perfect example.
I was saying statements like this:
Should have walked them out the door the moment that you found out that they didn't know even the basic underpinnings of networking or phones. What value did they bring if they aren't aware of how either work?
Are kind of ridiculous. If you yourself don't understand how they work, how would you decide they don't. Which is why people on SW are in the situations they are in.
Yeah this site is going down hill fast.. all it is is threads that turn into arguments anymore.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Put in QoS for your RTP traffic (the REAL voice traffic, not SIP),
Ah you said RDP before and I was so confused.
Whoops. Yes RTP, the Real Time Protocol.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I guess I don't see the point in VLANs with no firewall rules.
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
Of course the use of VLANs does allow for VLAN X to have a higher QOS level, but if the switch is saturated by traffic on other VLANs, I suppose the switch should give priority to the QOS ratings, but I probably have problems to fix.
Ah, actually there is a mistake here. VLANs, as we've discussed, don't provide for QoS. That we know. But what was being mentioned here is that without firewall rules, there isn't any effective QoS at all.
QoS only ever kicks in when something is totally saturated, otherwise there is nothing to do. But the issue is that your switches are effectively never a bottleneck. If they are, fix that.
QoS exists, for all intents and purposes, for one spot only and that is the bottleneck of when the LAN hits the WAN. When it does, the QoS from the VLANing is stripped off. So if you don't have QoS where it makes a difference, what was the point of it all along?
This is the fear of VLANs, well one of them. Not only do the VLANs make things more complex, but they also hide when the QoS might have actually been completely left off. Yes, a checkbox called QoS was checked, but there isn't any useful QoS on the network if it is not handled by a rule in the router(s).
This isn't a legacy thinking problem, VLANs are not a legacy thing. It's also not legacy in other potential ways. No matter what era you go back to, VLANs were never for performance or QoS and in no era was QoS on the LAN a replacement for QoS to the WAN. This isn't a consultant that didn't "keep up" with modern thinking. This was wrong in every era, in every scenario if there was nothing on the WAN link to do the QoS there.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
FYI - in Q1 of 2017, the plan is to replace the digital phones with IP phones, this is the reason for the POE switches in Building 2.
Is the pure PoE because essentially every device connects "through a phone"?
