During COVID, our org allowed some people to go 100% remote permanently. As part of that, we provided HR with a minimum technology requirements doc that the employee had to agree they would provide. Biggest challenge we faced was sending people home with a physical IP phone and them not having access to an ethernet connection to plug it in, even though that was on the list of requirements. “But everything is wireless these days”. Cry me a river.
Just this week, I was trying to help someone with VPN issues, and I finally got them to send me a speed test result after they INSISTED it was not an issue on their end.
What the actual fuck!? James Cameron has better speeds at the bottom of the ocean!
They recently moved, and could only get satellite internet, and the ISP tech told her it was fine, and to just have her IT department tweak the softphone to make it work. Bitch, no softphone is going to work with a 1 SECOND latency!
I do love how the home office is always as far as physically possible from the ISP installed wifi router behind the TV in the family room.
So many tards trying to tell me where the problem is when they haven’t a freaking clue.
It’s always ‘the server’ or ‘the network’. And they say it with such conviction.
Which network? Which server? They get confused when I ask. Clearly there is only one of each.
To no one in particular: empathy is the greatest skill that no one in your department will encourage you to cultivate - it is the difference maker in the practice of IT work.
One thing to check, because I see this pretty often on the ISP side, is your keepalive timeouts. If the customer is behind a NAT, which they probably are, it’s possible that the NAT translation for the VPN connection is getting torn down due to inactivity somewhere in the chain, causing the disconnect. If you are already using a pretty aggressive keepalive timeout though, bummer.
I got a ticket yesterday: can’t attach a zip to an email, I’m getting some error. Not telling me what error it was. User was trying to attach a 1.8GB zip into an email…
Thankfully this has gotten better for me since the start of the 2020 switchover…but I still remember those first few months:
- So many complaining the VPN was down, but also so was their Wifi. Magically the VPN started working again once they reconnected to their home network even though “they wanted VPN, not Internet”.
- So many with VPN issues that when I check, had 3-4 weeks uptime. Magically fixed with reboot, that many said they already did.
- User who complains of intermittent VPN. Find out they are working from their backyard, and refuse to go inside since “they like the back yard better”.
- User who complains of VPN issues. Find out they are working from coffee shops. Refuses to pay for Internet at home since “it costs money” and work should provide it for them.
- User with VPN issues. Find out they have a 2Mbps down, 0.5Mbps up connection. Tell them it is the source of all their issues. 2 years later they still complain at times, and have not talked to their ISP or upgraded their plan.
I think in total, it actually was the VPN server maybe 2-3 times over the past 2 years.
I hate the “are there any issues with” tickets.
How about you tell me what problem you’re seeing and I’ll investigate? I’m not going on a wild goose chase to confirm that a working system is working just because you think your Excel claiming it’s not licensed is caused by an undiagnosed problem with the Wifi or whatever.
I’ve had to tell people they can’t really work in their basement when their router is two floors above them. I’ve also had to tell someone using a hotspot for internet access to disable literally every other wifi-connected device in their house so she would have enough bandwidth to work.
In my opinion this is a policy issue. WFH is a privilege and if you can’t meet the requirements you can’t WFH. People want to eat their cake and have it too.
I believe our policy says something like you need minimum 200mbps internet to WFH and must use webcam for all meetings or something like that.
I realize this isn’t an option for every company but yeah it’s not surprising that your several thousand dollar enterprise grade professionally maintained networking equipment isn’t going to be the issue 99% of the time.
I am ‘working’ on this RIGHT FUCKING NOW… lol
“I couldn’t connect to the VPN yesterday at all, so I brought my computer in. Can you look at it?”
Sure. Set it up. Turn it on. Connect to our completely separate guest Wifi network…
Click “Connect”… you know what happened…
N P F
Amen Brother. I have learned to hate WFH wifis and ISPs in general. More in the past 2 years. Always the same reports of "It is slow… " and “VPN keeps disconnecting me all day, I canno work, I have to reconnect and enter the 2FA” I wasnt sure as we were changing ISPs in the time.
I have took a week off, went home to rest. Grabbed my laptop, put it in my home “comm room” connected to VPN, opened VNC to one linux VM and left it run. I know, not really secure, but this was for Science. After a week before going back to work, I have remmembered that I should take laptop with me so I can work at work and noticed, that my laptop stayed connected for more than 170h without disconnect.
“It is NOT us. It IS you.”
This one hit home. Had a user go out with covid early on. In the end it was the user, 4 kids (all gaming or watching movies), an out of work spouse (who gamed all day). I had her plug directly into her home router, that helped a little but as soon as the family woke up - boom, she was done. Management wanted us to fix it. No one served the area at all, their only internet was a mifi.
I’d estimate 8/10th’s of IT is proving the issue is not your fault but someone else’s.
LOL oh the shit that went on here during the shutdown… I personally know people that did zero work, it was a year vacation for them. They blamed us first, the VPN second finally they admitted that they were clueless.
We have occasional VPN issues, but the team that manages the VPN NEVER alerts anyone. So we (and staff) have learned that the only way to be sure is to ask. That’s usually where we start when troubleshooting. It only takes 5 seconds to rule out the VPN.
I was once trying to reinstall some app remotely via our deployment tool for one user and it was extremely slow to download the package. So i mentioned that to the user and after a few minutes it suddenly went through fast. And the user said they moved to another room. Soo, they struggle with barely usable internet all the day just because they like that room more. Seems legit.
Also, i don’t work with our VPN that much, but i do lots of similar complains from our VDI users from India… But Youtube is loading. Yeah, yeah.
The internet works but I can’t access our shared folder …
Have you tried connecting to the VPN? Oh it does now? You’re welcome, have a great day!
Tons of overlapping signals/channels for neighbors and businesses nearby.
Aren’t the damn things supposed to change channels in response to congestion these days?