*explosion*

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

Short time reader, first time poster. Hi everybody!

Let me preface this by saying that I'm the sickest I've been in a year, but, because I have no sick time available to me, I am here at work, talking to ridiculous customers who have no idea what they're doing.

Anyway, call rant follows:

Caller wanted to use public IP addresses on his LAN. I told him there are two ways to do this: 1) turn NAT off in the router and assign the addresses to the computers or 2) use an IP Map to map a public address to the computer's private address. The dickhead had NAT enabled, DHCP off and was using privates on his LAN. So I recommended an IP Map. He responded by saying that he has a bunch of t1 connections with CISCO routers and they don't force him to do that and, oh yeah, he knows what he's doing. He was convinced it was a product limitation of our router that wouldn't let him assign the public ip address in his computer's tcp/ip settings. I told him that if he wanted to do that, he would have to turn NAT off. He didn't know what NAT was. And then he told me "you obviously don't know very much about networking."

The guy obviously didn't want any help -- he just wanted to bitch about how our router wouldn't do something impossible. If he had just shut up and let me do my job -- which I know how to do very well, thank you -- he would have had a static, public ip address assigned to his computer in 2 seconds. But no, he decided he wanted to be superior, despite the fact that HE WAS CALLING FOR SUPPORT. Anyway, he totally harshed my mellow. Way to go, asshole.

Comments

[jecook]

Welcome aboard.

I would like to possibly get through a winter season without getting sick, but alas, it does not look to be the case.

::sniffles::

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

sigh...i am usually pretty healthy but i was around a bunch of smokers friday night and i think that pushed me over the edge.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

thanks!

[mawz.livejournal.com]

Actually, you can do NAT with public IP space, unless the router's OS is coded to not allow that.

It's a supremely dumb idea, as you will be unable to reach random parts of the net (Unless you actually own the block you're using) but some people are indeed dumb enough to do this.

yes, I've BTDT.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

oh yeah...our routers let you do publics on the lan with nat on. he could have done that, too. but he would have had to change the lan interface, and it wouldn't have given him the functionality he wanted. oh well, sucks to be a dickhead. you don't learn anything that way.

[jecook]

::spins hat::

"Wow wee! I've used Cisco routers with T-1 connections!"

B.F.D.

So have I. With multiple cards that individually cost more then your house. and won't do anything slower then a DS3, because Cisco does not make anything that runs slower then a DS3 port for that machine.

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yeah i dunno what kind of cred he thought that gave him. like i was supposed to say "oh yes! you've used cisco routers! obviously you are a tech guru! (although you're still calling for support....)"

[thecolorblue.livejournal.com]

yeah no kidding. what is up with all these sysadmins and techs who don't what NAT is? like, shouldn't that be a BASIC requirement for the job? i mean, would you go to a doctor who didn't know what blood types were?

[dirtymatt.livejournal.com]

I think more and more people who "know a little bit about computers" are getting hired by managers who know nothing about anything. My boss when I was 17 who was the head of IT for the company I worked at had me show him how to open a Word document on his computer. I had no idea how to respond, "err...double click..."