Other contractors...
So I have an interesting one today at one of the many offices I end up at.
There was a meeting and nobody could get online in the conference room in order to pull up their presentation, thankfully we at least had 24 hours notice as he had tried to do this yesterday as a test but couldn't get it to work, to my surprise, he was truthful in the ticket stating that both the wired and wireless connections did not work to this one room.
Anyway, after finding that out, and opening the network cabinet on that floor, I find the following:
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The patch panels had been moved within the cabinet (from being at the top, to being at the bottom)
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Our switch had been replaced (new model, perhaps the old one died, but unlikely)
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None of the cabling came anywhere near close the single 2 year old picture I had of the cabinet.
So after asking around, I found that the floor had had a overhaul 6 months ago, and as part of that they apparently "upgraded" the network on the floor, the guy also noted this was around the same time his iPhone couldn't leech off the wireless anymore.
The only upgrade I could find was the switch, it had both gbic ports filled, with only one in use.
So after a good 30 mins of going back and forward with my single cable tester, I managed to find that none of the network outlets in the conference room or any of the AP's on the floor were connected to the patch panels. I also find that the cables had just been removed from the patch panels, so after googling the needed cable sequence (give me a break, I was frustrated enough already) I managed to reconnect the disconnected wall ports to the patch panel, and confirm them working (well, at least the WAP port in the conference room). So I plugged them into spare ports on the switch, only to find they would not work, I found later (this turned into an all day job) that they had disabled all the extra ports on the switch (not a bad thing from a security standpoint), so I ended up blowing away the config and doing my own, as a quick workaround for the meeting I simply disconnected 1 of the working ports.
Seriously, OTHER CONTRACTORS, Y U... ANYTHING!
/rant
Posted Mar 13, 2012, 8:15 AM UTC
Find out who hired the contractors, and charge them the cost of your team's repair work?
I don't have a copy of the SLA they are under, but my regional manager basically said that we are billing this under a different rate, blah blah blah, he got my interest back when he said double pay, but sadly not for me, just from the company due to the cause of the problem.
Glad I get to stay out of the political/payment side of things.
Also, sadly not a team, was just me because it was reported as a single rooms net down, as it is, if we had known it was a floor, might have had a 2nd tech, but that's it really. It was nice to be able to deal with just a single problem all day I will admit in reflection.
Pity you don't get a share of the pay. It'd also have been nice if the manager doing the charging did something like pay for a team lunch out of the profit.
I got some of the meeting food as my extra pay ;). The catering was half-good too, the usual sandwiches/wraps, but some mini pies and sausage rolls as well (NOM).
As for the manager treating our local "team" out, about the best we could hope for is McDonalds. Not that I would complain about that. He's a good guy, but "afraid" (not the best way to put it) of auditors and being able to justify everything.