Time to gut the network - thoughts?
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
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? There are only two skills sets for VoIP to have... and thinking that VLANs do QoS indicates basically zero knowledge of either. That's super basic stuff. It doesn't require any special phone knowledge to know why that's impossible. This means that they weren't up to the knowledge level expected before someone starts to learn about VoIP specifically.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I put 10 Gb on the table mainly because it's actual cost over 1 Gb links was around $100 more per link and it would give me a chance to - just do it.
But as I mentioned above, when I put my IT hat one, you know, the one where we do what's best for the company - which includes being financially responsible - well, I suppose I should just save that $200 because it's really not going to gain us anything.
It if REALLY gains you nothing, then yeah, that's just $200 wasted. Not a tonne, but not nothing either. Think if there is ever a time that having $200 extra in the budget would have been of value. Then think if this decision might make it harder to get needed money in the future - whether for IT or a new office chair or a desk or whatever.
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@travisdh1 said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Are the fiber links setup with Link Aggregation? If not, that could make a big difference.
No, but it really won't make that much difference from a throughput to the server, because the servers are limited to 1 Gb links too.
The more we post, the more the 10 Gb links will be a complete waste unless I also install new NICs into my servers.
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The more we post, the more the 10 Gb links will be a complete waste unless I also install new NICs into my servers.
It's really nice when you have it, but costs a good bit.
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
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? There are only two skills sets for VoIP to have... and thinking that VLANs do QoS indicates basically zero knowledge of either. That's super basic stuff. It doesn't require any special phone knowledge to know why that's impossible. This means that they weren't up to the knowledge level expected before someone starts to learn about VoIP specifically.
Time out - while VLANs themselves don't do QoS, giving a VLAN a higher QoS over all other VLANs (which was their recommendation) does, right?
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I put 10 Gb on the table mainly because it's actual cost over 1 Gb links was around $100 more per link and it would give me a chance to - just do it.
But as I mentioned above, when I put my IT hat one, you know, the one where we do what's best for the company - which includes being financially responsible - well, I suppose I should just save that $200 because it's really not going to gain us anything.
It if REALLY gains you nothing, then yeah, that's just $200 wasted. Not a tonne, but not nothing either. Think if there is ever a time that having $200 extra in the budget would have been of value. Then think if this decision might make it harder to get needed money in the future - whether for IT or a new office chair or a desk or whatever.
Great points - and no, $200 spent now will have zero or near zero impact on my ability to spend in the future. Though, as additional posts point out, to make it have any real value, I would need to upgrade my VM hosts with 10 Gb NICs, so now the price is even higher, and while there would be a potential for a small amount of gain, the gain to value is really really low.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I put 10 Gb on the table mainly because it's actual cost over 1 Gb links was around $100 more per link and it would give me a chance to - just do it.
But as I mentioned above, when I put my IT hat one, you know, the one where we do what's best for the company - which includes being financially responsible - well, I suppose I should just save that $200 because it's really not going to gain us anything.
It if REALLY gains you nothing, then yeah, that's just $200 wasted. Not a tonne, but not nothing either. Think if there is ever a time that having $200 extra in the budget would have been of value. Then think if this decision might make it harder to get needed money in the future - whether for IT or a new office chair or a desk or whatever.
Great points - and no, $200 spent now will have zero or near zero impact on my ability to spend in the future. Though, as additional posts point out, to make it have any real value, I would need to upgrade my VM hosts with 10 Gb NICs, so now the price is even higher, and while there would be a potential for a small amount of gain, the gain to value is really really low.
Well in theory if you have two hosts and they were both "balls to the wall" with old 1Gb/s links and connected fully over the link you'd push into where there is "some" value. And presumably every host you have has multiple 1Gb/s links, so you need more than 1Gb/s "WAN" here to handle that.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
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? There are only two skills sets for VoIP to have... and thinking that VLANs do QoS indicates basically zero knowledge of either. That's super basic stuff. It doesn't require any special phone knowledge to know why that's impossible. This means that they weren't up to the knowledge level expected before someone starts to learn about VoIP specifically.
Time out - while VLANs themselves don't do QoS, giving a VLAN a higher QoS over all other VLANs (which was their recommendation) does, right?
Sure, QoS works regardless of the VLAN. So putting in a VLAN in order to get QoS is completely false.
So there are two possibilities that I see...
- They aren't qualified to do what they are doing, even at the most basic "has never seen VoIP" level.
- Worse case, they DO know what they are doing and were actively making your environment more expensive and complex in order to charge you for more work (theft.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
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? There are only two skills sets for VoIP to have... and thinking that VLANs do QoS indicates basically zero knowledge of either. That's super basic stuff. It doesn't require any special phone knowledge to know why that's impossible. This means that they weren't up to the knowledge level expected before someone starts to learn about VoIP specifically.
Time out - while VLANs themselves don't do QoS, giving a VLAN a higher QoS over all other VLANs (which was their recommendation) does, right?
Sure, QoS works regardless of the VLAN. So putting in a VLAN in order to get QoS is completely false.
So there are two possibilities that I see...
- They aren't qualified to do what they are doing, even at the most basic "has never seen VoIP" level.
- Worse case, they DO know what they are doing and were actively making your environment more expensive and complex in order to charge you for more work (theft.)
I wasn't the expert - I was hiring them then to be the experts. I did do the install of the switches though, based on their direction at the time, I was paying them for the installations directions/suggestions.
So I guess that mostly makes them fall into #1.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
I wasn't the expert - I was hiring them then to be the experts.
That's the problem, they took advantage of that situation. Either by not learning the basics and selling themselves as experts, or by outright trying to screw you.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Legacy understanding, and the belief (by the phone installation company) that VLANs would allow QOS for the IP phones.
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? There are only two skills sets for VoIP to have... and thinking that VLANs do QoS indicates basically zero knowledge of either. That's super basic stuff. It doesn't require any special phone knowledge to know why that's impossible. This means that they weren't up to the knowledge level expected before someone starts to learn about VoIP specifically.
Time out - while VLANs themselves don't do QoS, giving a VLAN a higher QoS over all other VLANs (which was their recommendation) does, right?
Sure, QoS works regardless of the VLAN. So putting in a VLAN in order to get QoS is completely false.
So there are two possibilities that I see...
- They aren't qualified to do what they are doing, even at the most basic "has never seen VoIP" level.
- Worse case, they DO know what they are doing and were actively making your environment more expensive and complex in order to charge you for more work (theft.)
I wasn't the expert - I was hiring them then to be the experts. I did do the install of the switches though, based on their direction at the time, I was paying them for the installations directions/suggestions.
So I guess that mostly makes them fall into #1.
No way to know that. I see why you'd think that. But they can NEVER risk changing their "screw the customer to generate more work" recommendations for a one off case where you are doing the work. What if you talked to other customers and they found out that the recommendations changed when you did the hourly work? They can't let that happen.
ANd they can't change it because... what if you changed your mind and had them do the work? And why would they maintain good docs for customers like you and bad ones for other customers? That's effort and cost that they don't need to bother with. If they are unethical, they don't take time to be ethical sometimes. And they still hope that your network breaks and that you will hire them to fix it later.
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Well then I have to assume that the continued chorus line of "we recommend you put the VOIP phones on their own VLAN for QoS" is showing that they are uneducated in modern networking, no?
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Well then I have to assume that the continued chorus line of "we recommend you put the VOIP phones on their own VLAN for QoS" is showing that they are uneducated in modern networking, no?
That's correct. There ARE use cases for that, but QoS is not it. In fact, that very slightly undermines QoS.
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For correct QoS for SIP traffic, for example, you want to prioritize RTP, not SIP. If you do a VLAN for QoS, you fail to do that and all of the non-VoIP traffic on that network gets prioritized, too, along with the important stuff. A big deal, not generally, but it fails to work as well as better QoS methods.
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@Dashrender said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Well then I have to assume that the continued chorus line of "we recommend you put the VOIP phones on their own VLAN for QoS" is showing that they are uneducated in modern networking, no?
This falls into the same general category of "The average of any market is poor. The average business will fail. The average system deployment is expensive, slow and insecure. The average advice is just a sales pitch, not good advice. And on, and on."
Nothing should ever be considered "good" because it is popular. If anything, the popularity of an idea, product or concept should put it under more scrutiny, not less.
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Which, in turn, is like the No One Ever Got Fired for Buying.... article. It's not that Cisco is always wrong, but if your "consultant" recommends Cisco you should be more wary of him than if he suggested Juniper or Ubiquiti. It doens't mean that Cisco is bad or that the consultant isn't knowledgeable. It simply is because nearly all bad advice looks the same. Good advice can look like almost anything.
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That's a great article idea... Patterns of Bad Advice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
Which, in turn, is like the No One Ever Got Fired for Buying.... article. It's not that Cisco is always wrong, but if your "consultant" recommends Cisco you should be more wary of him than if he suggested Juniper or Ubiquiti. It doens't mean that Cisco is bad or that the consultant isn't knowledgeable. It simply is because nearly all bad advice looks the same. Good advice can look like almost anything.
There was a gigantic thread about this before. If it's a real consultant, and they recommend Cisco, why would you question it? You're using a consultant because you don't know what you need.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
There was a gigantic thread about this before. If it's a real consultant, and they recommend Cisco, why would you question it?
You question it because it's a pattern that is extremely likely to be bad advice and extremely unlikely to be good advice but is highly predictable to be the sign of being scammed. The chances that the advice is good is too low to not question it. It's because it is a predictable scam response.
It only seems weird to "question" it because people get confused about what questioning means. They think that it is denying, which is totally different.
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@stacksofplates said in Time to gut the network - thoughts?:
If it's a real consultant, and they recommend Cisco, why would you question it?
What you are questioning is if they are a true consultant.
