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Doing this type of job You undergo lots of experiences. I could write a book about all that, what happened in all these years - especially when it comes to troubleshooting of problems. Luckily the devices of Cisco are pretty reliable; I rarely had a real fight solving a problem derived from the hard- or software. Most of the time it have been the customer’s employees, who always finds new ways to surprise You. It ranges from bringing the home DSL router to work ( and of course the DHCP server is still switched on ) to downloading odd software from the internet disturbing the network traffic. A close look is also required to find infrared steering devices, which reflect received LAN traffic back into the LAN puzzling the switches as they receive packets from a specific MAC address from 2 directions. A great thing is also a small office switch (non Cisco), which blocks(!) spanning tree. It’s a matter of time one will connect 2 lines from the next workgroup switch to it, which blows the LAN in a minute leaving a whole site unable to work.
Although I had a specific role I also enjoyed to put a sales rep hat on, when I talked to the customer and in fact had some success. You know, that You are always the second best, if it comes to the very specific production related requirements. The question is how far You can reach out as a standard IT provider. And how much responsibility You can bear. Having this in mind I made the customers not only to buy network extensions, but also servers and applications.
So my work was never boring. I never felt the need of external education, because I perfectly managed all demands, educated myself and by the way got it all for free with no extra time away. No training can give You all the experience of Wireshark, M0n0wall, fli4l, Nortel, Linux etc and of course all the Cisco knowledge.
Nevertheless I participated in training for special things like ITIL, Cisco QoS/CoS, Routing and Protocols to name a few. Beside that I was fortunate to have enough space at home to have a test lab. Thank You ebay, that You provided me with device types I didn’t work with in daytime and finally there is still GNS3.
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