day of a voice guy

empc4000xl

Come to work about 20 min late as usual. Not intending on taking any calls for a while. So my Karma cathes up with me and the 1st call is a outtage. Now since Phones are tied to them I have to support them, but we are not network support(even though we are secretly moving that way). So I ask the guy what is the IP of the switch so I can telnet in. He didnt know it, so I asked him for a router or a different switch so I can get into the network. They don't know any(keep in mind these are the network guys, no other jobs, just support the network). I look through my drawings that I keep of there network and don't find any because they didnt' provide us with any, so all the IP's I had they changed and they changed there passwords also. So we take the swtich down and they guy consoles in and we find out the switch is dead. So okay, that's easy right? They have a spare on site, but dont have the passwords for that switch either, even though we shipped it with the defaults we used for there other equipment they buy from us. Well I ask him to perform a password recovery and turn on the uplink ports and it should be ok. Sounds easy, well he didn't know how to do one, so we have to have me remote desktop into a PC with a console, do a password recovery and get the switch in the network. So after I get access to the switch they remember they changed the IP addressing scheme, so they asked me to change it to the old switch. Done that, plugged it in, but we can't telnet into it. So I ask them for some sort of default gateway I can use to get the to point the switch at. They really didn't know any. Its around 4pm now. I have also deal with other issues as they were making changes. We finally find the right IP's get the switch goign and there phones are back up. The day is saved. Even though I had my own pile of work I didn't get done because of the outtage.



I love my job

networker050184

All in the day of a voice person. Most regular network techs are scared of VoIP and they usually try to wash their hands of anything with the word VoIP tied to it. Even if the data is also down you have to bend over backwards to prove its not a VoIP issue. By that time you can usually fix it yourself anyway.

Just more tools to add to my tool bag

empc4000xl

My instructor told me VOIP was the way to go as far as cisco. You learn the VOIP, the routing and swtich, I deal with ASA's, and a bunch of other crap. You don't master any of them, but you get to touch it all.

Mrock4

I love voice. I was fortunate enough to get a lot of great experience with it, but I'm afraid I'm out of practice now. I too find my day doesn't have enough hours for everything, but I try to fit it all in. I still absolutely love project management though. Get to be on the tech side but with more oversight of things.

laidbackfreak

sounds like a good day to me..... frustrating as hell tho

malcybood

I find myself in the same position regularly being the network admin for a 1200 user Voip network / 1800 user data network.

Our VoIP platform is pretty stable now so if something "stops working" it is usually linked to some issue on the infrastructure i.e. switch, router, ISP MPLS core are the main culprits unless we patch the call server or something and things go knees up obviously!

I agree with the statement that alot of data guys will try to fobb off voice work as "the network is fine it must be a voice issue".....Saying that you get the same vice versa where you have voice engineers that have come from a TDM traditional PBX background that will run a mile rather than try and find out the IP address of a problematic phone, so it's swings and roundabouts.

As much as I hate to say it, in the converged world we're heading towards, these are the guys that will struggle to hold onto their jobs if they don't adapt to the other technology as you really need both these days to be classed as a network engineer, or at least an understanding on where to look for an issue!

Anyway back to the original post, keep up the good work empc4000xl