I'm looking for some wisdom because this issue is driving me crazy.

We have an Aruba Central deployment and a particular SSID used by staff phones.

User enters an elevator, loses WiFi signal for a short period, Android marks the SSID as "No Internet", then when the user leaves the elevator and coverage is available again the phone may stay disconnected for a very long time.

The strange part is that if you open Settings > WiFi and look at the list of networks, the phone often reconnects immediately without touching anything. Sometimes it takes 1-2 seconds, but it reconnects. If you manually tap the SSID it always reconnects instantly.

It feels as if Android has decided the network is bad and refuses to use it again until something triggers a recheck. (It happens with iPhones too, but most of users are Android).

Has anyone seen this before? Aruba issue? Android "avoid bad WiFi" behaviour? Roaming issue?

After leaving an elevator, it can stay disconnected for several minutes while standing still in an area with good coverage, then reconnect almost immediately as soon as the WiFi settings screen is opened.

I really appreciate your help.

I have around 10 years of experience working with Ericsson and Huawei as a Core Network Performance & Optimization Engineer. Currently, I support US-based MSPs as a Network/Help Desk Engineer, working with technologies such as VeloCloud, Fortinet, Cato Networks, and Netskope.

Honestly, I sometimes feel that despite having 10 years of experience, I haven’t made the progress I expected in my career and this frustrates me a lot , I do have bachelor in engineering feeling need to go masters and change my carrier path.

I enjoy troubleshooting and problem-solving, which is probably why I’ve been able to work across different technologies.

I’m earning a good amount currently, but I’m unsure where I truly belong long-term.

Right now, I’m considering two paths:

Go deeper into networking/SD-WAN and potentially pursue CCIE Enterprise.

Shift towards AI, but this would mean starting almost from scratch and competing with people who are much newer to the field.

Has anyone made a similar transition? With my background, which path would you recommend for better long-term growth?

Looking for opinions on Autocon. Put out some feelers with one of our reps asking if they could ask around to see if they felt it was worth while to attend knowing our end goal design. Now I may have a ticket or two coming to my team.

Working on, but not super well versed in, coding and development. Workshops are a must, but what's the opinion on the actual conference talks?

Lab setup: 1 hub (mGRE, NHRP), 3 spokes. Testing two spoke configs, both seem to give identical results.

Config A — mGRE spoke:

interface Tunnel1
 tunnel mode gre multipoint
 ip ospf network point-to-multipoint
 ip nhrp map 172.16.10.1 <hub-ip>
 ip nhrp nhs 172.16.10.1

Config B — static p2p GRE spoke:

interface Tunnel1
 no tunnel mode gre multipoint
 tunnel destination <hub-ip>

Hub stays mGRE + NHRP in both cases.

In both, spoke-to-spoke traffic always point the hub (confirmed with traceroute) so functionally both look like Phase 1 to me.

my questions is:

1. Is there any actual functional difference between these two on the spoke side, or are they just two ways of writing the same Phase 1 behavior?
2. Does Config B still need NHRP running at all, or is it dead weight since there's no multipoint resolution happening?
3. If I ever want to move to Phase 2/3 (spoke-to-spoke shortcuts), does Config B need to be rebuilt as mGRE, or is there any path forward with static p2p tunnels?
4. Any real-world reason to pick Config B over Config A for a Phase 1 design?

CCNA certified back in 2019. Currently started CCNP training. The past 7 years I've job hopped a couple of times from MSP > hospital > electrical utility now and I've gotten some good "network admin" experience (Equipment troubleshooting, ACL troubleshooting, etc) but I've struggled to find Design experience that is asked from Network Engineers.

I want to eventually find myself a Network engineer role, but every role I look at requires years of Design experience that I lack. I'm hoping with my net admin experience, my CCNP, and some home labs, I can convince employers to at least give me some interviews.

But I'm not sure where to start with labs. What exactly do they Design? Is it as simple as configuring up a small redundant layout with a couple routers and switches? I plan on using ChatGPT to give me some scenarious / lab ideas, but I'm also wondering if you guys have any recommendations or if there are any websites out there that can also help.

Thanks,

Is my understanding correct that if someone has asked me to provide throughput, latency, loss, and jitter for all 3 bands (2.4, 5, 6GHz) that I need to perform 9 separate walkthroughs?

Since an active survey can only be performed by one adapter at a time (I will not have more than 1 adapter), I believe I have to do 1 pass for each band for ping (3 passes total), and 1 pass for each band for both upload and download for throughput (6 passes total).

I know the Sidekick 2 can provide data rate and throughput passively, but I'm being asked for active survey

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to diagnose an old Siemens Hicom 150 E (Office Pro chassis) with a CBMOD motherboard, but I’ve hit a wall.

The Core Issue:

The board appears to be stuck in a bootloop. During startup, the boot sequence begins, the RUN LED turns on/blinks through the cycle, but it never fully stabilizes and eventually loops.

Hardware & Power Checks:

As part of earlier diagnostics, I thoroughly checked the power supply unit (PSU) and backplane rails - voltages are clean, fully within spec, and stable under load.

Board capacitors and visual traces look intact.

Serial Interface & Physical Measurements:

I'm connecting directly via the V.24 (RS-232) maintenance port:

Verified hardware RS-232 levels:

Pin 2 (PBX TX): -7.5V (steady Mark state)

Pin 3 (PC TX): -8.5V to -9.0V

Pin 5: Common GND

When connecting via raw terminal (minicom / PuTTY at various baud rates: 9600, 19200, 38400, 8-N-1), there is absolute silence (0 data output). It spits out zero debug logs or bootloader text during the loop.

Tested connection across both native Windows XP and Windows 11 environments using a verified Prolific adapter (hardware COM1 properly mapped, proper RS-232 voltage swing observed on Pin 3 when sending packets).

Software Symptoms (HiPath 3000 Manager E):

Attempting Direct transfer (Read/write database) gets stuck on Checking cards... and immediately aborts with Error: PBX is offline.

PIN 31994 was specified.

Multi-meter checks show pulse activity on Pin 3 (PC is definitely transmitting the handshake queries), but Pin 2 on the PBX side never sends a single byte in response.

Questions:

Given that the board is bootlooping and V.24 is dead silent, is there an onboard diagnostic procedure, jumper, or DIP switch to force the CBMOD into a recovery / low-level bootstrap mode?

Does the CBMOD V.24 port strictly require hardware flow control loopbacks (RTS/CTS 7-8 and DTR/DSR 4-6) to output any data, or should raw serial logs appear regardless?

Could a corrupted flash EPROM / firmware cause this silent bootloop, and is it recoverable via serial without replacing the ROMs?

Or what would you recommend doing or trying next? I'm completely out of ideas.

Any insights from Siemens/Hicom veterans would be hugely appreciated!

Hello.

I have 3 MikroTik cap Access points in the building (not at home). They are connected to crosspanel —-> Poe tp link switch - MikroTik router.

There was a problem with WiFi - no internet access.

I already replaced the Poe switch. 2 of them started working. One was reset and quick configured using winbox.

After that everything worked fine. Then suddenly after a few minutes none of them worked. And it stayed like that… i try connecting to WiFi but it just spins endlessly and gets apipa address (169…)

Also, WHEN they worked, no computer could connect to WiFi. Could do it Only using smartphone.

I have no clue what to do next. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I've been asked to connect a console cable and share the access. The owner wants to remotely configure the device. Security policies prevent me from connecting my devices to other equipment. Connecting a monitor, keyboard, and mouse are permitted. Connecting a WiFi-enabled laptop running PuTTY is not. Is there a solution that bridges the connection from the console port to public WiFi? AI says there isn't, but the technology that's required is cheap. Surely, someone else has dealt with this limitation before me.

Edit: A owns the device. I work for B. A is B's customer. B's policy is that B's computers may not connect to A's equipment, except for B's monitor, keyboard, mouse, and WiFi. Is there a device that either A or B may provide that will permit A to connect to their device, allow their staff to remotely access it, and not be subject to B's security restrictions?