Managing the Politics of Network Troubleshooting: Communication, SPOCs, and Post-Incident Reviews

 With your experience and knowledge of technology and your ability to navigate the politics of work, you may find yourself as the main technical resource for troubleshooting. At this point in your career, you may be empowered to pull a troubleshooting team together to resolve a major issue.

There’s no surprise that you have to manage EVERYONE impacted by the issue which may include technical teams, management, clients and everyone that has a vested interest in the current situation.

Troubleshooting NTP With Wireshark

 

Many of my regular customers refer to me as the ‘Network Janitor’ because I seem to gravitate to ‘cleaning up’ networks.

In some cases, yes physically cleaning up and organizing datacenters, wiring closets, etc – kind a network version of a personal organizer. In most cases though I clean up the network from the packet perspective.

For years I have been preaching concepts such as ‘The pc bootup and login baseline’ as well as “The VLAN or subnet broadcast analysis”. In both cases, I look for unnecessary traffic to make things run smoother and more efficiently.

In my throughput class I explain how quickly things get messy using basic math. For example, assume you have a 7% broadcast rate on switch where everybody has a 1 Gbps connection. 

Documenting Why “Its Slow”

 I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that dreaded phrase, “Its Slow”.

I’ve heard this so many times I typically casually respond with, “Great, what is it and how slow is slow?”

The biggest issue I have with this statement is that this is the typical network complaint that sucks you into the troubleshooting vortex since nothing is clearly defined.

For example, if I said, “email is slow or it takes 2 hours to download my files” you have a chance to address this since I can measure the problem and the end result. The 2 hour comment actually gives you a measurable value to compare against.

One More Thing (Paul W. Smith )

 

Everyone loves a good saying.  Aphorisms – those terse statements instilled with a modicum of truth – are a popular part of our language.  The term originated with Greek physician Hippocrates who once aphorized, “To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.”  Ironically, he is also regarded as the Father of Medicine.  The more aphorisms are used, the more credibility they accrue.  

It is widely known that actions speak louder than words, he who hesitates is lost, and if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.  It is reassuring that a barking dog never bites, and that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  

Create a Wireshark Auto‑Capture Shortcut: Instant Packet Sniffing on Launch

In this video, I show you how to streamline your workflow in Wireshark by creating a Windows desktop shortcut that launches the program and immediately begins capturing packets. Instead of navigating menus or manually starting a capture each time, the tutorial walks you through a simple command‑line tweak that transforms Wireshark into a one‑click network analysis tool. It’s a small optimization with a big impact, especially if you frequently monitor network traffic.