A common approach for TAC engineers and customers working on a tough case is to just “throw hardware at it.” Sometimes this can be laziness: why troubleshoot a complex problem when you can send an RMA, swap out a...
Read MoreJesse, a recent commentor, asked why I haven’t been posting much lately. In fact, my last post was August of 2017. Well, there are several reasons I don’t post much these days. In part, I’m not convinced...
Read MoreWhen I first started at Cisco TAC, I was assigned to a team that handled only enterprise customers. One of the first things my boss said to me when I started there was “At Cisco, if you don’t like your boss or your...
Read MoreThere is one really nice thing about having a blog whose readership consists mainly of car insurance spambots: I don’t have to feel guilty when I don’t post anything for a while. I had started a series on...
Read MoreNo customer is happy if they have to reboot one of their Internet-facing routers periodically, and this was one of our biggest customers. (At HTTS, they were all big customers.) This customer had a GSR connecting to the...
Read MoreSince I finished my series of articles on the CCIE, I thought I would kick off a new series on my current area of focus: network programmability. The past year at Cisco, programmability and automation have been my focus, first...
Read MoreWhen you work at TAC, you are required to be “on-shift” for 4 hours each day. This doesn’t mean that you work four hours a day, just that you are actively taking cases only four hours per day. The other four...
Read MoreIntroduction My role at Cisco is transitioning to enterprise so I won’t be working on Nexus switches much any more. I figured it would be a good time to finish this article on DCNM. In my previous article, I talked about...
Read MoreIn the final post in my “Ten Years a CCIE” series, I take a look at the age-old question: Is a CCIE really worth it? I conclude the series with some thoughts on the value of this journey. I’ve written this...
Read MoreIvan Peplnjak referenced a piece by Robert Graham called “Why cybersecurity certifications suck,” which I found amusing considering that I am doing some question writing right now. I’ve certainly been a member...
Read MoreWhen I was still a new engineer, a fellow customer support engineer (CSE) asked a favor of me. I’ll call him Andy. “I’m going on PTO, could you cover a case for me? I’ve filed a bug and while I’m...
Read MoreMy job as a customer support engineer (CSE) at TAC was the most quantified I’ve ever had. Every aspect of our job performance was tracked and measured. We live in the era of big data, and while numbers can be helpful,...
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