

Ask YC: Any network gurus want a paid holiday? - gsiener

I'm in The Bahamas, at a semester abroad school and research institute.  Our campus is largely powered by renewables and we try to practice responsible living.  You can see more at http://islandschool.org and http://ceibahamas.org<p>One of my many hats is maintaining our network and data across our 18-acre campus.  This is something I do because I can, not because I'm an expert.  We recently had a fiber link go bad that took several days to locate (because it propagated as many different things), and the result was a real wake up call.<p>So, here's the pitch:
You're a network guru that needs a break from the looming winter.  We're in a beautiful remote spot in The Bahamas with gorgeous beaches, great diving, snorkeling, fishing, you name it.
We'll fly you down (and a guest?), put you up and feed you (we'll even pick you up in a van running biodiesel we made from waste cooking oil).  All we ask in return is some sound advice on how to move forward and what tools we should add to our belts.
If this sounds too good to pass up, email me: gsiener at ceibahamas.org<p>Thanks!
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smaher
I volunteered at the Island School 4 years ago. I can attest that it is a
beautiful remote spot. I was there helping out with their summer camp for
middle schoolers and also working on some construction projects around the
campus. I'd go back if I had the networking experience. Depending on my mood I
found it peaceful or lonely as it is very isolated and I saw only 50 people
total in the 1 month I was there. Other thoughts on my experience:

Pros - Warm tropical weather, great location right on a beach, great food
cooked by locals everyday, friendly staff and students, interesting
sustainability projects, pretty good library, great sailing, diving, and
kayaking

Cons - No hot water (we did morning exercise that made this more manageable),
lots of mosquitoes (I did get used to them after a week or so), the island
(Eleuthera) is fairly small so not too many places to go and explore

EDIT: For those more visually inclined, here are my pictures:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/steven_maher/tags/thebahamas>

~~~
gsiener
Glad you enjoyed your time, thanks for those insights. We actually have hot
water via solar water heaters. To be honest, most days you wish your shower
was a little colder!

A metropolis this is not, but it's worth it when you have your pick of several
deserted beaches :)

PS Where'd you get that aerial shot? Was that a Twin Air flight?

~~~
smaher
Yes, I took it on a Twin Air flight back to Fort Lauderdale. You guys have
made a lot of progress, since I was there. Congrats!

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tibbon
Makes me wish for once I'd actually finished those Cisco networking classes.

~~~
brk
I grok your point, but will make a mild counter argument.

Networking classes alone would not give you any value in this case. In fact,
they'd give you negative value because the real world never works like the
text book, and offering advice that you yourself have not applied in practice
is bad form.

I never finished Cisco networking classes either. I never really started them
in the first place. I did however help develop the training and certification
program for the Ascend/Lucent Certified Technical Expert course. That was
after I already had about 8 years of daily hands-on LAN and WAN design and
administration (late 90's timeframe). I was able to do that because I had been
in the bowels of everything from a local travel agent office network to some
of the worlds largest datacenters and NAPs (at the time).

Don't wish for network classes, instead spend some time with actual equipment,
a copy of Wireshark, and some time on network admin forums/groups. Go work for
a local ISP for even 6 months. You'll learn more about LAN/WAN networking in
that time than in most formal network courses.

~~~
jeremymcanally
If you take the official network classes from Cisco then you do spend a lot
more time on real equipment than buried in a book.

// finished 4 semesters of CCNA instruction only to be too poor to afford the
testing. :)

~~~
brk
And where does that equipment live?

Unless things have changed since I last looked, it's all labware. Sure, that's
better than pure textbook, but still a far cry from reality.

~~~
jeremymcanally
We had a full network setup where I took them, with a fair amount of real
hardware (of varying manufacturers even [a few AdTran boxes]). Perhaps that is
a rarity, I'm not sure. :)

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markjeee
would be nice specially if internet access there is also super fast, so any
network guru can just go there and still be able to administer remotely
whatever he/she is administering before. :)

but any serious work related to network can probably last more than a few
months. perhaps a sabbatical leave will do. :)

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gsiener
An overwhelming response, thanks for reaching out. I'll get back to your
emails in the next 24 hrs but to answer the most common questions: \- I'm
expecting this to be ~1 week long trip. Spend some time checking out what we
have, make some recommendations and have some fun.

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prakash
you might want to post this on NANOG/SANOG mailing lists.

~~~
count
I'm guessing the signal to noise ratio of posting there would be overwhelming
and defeat the purpose...

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rman666
The power of HN is that you have many resources to call on at once. Might it
be a better idea to troubleshoot using the knowledge and tools available to
you through the people on HN?

~~~
jacquesm
And 'greener' to boot.

If that matters to you anyway (and it probably should), then flying in people
just to troubleshoot your network seems a bit excessive.

Other than physical cabling and things like that this seems to be one job
where you could do most if not all of the work remotely anyway (hard to tell
without a lot more background info).

~~~
brk
I would have guessed the opposite. It depends on what you are walking in to.

These are some pics from a hotel LAN at a place in Tortola I was at about this
time last year: <http://www.karas.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2505> Not
dissimilar to the OP case here, they were having "network issues" (this was
not the reason for my business there, it became a side project), and their LAN
was the result of someone who knew some fundamentals but was not a network guy
by any means. I could tell more from 30 seconds of looking at this stuff than
what they could ever describe to me (even if they had sent pictures).

A network that spans an 18 acre campus could vary from simple to mildly
complex. The terrain and budget could suggest that alternative technologies
might be more appropriate (PtP Wifi, Mesh, etc.) for some of the links being
served by the fiber. Perhaps there are aspects of the fiber install that would
indicate future potential failures and/or inabilities to recover from those
failures.

A savvy network guy could assess and communicate this, but if they HAD a savvy
network guy, this whole thread would have never existed.

So, IMO, an in-person trip is probably the most resourceful way to handle
this. My guess would be a 3-4 day initial session, from which some
recommendations could be made. After that it could be determined if they have
the time/skills to implement the recommendations, or if the implementation
should also be outsourced as well.

~~~
jacquesm
Good points, a 'guru' on the spot can save (a lot) of time.

I've had to do some remote debugging of trouble and I found that it is quite
taxing to 'talk someone through' the steps but eventually it did work.

It probably depends on how 'hands on' the issues are, if they're configuration
issues or so then remote is probably ok, if they're related to physical stuff
then onsite is probably much better.

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markessien
The question is - can a network guru leave whatever company he is working at
for a few months, and then come back with no problems?

~~~
count
I doubt they need a couple months of work? It sounds more like a week or so to
get them pointed in the right direction.

~~~
gsiener
My thoughts exactly.

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stevoski
Doesn't the fossil fuel energy cost of the flight overwhelm any energy savings
from living on renewables?

~~~
brk
This is probably getting off topic, but I think that many times the concept of
"green" energy is more about reduced footprint vs. zero or negative footprint.

The impact of the plane ride may take a very long time of renewable living to
offset. Some things in life are unavoidable, but the net impact of
plane+renewable is still going to be less than plane+standard/disposable
lifestyle.

