Monthly Archives: January 2024

A Handy Acronym for Troubleshooting

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While I may be getting further from my days of being an active IT troubleshooter it doesn’t mean that I can’t keep refining my technique. As I spend time looking back on my formative years of doing troubleshooting either from a desktop perspective or from a larger enterprise role I find that there were always a few things that were critical to understand about the issues I was facing.

Sadly, getting that information out of people in the middle of a crisis wasn’t always super easy. I often ran into people that were very hard to communicate with during an outage or a big problem. Sometimes they were complicit because they made the mistake that caused it. They also bristled at the idea of someone else coming to fix something they couldn’t or wouldn’t. Just as often I ran into people that loved to give me lots of information that wasn’t relevant to the issue. Whether they were nervous talkers or just had a bad grasp on the situation it resulted in me having to sift through all that data to tease out the information I needed.

The Method

Today, as I look back on my career I would like to posit an idea of collecting the information that you need in order to effectively troubleshoot an issue.

  • Scope: How big is this problem? Is it just a single system or is it an entire building? Is it every site? If you don’t know how widespread the problem is you can’t really begin to figure out how to fix it. You need to properly understand the scope. That also includes understanding what the scope of the system for the business is. Taking down a reservation system for an airline is a bigger deal that guest Wi-Fi being down at a restaurant.
  • Timeline: When did this start happening? What occurred right before? Were there any issues that you think might have contributed here. It’s important to make the people you’re working with understand that a proper timeline is critical because it allows you to eliminate issues. You don’t want to spend hours trying to find the root cause in one system only to learn it wasn’t even powered on at the time and the real cause is in a switch that was just plugged in.
  • Frequency: Is this the first time this has happened? Does it happen randomly or seemingly on a schedule? This one helps you figure out if it’s systemic and regular or just cosmic rays. It also forces your team or customers to think about when it’s occurring and how far back the issue goes. If you come in thinking it’s a one-off that happened yesterday only to find out it’s actually been happening for weeks or months you’ll take a much different approach.
  • Urgency: Is this an emergency? Are we talking about a hospital ER being down or a typo in a documentation page? Do I need to roll out to spend the whole night fixing this or is it something that I can look at on a scheduled visit. Be sure to note the reasoning behind why they choose to make it a priority too. Some customers love to make everything a dire emergency just to ensure they get someone out right away. At least until it’s time to pay the emergency call rate.

A four step plan that’s easy to remember. Scope, Timeline, Frequency, Urgency. STFU.

Memory Aids

Okay, you can stop giggling now. I did that on purpose. In part to help you remember what the acronym was. In part to help you take a big of a relaxed approach to troubleshooting. In, in some ways, to help you learn to get those chatterboxes and pushy stakeholders off your back. If your methodology includes STFU they might figure out quickly that you need to be the one doing the talking and they need to be the one giving the answers, not the other way around.

And yes, each of these little steps would have saved me so much time in my old role. For example:

  • Scope – Was the whole network down? Or did one of the kids just unplug your Ethernet cable?
  • Frequency – Has this server seriously been beeping every 30 seconds for the last two years? Did you bother to look at the error message?
  • Timeline – Yes, I would assume that when you put that lab switch into your network was when the problem with VTP started.
  • Urgency – Do you really need me to drive three hours to press the F1 key on a keyboard?

I seriously have dozens of examples but these are four of the stories I tell all of the time to show just how some basic understanding can help people do more than they think.

Tom’s Take

People love mnemonic devices to remember things. Whether it’s My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine (Pizzas) to remember the 8 planets and that one weird one or All People Seem To Need Data Processing to remember the seven layers of the OSI Model. I remember thinking through the important need-to-know information for doing some basic initial troubleshooting and how easily it fit into an acronym that could be handy for other things too when you’re in a stressful situation. Feel free to use it.

Painless Progress with My Ubiquiti Upgrade

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I’m not a wireless engineer by trade. I don’t have a lab of access points that I’m using to test the latest and greatest solutions. I leave that to my friends. I fall more in the camp of having a working wireless network that meets my needs and keeps my family from yelling at me when the network is down.

Ubiquitous Usage

For the last five years my house has been running on Ubiquiti gear. You may recall I did a review back in 2018 after having it up and running for a few months. Since then I’ve had no issues. In fact, the only problem I had was not with the gear but with the machine I installed the controller software on. Turns out hard disk drives do eventually go bad and I needed to replace it and get everything up and running again. Which was my intention when it went down sometime in 2021. Of course, life being what it is I deprioritized the recovery of the system. I realized after more than a year that my wireless network hadn’t hiccuped once. Sure, I couldn’t make any changes to it but the joy of having a stable environment is that you don’t need to make constant changes. Still, I was impressed that I had no issues the necessitated my recovery of my controller software.

Flash forward to late 2023. I’m talking with some of the folks at Ubiquiti about a totally unrelated matter and I just happened to mention that I was impressed at how long the system had been running. They asked me what hardware I was working with and when I told them they laughed and said I needed to check out their new stuff. I was just about to ask them what I should look at when they told me they were going to ship me a package to install and try out.

Dreaming of Ease

Tom Hildebrand really did a great job because I got a UPS shipment at the beginning of December with a Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, a new U6 Pro AP, and a G5 Flex Camera. As soon as I had the chance I unboxed the UDM SE and started looking over the installation process. The UDM SE is an all-in-one switch, firewall, and controller for the APs. I booted the system and started to do the setup process. I panicked for a moment because I realized that my computer was currently doing something connected to my old network and I didn’t want to have to dig through the pile to find a laptop to connect in via Ethernet to configure things.

That’s when my first surprise popped up. The UDM SE allows you to download the UniFi app to your phone and do the setup process from a mobile device. I was able to configure the UDM SE with my network settings and network names and get it staged and ready to do without the need for a laptop. That was a big win in my book. Lugging your laptop to a remote site for an installation isn’t always feasible. And counting on someone to have the right software isn’t either. How many times have you asked a junior admin or remote IT person what terminal program they’re using only to be met with a blank stare?

Once the UDM SE was up and running, getting the new U6 AP joined was easy. It joined the controller, downloaded the firmware updates and adopted my new (old) network settings. Since I didn’t have my old controller software handy I just recreated the old network settings from scratch. I took the opportunity to clean out some older compatibility issues that I was ready to be rid of thanks to an old Xbox 360 and some other ancient devices that were long ago retired. Clean implementations for the win. After the U6 was ready to go I installed it in my office and got ready to move my old AP to a different location to provide coverage.

The UDM SE detected that there were two APs that were running but part of a different controller. It asked me if I wanted to take them over and I happily responded in the affirmative. Sadly, when asked for the password to the old controller I drew a blank because that was two years ago and I can barely remember what I eat for breakfast. Ubiquiti has a solution for that and with some judicious use of the reset button I was able to reset the APs and join them to the UDM SE with no issues. Now everything is humming along smoothly. The camera is still waiting to be deployed once I figure out where I want to put it.

How is it all working? Zero complaints so far. Much like my previous deployment everything is humming right along and all my devices joined the new network without complaint. All the APs are running on new firmware and my new settings mean fewer questions about why something isn’t working because the kids are on a different network than the printer or one of the devices can’t download movies or something like that. Given how long I was running the old network without any form of control I’m glad it picked right up and kept going. Scheduling the right downtime at the beginning of the month may have had something to do with that but otherwise I’m trilled to see how it’s going.

Tom’s Take

Now that I’ve been running Ubiquiti for the last five years how would I rate it? I’d say for people that don’t want to rely on consumer APs from a big box store to run your home network you need to check Ubiquiti out. I know my friend Darrel Derosia is doing some amazing enterprise things with it in Memphis but I don’t need to run an entire arena. What I need is seamless connectivity for my devices without worry about what’s going to go down when I walk upstairs. My home network budget precludes enterprise gear. It fits nicely with Ubiquiti’s price point and functionality. Whether I’m trying to track down a lost Nintendo Switch or limit bandwidth so game updates aren’t choking out my cable modem I’m pleased with the performance and flexibility I have so far. I’m still putting the UDM SE through it’s paces and once I get the camera installed and working with it I’ll have more to say but rest assured I’m very thankful for Tom and his team for letting me kick the tires on some awesome hardware.

Disclaimer: The hardware mentioned in this post was provided by Ubiquiti at no charge to me. Ubiquiti did not ask for a review of their equipment and the opinions and perspectives represented in this post are mine and mine alone with not expectation of editorial review or compensation.

Back On Track in 2024

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It’s time to look back at my year that was and figure out where this little train jumped off the rails. I’ll be the first to admit that I ran out of steam chugging along toward the end of the year. My writing output was way down for reasons I still can’t quite figure out. Everything has felt like a much bigger task to accomplish throughout the year. To that end, let’s look at what I wanted to do and how it came out:

  • Keeping Track of Things: I did a little bit better with this one, aside from my post schedule. I tried to track things much more and understand deadlines and such. I didn’t always succeed like I wanted to but at least I made the effort.
  • Creating Evergreen Content: This one was probably a miss. I didn’t create nearly as much content this year as I have in years past. What little I did create sometimes felt unfocused and less impactful. Part of that has to do with the overall move away from written content to something more video and audio focused. However, even my other content like Tomversations was significantly reduced this year. I will say that the one episode that I did record that dealt with InfiniBand was actually really good and I think it’s going to have some life in the future.
  • Insuring Intentionality: I tried to be more intentional with things in 2023 and we see how this turned out. I think I need to make sure to put that more at the front of my mind in 2024 as we look at the way that writing and other content creation is being transformed. In fact, the number of times that I’ve had to fight my AI-based autocomplete to make it stop finishing sentences for me reminds me how intentional I need to be in order to get the right things out there that I want to say. And before you say “just turn it off” I want to see how trainable it is to actually do what I want. So maybe part of the intentionality is making it intentional that I’m going to beat this thing.

Looking back at where I was makes me realize that content creation is always going to be a battle and so it making sure I have time for it. That means prioritizing the schedule for 2024, which isn’t going to be easy. Tech Field Day is now a part of the Futurum Group, which means I’m going to need to figure out how my role is going to be different in the coming months. I’m still going to be a part of Field Day but I also know I’m going to need to figure out how to navigate new coworkers and new goals. I have also been named a course director for my council’s Wood Badge course in the fall. That means doing some of the hardest leadership I’ve ever had to do, which I’m sure I’ll be documenting along the way here. As to what I want to specifically work on in 2024, what needs the most help?

  • Reaching Out For Help: Not surprisingly, this is something I have always needed help with (pun intended). I’ve never been one to ask for help with things until it’s almost to the point of disaster. So I need to be better in 2024 about asking for the help I need or think I’m going to need before it gets to be a huge problem. But that also means asking for assistance with things early on to help me get on the right track. Help isn’t always just doing things. It’s about making sure that you have the right ideas before you start down the track. So I’m going to make sure I’m ready to get the guidance and assistance I need when it’s needed and not when it’s an attempt to save the day.
  • Prioritizing Scheduling Intelligently: Part of the struggle in 2023 was making sure I was prioritizing things appropriately. Yes, work things always take priority as they should. But It’s also about other things that are part of my calendar that I need to get a handle on. I’ve done a good job of letting some of them go over the last year so the next phase is taming the ones that are left. Making sure the important meetings have their place and time but also making sure that those meetings have prep time and other pieces in the calendar so they don’t push anything else out of the way. It’s not enough to just block time and hope for the best. It’s about knowing what needs to be done and making it happen the right way at the right time.
  • Staying Consistent with Content: After the rise of GPT assistants and the flood of video content in 2023 I realize that I like writing more and more. Not having something complete my thoughts for me. Not jumping in front of a video camera to do stuff cold. I like to write. As much as I love the weekly Rundown show that we do I love writing the scripts almost as much. My Zen is in the keyboard, not the camera. I’ll still be creating video content but my focus will be in creating more of the writing that I like so much. I’ve already been experimenting with LinkedIn as a platform and I think I’ll be doing some more there too. Maybe not as much as I hope to do here but we will see how that goes.

Tom’s Take

We all have challenges we have to overcome. That’s the nature of life. As the industry has changed and evolved over time the way we communicate our ideas and perspectives to everyone has had to change as well. If you’d have told me ten years ago that Twitter would be a ghost town and Youtube would be everyone’s preferred learning tool I might have laughed. If you’d have told me five years ago I couldn’t have foreseen how things would turn out. The way we make it work is by staying on track and taking the challenges as they come. Switching social media platforms or embracing new content styles is all part of the game. But working with your strengths and making people smile and helping them to be informed is part of what this whole game is all about. 2024 is going to be another year of challenges and opportunities to shine. I hope the make the most of it and stay on track to success.