Opinions on really large networks that have their downfalls.

I was wondering what you guys thought about networks that are really large that have "problems". On the helpdesk that I work, I've gotten calls where a person's account was locked out for no reason caused by the customer. Outlook would prompt for a username and password and when the person closes the box (because there is no username and password, everyone uses smartcards) it counts as a bad password attempt and after three of those, the account locks and the person needs the call the service desk. There are other things caused by the "system" that create problems at no fault to the user like MS Office uninstalling itself. I've heard a lot of negative stuff about the workstations used on this network. I hear so much about how they are slow (which is kind of true to an extent due to something called Guardian Edge and a bunch of other things) and how the network is slow. I can sort of sympathize on some of this but for the helpdesk I work on, it's probably one of the largest networks in the world. Do you guys ever have so many people complain? I mean, I'd like to see how some other company would handle the sheer number of users. A lot of people calling in seem to just want their problems fixed and are happy when it is fixed. Then there are others who expect everything to be blazing fast such as when deleting an item in outlook, they expect it to be deleted .0002345235 nano seconds later on the blackberry which is synced up with outlook.

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Comments

Everyone

Define "one of the largest networks in the world". How many endpoints? How many users? Are all calls handled by the Help Desk you work at, at your location?

IIRC you work on a Government contract, and while large, it might not be as large as you think.

Really it sounds pretty typical, especially for Government systems. Although I haven't worked a Help Desk in over a decade now.

CodeBlox

NMCI. Nuff said?

There are three helpdesk in three different states.

wrwarwick

CodeBlox wrote: »

NMCI. Nuff said? There are three helpdesk in three different states.

I figured it was NMCI from your first post. I worked at the Norfolk help desk a few years back, and yes, the network is huge. They would always tell us it is the largest network in the world behind the Internet.

Not sure of anything you can do really. It is just the issues caused with such a beast of a network.

CodeBlox

I'm working on the Norfolk helpdesk now! How long did you stay there before moving on? This is my 5th month here, and I'm kinda wanting to get off of these phones and do something else. Doesn't look like that will happen around here as most everything involves sitting at the phone all day, even the NOC.

Everyone

CodeBlox wrote: »

NMCI. Nuff said? There are three helpdesk in three different states.

Yeah, Google your own network, that whole thing is a disaster. The Air Force and Army didn't do much better in their efforts either. Old PCs + small pipes at many locations = painfully slow. I absolutely hate trying to do anything on a PC on the ANG network I work on once a month.

Big corporations actually do it much better. My company has over 70,000 employees worldwide. The "Global Support Center" is our "Help Desk". Each facility (we have many all over the world) has at least 1 local IT person, depending on size. The Global Support Center takes all the help desk calls, and routes tickets to the appropriate location. There are 3 data centers, all servers/applications/services/etc. are clustered between 2 of the data centers for high availability, and the 3rd is for disaster recovery.

I'm not sure what kind of bandwidth we have, but let me put it this way, I work from home over 450 miles away from the main data center. Response time to any of the servers for me is always less than 50 ms.

wrwarwick

CodeBlox wrote: »

I'm working on the Norfolk helpdesk now! How long did you stay there before moving on? This is my 5th month here, and I'm kinda wanting to get off of these phones and do something else. Doesn't look like that will happen around here as most everything involves sitting at the phone all day, even the NOC.

I was there for 5 months before moving on to a level 2 position with another company. That was 2008 - I'm now in the Atlanta area doing network design and implementation for GE. If you have the motivation and work hard, you can move up quickly (along with a little luck along the way

)

CodeBlox

Makes for good entry level experience and I have learned a lot for sure but sometimes this place drives me bonkers. I hope to be where you are (as far a career goes) in a while!