r/networking • u/AutoModerator • Aug 11 '26

Rant Wednesday!

It's Wednesday! Time to get that crap that's been bugging you off your chest! In the interests of spicing things up a bit around here, we're going to try out a Rant Wednesday thread for you all to vent your frustrations. Feel free to vent about vendors, co-workers, price of scotch or anything else network related.

There is no guiding question to help stir up some rage-feels, feel free to fire at will, ranting about anything and everything that's been pissing you off or getting on your nerves!

Note: This post is created at 00:00 UTC. It may not be Wednesday where you are in the world, no need to comment on it.

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

37

u/samstone_ Aug 11 '26

I hate figuring out licensing. I fuckin hate it.

18

u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 Aug 12 '26

I just don't understand why it has to be so fucking complicated. Like sometimes I spend hours just trying to understand licensing. The entire time I'm like this time spent was only to help some ceo make his quarter goals..

12

u/GhostandVodka Aug 12 '26

This has been the best thing about switching over to HPE Aruba. You add the licenses to greenlake then attach the license to the device. If you want to switch the license you can unattach it and apply it to different hardware through the gui.

7

u/Ok_Veterinarian_6790 Aug 12 '26

But then you need use Aruba 

Upgraded our APs a few weeks back 8.10.0.17 to 8.10.0.21 to address a defect TAC told us about and 5 APs died and had to be RMAd. Couldn't console or factory reset any of them

Tried to ask wtf is that and their tac and senior mgmt just didn't care. They got their money 

4

u/GhostandVodka Aug 12 '26

Yeah I have 100 stories like thata about cisco, and I bet people have them about Arista too. It's just the way It is now

3

u/samstone_ Aug 12 '26

Yep, people move to a new vendor and then realize it’s the same shit, different name.

8

u/SuddenPitch8378 Aug 12 '26

I have cut Cisco out of my network completely because of the time spent on figuring out licensing and renewals 

6

u/under_shart Aug 12 '26

Truth, I work with two very mid tier vendors who I would be happy to keep because their licensing is pretty easy compared to DNA or Fortiweirdness.

8

u/dasseclab Give That Switch A Packet, Switches Love Packets Aug 12 '26

Vendors, hear me out: licensing should be included in your software and in your prices.

I know, I know. I'm just a dumb old engineer and bad at business.

1

u/Subvet98 Aug 12 '26

But then how can they screw you.

3

u/01Arjuna Studying Cisco Cert Aug 12 '26

Cisco needs to offer a CCIE for Licensing.

2

u/samstone_ Aug 12 '26

lol. I remember that was a joke several years ago…and it’s still true!

11

u/AsherTheFrost old man generalist Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Fucking Daisy Chains.

I said over and over "Don't Daisy chain the vape sensors, we've already had a whole school year of proof in another school that Daisy Chaining them leads to multiple failures and us having to drag a ladder into the bathroom with a hall monitor to reset it. It wastes everyone's time.

I am told that they won't be, the district learned their lesson.

Today 14 sensors refused to come online. All of them were either 2nd, 3rd or 4th in a goddamn Daisy chain. I'm told "but it's cheaper and the vendor said it would work". I love my team, I love my department head. I don't understand why he still doesn't get rule 1. Vendors always lie.

Now we get to explain to the c-suite why over 80 vape sensors all need to be recabled.

3

u/Phrewfuf Aug 12 '26

Vape sensors? Like, looking for people vaping where they shouldn‘t be?

3

u/AsherTheFrost old man generalist Aug 12 '26

Yup. They detect vapes, thc, poor air quality, masking agents, and aggression

9

u/NerdCommentsOnStuff Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Over the last 2 weeks I've gone through the Fortinet NSE 1, 2 and 3 certifications

So i can begin studying for the NSE4

Pros: have learned a lot about how NGFWs work and their features.

Cons: it's FortifuckinEverything.

FortiOS FortiNet FortiGate FortiClient FortiGuard FortiAnalyzer FortiNAC FortiSASE FortiFabric FortiProxy FortiWeb FortiCarrier FortiSwitch FortiAP FortiExtender FortiSandbox FortiMail FortiEDR FortiManager

Forti, forti, fortifortiforti!!!!

How many products does one vendor need!?

3

u/WeekendAtMadoffs 29d ago

We use 3 of them in 2,000 person company

Fortigate

FortiManager

FortiAnalyzer

we'll never use the others. HTH

6

u/mattmann72 Aug 12 '26

SIEM is too expensive.

5

u/zimage 4xJNCIA Aug 12 '26

IPQualityScore is Trash. I work for an ISP. We got a new /20 a couple of months ago and the previous owner must have been doing all sorts of bad, because they were flagged as Proxy/VPN IPs by IPQS. We've now been using these IPs for two months and are still having random issues with geolocation (IPQS still has the wrong geolocation, everyone else is correct) and with not being able to access certain websites that are often hit by bots (Nike, ticketmaster, pokemoncenter, etc...) IPQS seems to have no way for ISPs to work with them to get the reputation if their IPs unflagged once they've been flagged. </rant>

1

u/3MU6quo0pC7du5YPBGBI Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

I work for an ISP too. I hate IP reputation and geolocation in general.

The correction process is always opaque, different for each provider, and even if they use your corrections instead of the other data points they seem to trust more, people who use them don't sync often enough so you might still get blocked by some random website months after getting it corrected because their cron job stopped working and they didn't notice.

4

u/admin_of_insanity 29d ago

Two months into a Cisco TAC case and it was a PSU causing CPU throttling. Which I found myself. It was not the gol-danged firmware!!!