All,
Anyone have a knowledgeable technical contact for Qwest? We've been
working through the night to resolve some problems and been totally unable
to talk to anyone who will tell us anything beyond "It must be your CPE".
Any help would be greatly appreciated
hehe. I faced the same issue turing up bgp on a frame-relay circuit in
colorado. Some highlights of the conversation were me saying that I
needed to enable BGP and the tech's response was "I don't know what that
is". Mere mention of the RADB caused him to run for another engineer.
And this was the engineer assigned to my case which I opened with an
email to their bgp-admin@qwestip.net address. I'm not sure they have
people with a high clue factor yet.
Michael Heller
Sr. Systems Engineer
Earthweb, Inc.
212.448.4175
mikeh@earthweb.com
Brian & Mike,
I'm sorry your service needs were not met. In the future please feel free
to escalate your problems to senior engineers within Qwest IP Operations.
Though I understand your frustration, I do not believe NANOG is the
appropriate form for this topic. You can contact me via email at
mhirse@qwestip.net or mo@qwest.com. I would like to talk off line.
Regards
Mohamed A. Hirse
Manager
IP Operations
Network Optimization Group
Qwest Communications Inc.
Even though nanog is not a consumer advice forum, if complaints on a
public list get the attention of management where asking engineers for
that attention doesn't - then fine by me.
Has anybody ever organized a poll of ISP services? It's very difficult to
get a good feel for what any organization is doing well or badly, since
the only opinions readily available are from chit-chat and public gripes
(it seems people seldom volunteer positive feedback, at least not
publicly). Since there exists a well-informed community (NANOG), it would
seem that we could come up with some nice results.
--matt hempel
Maybe not an appropriate topic for Nanog... but... it is becoming a sad fact
that the clue level of 'internet engineers' is going down.
Christian
Just as a closing note;
I did not write to the list to complain about Qwest or to ask people to
solve the problem. My understanding was that NANOG was a forum for network
operators to share information useful in resolving problems related to
North American networks.
Thus, I asked for contact information which I was unable to get via other
sources. The situation has been resolved, at least insofar as us getting
hooked up with someone able to handle our situation. This ONLY happened
following my post to NANOG which (BTW) got about 25 responses off list,
maybe 15 of them from Qwest people or Qwest related people.
If asking for contact info is inappropriate for this list, let me know,
I'll desist.
I think you mean that the clue density is getting sparser as the Internet
grows. This is because clueful Internet engineers are often clueless when
it comes to things like mentoring which would cause a more even clue
distribution. And management does not put enough emphasis on knowledge
transfer because they don't seem to have a clue about where Internet
engineers come from.
Since the thrice yearly NANOG meetings are a major source of clue transfer
in the industry, I think that this is quite appropriate to discuss on the
list. Should the NANOG meetings include a longer tutorial component prior
to the two-day meeting? If NANOG offered weeklong courses prior to the
meetings would your management sent engineers for training? Would your
management allow clueful engineers to teach such courses?
What about saying that clueful internet engineers are getting greedy, and are
afraid to teach junior engineers in an attempt to save their jobs and not loose
there high salaries. For example...
Joe Shmoo is a great internet engineer getting paid 35 dollars an hour (This is
just a round estimate since i have no idea what the pay level is).
The manager sees Joe Shmoo is getting over worked and hires Mike as a junior or
assistant to Joe. Joe has 2 options.
Teach Mike all he knows
or
Teach Mike enough to keep him silent and still make sure that Mike is below th
clue level of Joe. What does Joe do ? I dont know.
I have not found this to be the case at my place of employ. Aye, the
gurus are often too busy for immediate clue transfer, no doubt
due to the workload caused by clueful geeks being so scarce, but I have
never had a reasonable question ignored. YMMV, of course, but I am young
and foolish enough to believe in a moderate degree of altruism among
geeks. If there were enough to go around, then what you suggest might be
the case, especially if there were a surplus. OTOH, such is not the case,
and it is quite plausible to believe that the scarcity of clued net-geeks
has left them in the position that they will gladly educate youngsters
(like myself) if only to offload some work, which has piled upon their
desks because there aren't enough of them to get it all done.
For the other part of it, I cannot overemphasize that I did not obtain
what little clue I have by continuously pestering the Oracles of all
things IP with whom I have the good fortune to have 24x7 access to
through virtue of common employment. I have read countless RFC's (some
even authored by those aforementioned Oracles), thick dry texts (Stevens,
Comer, Halabi, Hunt, Liu, etc), and numerous scattered references on the
WWW (yes, Virginia, there really is useful content on the WWW). Not to
undervalue the clued geeks, but responsibility for the education of
would-be clueful engineers is at least 90% student, at most 10% mentor.
As I gain clue, it becomes increasingly more apparent to me which people
asking me difficult questions have put forth the effort to find the
answer, and need only the right subtle hint to find it on their own,
and which are just looking for a clue handout and have not prepared
themselves with sufficient background knowledge for the answer. I have
become increasingly patient with the former, and increasingly intolerant
of the latter. Perhaps it is this phenomenon that makes the clueful few
appear to outsiders as pompous, arrogant elitists, but it is also this
phenomenon that ensures that those following in their footsteps will
indeed be of par quality.
I've also learned that the long, slow, hard way *is* the fast, easy way.
If someone wants the big-$$$ geek jobs, they can have it, but they have to
be willing to invest in themselves, my $Ye+3 bookshelf is a testament to that.
I am not out to prove myself, I am out to improve myself.
party on,
Sam Thomas
Guru-in-training
if you do not find this message to be of operational value, please press the
key (click on the button, recite the incantation, etc) to delete it.
undervalue the clued geeks, but responsibility for the education of
would-be clueful engineers is at least 90% student, at most 10% mentor.
That 10% mentor is more important than the percentages would suggest
because it acts as a catalyst for the other 90%. A good mentor will help
a less experienced engineer to make most effective use of their time in
learning the trade. It's not enough to just be available to answer
questions.
become increasingly patient with the former, and increasingly intolerant
of the latter.
You just need to adjust your style to the individual. Your job should be
to develop all of the up and coming engineers to the limits of their
ability. That could mean that you keep referring some engineers to
relevant books, manuals, RFCs and websites rather than answering their
question right away. Help them to develop the habit of looking up the info
rather than relying on other people. Basically, if you are going to put
some effort into another person, do it in a way that brings results.
If the other person is just wasting your time, fire them.