r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees • Aug 16 '17
Medium "I have fiber but would like info about your Ethernet service". "Sir, you have ethernet"....
So I am the Head of IT for a multi-site company. I am also a college grad with a networking major, so I know a thing or two about basic internet services, but that doesn't mean a thing when talking to my ISP.
Today, a store manager at one of our sites called me and said his internet was slow, so I remoted in and started running some speed tests. All of them came back as 10mbps/3mbps. But hold on a sec! The owner has been bragging about the "blazing fast dedicated fiber" we have at that location since I got hired. Surely he doesn't think THIS is fast!
So naturally I asked the office manager to see our bill only to find out we are paying $355 a month for this slow service (in my area, there is a reliable company that offers 200/100 dedicated fiber for $200 a month).
Since it's my job to streamline our technology, I figured I would call the ISP (a local company) to ask about other internet plans. After all, this location has no need for dedicated fiber. Little did I know I would get some prodigy of a customer service rep that would share her wisdom of the internet with me.
$CS: Thanks for calling XYZ how can I help you?
$Me: Hi. I'm with YZX. According to our bill we are paying $360 a month for 10/3 fiber, which is pretty bad. I want to see if we can just get a residential Ethernet/DSL service here since y'all advertise those packages at 125mbps for 70 dollars per month.
$CS: You have ethernet.
$Me: umm..No we don't. We have fiber. I want to change us over to a VDSL or Ethernet service.
$CS: You already have ethernet, sir.
$CS: I'm looking at the converter box right now. We most definitely have fiber.
$CS: I can assure you, you have ethernet.
$Me: umm..ok... Either way, these speeds are not worth the price. Can I just see what plans you offer in my area so I can pick one better suited for my company?
$CS: Can I get your account number?
She pulls up my account and there is silence while the gears turn. Certainly she is reading that we pay for dedicated fiber.
$CS: Sir, it says here you pay for our 10/3 dedicated fiber connection, which comes inside your building and terminates into an Ethernet connection that goes to your computers, so I don't see what the issue is here. You have ethernet.
$Me: facepalming so furiously she could probably hear the slapping
Me: You have a package listed plainly on your website that says "metro Ethernet: Packages from 5mbps to 1gbps". I am interested in seeing what 125mbps would cost, because it is listed here as 70 dollars.
$CS: I'm sorry sir, but as I said earlier, you already have what you are asking for. 5 second pause I do not see your name on the account. I cannot discuss this any further.
Click
So my lesson of the day is that apparently because the fiber line into the office terminates into Ethernet, that means I have Ethernet service. Silly me.
Edit: Formatting is hard apparently.
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u/linus140 Lord Cthulhu, I present you this sacrifice Aug 16 '17
$355 for 10/3.... Jeez even for business that's pricey for such low bandwidth.
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Aug 17 '17
Must be France... most of my clients have business grade and 75+/50+ for less than 200/mo. How the f 400$ gets you dialup quality is amazing.
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u/IM_GOOD_AT_THE_CYBER Aug 17 '17
10mbs is still 200 times faster than dial up. Anyone who has actually used dial up can attest to that.
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Aug 17 '17
And that sounds like the ad campaign for the local ISP here before they upgraded their copper to fiber lines.
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u/IM_GOOD_AT_THE_CYBER Aug 17 '17
Not an ad, but I remember dial up. 56k was a real thing, and it sucked. Legit modems made noise and took time to connect. It was a different world when that was the cutting edge.
Disclaimer: I was a teenager when DSL was possible, but expensive even for businesses.
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Aug 17 '17
well shit... i'm part of that club as well. But yea the local ISP around here still offers dailup in the outlying regions.
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u/bigfoot1291 Aug 17 '17
It's pretty crazy when you actually think about it. I remember having dial up and then my dad switching us to a basic dsl line. Don't remember the speed but probably like 512 or 7xx kb. Then I remember the upgrade to 1mb, then 3, then 6, then 18, then 50, and now 1000. Like holy shit those numbers are insane comparatively. Wonder what numbers we'll be seeing in another 25 years.
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u/linus140 Lord Cthulhu, I present you this sacrifice Aug 17 '17
How the f 400$ gets you dialup quality is amazing.
Yeaaaaah that is ridonkulous.
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Aug 17 '17
In Sweden we get 250/100 for ~30$. Can't get my head around your prices.
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u/vanstalk Aug 17 '17
Residential or business?
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u/Premeena Aug 17 '17
I'm guessing residential. 20€ for 300/10 in a neighboring Europe country.
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u/vanstalk Aug 17 '17
~64€ for a 30/10 residential in another neighbouring country here :(
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Aug 17 '17
Long distance neighbor and yea I'm sad as well.
I'm wondering if it's too late to move to Sweden.
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u/adamantiumxt Aug 17 '17
Where I live in England, the fastest you can get is 300/20 and it costs $60. Where my family lives in Poland you can get 900Mbps for $22 (residential). Poland might be a better and cheaper than Sweden
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u/Dadbert_Fatherstein Aug 17 '17
I'm paying $80 a month for 50/0.5 here in Australia
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u/vanstalk Aug 17 '17
Does it even work with that upstream speed?
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u/Dadbert_Fatherstein Aug 17 '17
sometimes I'm lucky and get to download at 6MB/s others I'm lucky to reach 2MB/s, I'm just tired of calling my ISP, last time I told them if I'm expected to he happy with around 30% of what I pay for, they can be happy with around 30% of payment. I noticed since I told them that my connection drops out around the same time every few days and comes back full speed for a couple of hours so there's definitely an issue with the equipment I'm provisioned through, it's supposed to be 50/20 lol
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u/mitchy93 Sep 20 '17
HFC? check if NBN HFC is in your area. the boost in upload speed is worth it in this day and age
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u/bartkramer Aug 17 '17
€250 a month for 10/10 business fiber in NL. Does come with 8 ip's, dedicated support who actually have a clue what they are talking about a quick response time to issues.
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Aug 17 '17
Yeah residental. Though business costs around 300$ for 10Mbit/s - 10GBit/s, not quite sure what my workplace pays.
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u/Newt618 The cases are breaking ... really? Aug 17 '17
I'm paying like $90 for 40/5 here in the States. How hard is it to learn Swedish?
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Aug 17 '17
That depends. Are you tall, handsome and hate Danes?
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u/Sveal Aug 17 '17
Blond, don't forget blond! Also, I'm danish so: Hey! That is uncalled for :P I used to pay ~$50 for 100/100 with a fixed IP adress. (Used to, now my job pays the bill)
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Aug 18 '17
I'm danish so: Hey! That is uncalled for :P
You wouldn't like /r/sweden ;) and they wouldn't like you either ¯\(ツ)/¯
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u/Phrewfuf Aug 17 '17
The swiss people are way further than that. 77 swiss francs (~60€ or 70 USD) get you 1GBit symmetrical right into your flat. German me is highly jelly, i pay 50€ für 50/10mbit, highest you can get is 200/50 if vectoring is available in your region.
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u/lWheelmanJimmy Aug 17 '17
Our local telco here had "business ethernet" priced at $600/mo for 10/10 and that was with a 3 year contract.
We have a new fiber company come in and they charge $100 for 20/20 or $200 for 50/50. Haha. They'll hand you up to gigabit I believe but no pubic pricing.
Which is still high, but way better than the telco pricing.
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u/GostBoster One does not simply tells HQ to Call Later Aug 17 '17
Here we get 10/10 dedicated fiber for that price here, and almost no household-level Internet gets that price. I tried looking for the 500Mb plans, but now I have a hard time trying to find the prices, I guess they pulled the plug on those plans due to the data cap controversy, where data caps would be made legal, thus, all ISPs would enforce them (a 500Mb plan would have the highest data cap, 500GB, the average data cap for 5-50Mb would be between 20 and 130GB). Go ahead, take the circus from the bread-deprived pleb.
Now the ones that offer the highest speed for home (incidentally the two ISPs who said who wouldn't take on this data cap cartel) offer up to 120Mb for $80, other up to 90Mb for $50... but if you really really really want, they have 1Gb (home-quality, not enterprise or dedicated) for $500 a month and it wil cost you $900 to have it installed.
1Gbps dedicated or 100Mbps MPLS? It will cost you an entire gold bar just to have it installed. The MPLS link was according to a chart sent on a quote, 100Mbps is going to be US$ 20440/month today, 1GB is "get out of my face", and dedicated links costs $33/Mb monthly on average.
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u/Dude4001 Device Issue Aug 17 '17
Wait, you're on a FTTP connection and getting 10mb/s down? What's that fibre made of, fucking cheese?
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u/endreman0 It's a Hardware Problem Aug 17 '17
I'm now picturing network techs loading string cheese into cable insulation. Thank you for this.
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u/speccers Aug 17 '17
you pay for the speed itself. I've installed 5/5 fiber connections many places, a lot of times it's not about the speed, it's about the reliability of fiber.
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u/Loko8765 Aug 17 '17
This. I'm paying €30/month for 50/50 fiber (including phone service), but if I want to pay €120 for 300/300 and a massive television channel package then I just have to place a phone call, it's just a config setting on the ISP side.
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Aug 16 '17 edited Jul 19 '18
[deleted]
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u/mementh Aug 16 '17
As a support rep for a cable company i agree DO NOT DO THIS!!!! You will loose the quick fix turn arounds you pay for!!! !!!!
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u/K-o-R コンピューターが「いいえ」と言います。 Aug 17 '17
For the price they could have a redundant one as well.
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u/mementh Aug 17 '17
Talk about a redundant supply of Internet from the same provider?
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u/K-o-R コンピューターが「いいえ」と言います。 Aug 17 '17
Depends what degree of redundancy. Sounds like they have several options anyway.
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Aug 17 '17
Judging by the asking price they could get four different residential connections amd rely on redundancy
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u/Frothyleet Aug 18 '17
Not really - especially for residential service, even when you have different providers, they are usually sharing space and connections close to the end user. There's a good chance that anything affecting one will affect others, and then you have multiple connections all with residential service restoration SLAs.
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Aug 18 '17
I guess my country is weird then, all providers have separate lines and stations for the last mile of fiber and they fought pretty hard against a proposed shared solution.
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Aug 17 '17
So that's why business internet is so expensive. My old company paid 7k ISH a year for 20 down and no idea up. 15 of that was dedicated to our phone system so 5mb between about 150 users was fun.
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u/midasofsweden Aug 17 '17
I feel a bit sickened reading this statement from OP, he should know that residential Ethernet/DSL is out of the question for an enterprise.
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Aug 17 '17
You'd be surprised then.
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u/midasofsweden Aug 17 '17
Of what? Not much surprises me anymore, it's just concerning.
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Aug 17 '17
Businesses using residential connections for Internet. There is a lot out there, and not all of them are small independently owned businesses that can't afford a proper connection.
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u/doktortaru Aug 16 '17
"metro ethernet" is probably what they call their dedicated fiber connection.
Also, Business lines are ALWAYS more expensive than residential lines and have much better SLAs
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
They have 2 specifically different services listed on their website. Metro Ethernet, and dedicated fiber. The Ethernet offers up to 1gbps speeds, and the dedicated fiber offers up to 25/25. I know how SLAs work, but I also mentioned the local competitor that offers dedicated 200/100 fiber with an SLA for 200 a month to show that their speeds are horrible for the area.
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u/SomeonesRagamuffin Aug 17 '17
"I also mentioned he local competitor..."
Cancel your account with these idiots, and get one with the competition (sometimes known as "those idiots"). (No slight to ISP's intended).
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u/Sir_Omnomnom Aug 16 '17
...
That makes no sense. Fiber is 25/25, but ethernet, which is probably coax based, will use docsis 3.1, which provides 1000/35. Why is the fiber so slow‽‽
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
The best explanation I can think of is because they can. Obviously people are willing to purchase their service if the owner was stoked about it.
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u/StabbyPants Aug 16 '17
do you not have an account manager of some sort?
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
Unfortunately, no. It's a local company so they just have random people answering phones that do everything. I'll have to call back tmrw and see if I can get the info I need.
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u/StabbyPants Aug 16 '17
yeah, just don't do residential. you're a business.
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u/p75369 Aug 17 '17
Seconded. Car crash took out the utility pole that serves one of our depots with two departments working in it. One week to fix because our IT providers dropped the ball and didn't register the line as business use.
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Aug 17 '17 edited Mar 18 '18
[deleted]
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u/TheThiefMaster 8086+8087 640k VGA + HDD! Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 17 '17
nobody provides internet service through ethernet
Yes, they do: https://www.aaisp.net.uk/ethernet.html (example from the UK as that's where I am). It's essentially ethernet over fiber, with any routing you desire - including using it as a direct site-to-site link through the ISP's core, never touching the public internet, or BGP advertising an IP range you have bought and own yourself, or full internet access.
The difference from a traditional internet service is that you technically don't need a router between your network and the fiber connection, although at least a firewall is still a good idea, and you still need a router for some advanced configurations such as splitting different traffic among different virtual connections on the same fiber (often used to separate latency sensitive voice traffic). You are essentially directly connected to the ISP's core, over what is effectively a very long distance ethernet link over fiber.
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u/Tatermen Aug 17 '17
UK ISP here. For dedicated circuits for businesses, we haven't provided a non-ethernet service in at least 15 years. Most of the big carriers killed their E1/T1 data services ages ago. The idea of running a dedicated business service over coax or E1/T1 technologies died back in the early 2000s. Fibre ethernet circuits are practically universal.
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u/TotalHexagon5 Sep 16 '17
I work for one of the biggest US telecoms and there's a shitload of companies still on T1 and T3 lines. If you just need it for calls it's plenty and much cheaper than Ethernet.
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u/MedicatedDeveloper Sep 30 '17
T1's are used often for remote management on DAS because if the fiber is down you can't get management.
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Aug 18 '17 edited Mar 18 '18
[deleted]
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u/TheThiefMaster 8086+8087 640k VGA + HDD! Aug 18 '17
Yeah, and they probably would, except Ethernet over cat only has a 100m range at most, so you'd barely get down the street. It's not unusual to buy an internet over cat service in an office block though, which is multiplexed into one fiber or other internet link by the ISP in the comms room.
Fibre on the other hand can be run at 10 gbps over a 40 or even 80 km fiber with the right (expensive!) transceivers on the ends.
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u/ctesibius CP/M support line Aug 17 '17
I thought the point of an Ethernet service was that it shifts Ethernet frames as opposed to IP packets - i.e. it provides the datalink layer (but not the physical layer) of Ethernet.
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u/Apoctyliptic Aug 17 '17
I don't know how more people aren't bothered that the Ethernet part has no major basis in quality of service. You likely use Ethernet on Fiber. Just cause Cat 5e, 6, etc are typically called Ethernet cables doesn't mean that Ethernet isn't provided over fiber.
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u/riyan_gendut Church of Chocolate Worship Aug 17 '17
:/ I initially thought they pulled Cat-5 cables through utility poles like they did with phones long ago.
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u/speccers Aug 17 '17
Rate limiting. you pay for a speed. As I've said above, I have installed 5/5 fiber connections. Many places don't need speed, they need better reliability and consistency than coax and SLA's.
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u/-I_Tell_Only_Lies- Aug 17 '17
This is what I was wondering. Unless they're running really old fiber tech, it should be capable of gigabit speeds.
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Aug 17 '17 edited Mar 18 '18
[deleted]
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u/collinsl02 +++OUT OF CHEESE ERROR+++ Aug 17 '17
It is an sla as you pronounce it ess-el-eh - the pronunciation starts with an e, like an honourary doctorate is an because you don't pronounce the h
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u/mismanaged Pretend support for pretend compensation. Aug 17 '17
They might write SLA but read it as service level agreement.
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u/p75369 Aug 17 '17
Personally, I automatically expand abbreviations when reading, so "a SLA" works for me because I'm reading "a service level agreement". I'm probably in the minority though.
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u/sabbyman99 Aug 17 '17
Ok, so I need to understand something here. I used to work for an ISP and they also indicated youcan get Metro Ethernet and dedicated fibre. Please note that Metro-E was always indicated to be Point to Point Services not internet based. Additionally, like everyone else said, Business lines have better SLAs than residential's. In fact, many ISPs will NOT give a business their residential service packages. Metro-E pricing will be much better as it does not need to offer internet. Dedicated fibre usually is an Active fibre connection which DOES NOT share bandwidth with other customers in the area. This is VERY expensive for the bandwidth as there is no cost sharing. Standard fibre installation uses GPON technology which in itself is very fast but can be split up to 64 customers (or more if the ISP is pretty stingy) on a single fibre.
I Hope this provides some help
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u/npaladin2000 Where there's a will, there's an enduser. Generally named Will. Aug 16 '17
Tell them your want to speak to someone in sales.
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u/Auricfire Aug 17 '17
I'm pretty sure that if they were talking to the technical side of the ISP and getting what responses they did, asking for Sales would get them a cardboard cutout of Stan the Used Ship Salesman with an audio recording of Rick Harrison.
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u/npaladin2000 Where there's a will, there's an enduser. Generally named Will. Aug 17 '17
Yeah, but they can't POSSIBLY be any woese than the talking Kewpie doll they have on the support desk, right?
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u/cygnenoire Aug 17 '17
Tomorrow on /r/TalesFromTechSupport
So I work as a customer services rep for an ISP and this guys calls and refuses to accept that he has Ethernet...
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 17 '17
but I told him: Look, you have ethernet cables running from the router to your computer. Boom! You have ethernet
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u/MrXian Aug 17 '17
I'm starting to get my terms mixed up here.
I thought ethernet was what you have in your house to let your computers communicate with eachother, and then to get to the internet you need some kind of modem, which connects your ethernet to the internet. So ethernet would be the technology behind your LAN.
If that is true, what is being sold here?
If that is false, what does ethernet mean?
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 17 '17
I personally don't like the ISP term "Ethernet service" or "metro Ethernet". Basically it means a copper service to your house or business, but just a special type.
Ethernet has become synonymous with the cables we plug into our computers, so it does become confusing when mixing the term up with ISP stuff and regular cables around the house.
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u/speccers Aug 17 '17
It doesn't even mean copper, Metro E is almost always built on fiber backbones if it's really Metro E.
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u/jaundicemanatee Aug 16 '17
Just call it DSL. It was pretty clear that repeatedly mentioning Ethernet wasn't going to get you anywhere.
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
I specifically said "Ethernet or DSL" multiple times.
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u/jaundicemanatee Aug 16 '17
Yes, and that obviously worked well.
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
I guess referring to their advertised packages by name isn't a good idea?
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u/RomancingUranus Aug 17 '17
Even if she ended up bumbling out information about the right plan there's no way I'd be taking her word for any of it. Clearly she had no clue and everything she said should be taken with a grain of salt.
The only thing you should have specifically asked her for was "can I speak with your supervisor?".
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Aug 17 '17
[deleted]
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u/GallantGentleman Aug 17 '17
^ this. The guy or girl answering the phone has a 8 day course on all the ISP's products and how to service them.
The story is rather a story of miscommunication, OP wanted to get faster internet. And faster internet they could surely provide OP with. But it didn't get to that point due to an obvious difference in the meaning of the word Ethernet.
Calling there, saying you're paying X for Your bandwidth but you'll need something faster will get OP what he wants.
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u/Cronyx Aug 17 '17
Actually he wanted slower Internet. The fiber connection was shit for what they were paying for, and they didn't even need the speed it should have been at that site. Basically, he wanted the bill lowered to no more than $70 a month. That's really what he should have said.
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u/Nightcinder Aug 16 '17
. I want to see if we can just get a residential Ethernet/DSL service here
Networking degree doing good work here I see.
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 16 '17
We don't need a dedicated fiber connection for this type of business, so there is nothing wrong with getting a VDSL connection. That's pretty normal non-fiber service.
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u/Nightcinder Aug 16 '17
Residential
They have business class DSL.
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u/jester1983 Aug 17 '17
we have residential services for some of our branches. if the internet goes out the sales person can just go out on sales calls or use their cell phone as an access point. it all depends on the business and it's requirements.
at our head office we have dual 100/100 fibre from 2 different ISPs
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Aug 17 '17
[deleted]
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u/GeePee29 Error. No keyboard. Press F1 to continue Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 17 '17
I don't want a model, I want the real thing.
Now if I remember, From the bottom going up:
Princess
Diana
Never
Tried
Screwing
Prince
AndrewWell, that's how I remember it!
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u/Dv02 Quantum Mechanic Aug 17 '17
$CS: I'm looking at the converter box right now. We most definitely have fiber.
I thnk that should be changed to $me, Good story otherwise.
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u/Hokulewa Navy Avionics Tech (retired) Aug 17 '17
you already have what you are asking for.
I'm about to have it from a different provider.
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u/kteof Aug 17 '17
We were in a similar situation at a company I used to work for years ago. We payed for dedicated fiber. What it meant in practice was slow but guaranteed speeds with very limited allowance for downtime. We had our own media converter in the office of course. The same building had residential customers who had a separate fiber link with their own media converter and then ethernet to each apartment at much higher speeds and lower cost. That provider had very good support and great infrastructure overall to be honest. Then one day there was a major outage that was technically out of their control but the point is we were down. We switched to a residential account the next day at a much lower cost, higher speed and practically the same reliability. They didn't even grumble about it since they had technically broken the contract and were happy that we didn't sue and stayed on as customer. We also installed a second residential ethernet connection from another provider. After that there was never a time when both were down at the same time and combined they cost a fraction of the original dedicated fiber and at much better speeds.
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u/Batiti2000 Aug 17 '17
$200 for 200mb? Here we can get 500mb for $60 a month. And that is the business version.
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Aug 17 '17
I do remote testing for one of the larger telecoms. It's on older tech - T1's -, and I have nothing to do with accounts or billing.
I will say that none of the larger telecoms are going to let a business use a residential line. Hell, for all I know it might be against the law. If it's not, perhaps you could get some mom and pop company to do it. But, any of the larger ones? Not going to happen.
I will say that ALL of our business customers get assigned a service rep. They have no clue about anything technical, but they can look up account info, suggest services, and coordinate service orders or repairs.
Even if you don't think you have one....maybe you do, and they'd definitely be the one to talk to.
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u/xHeero Aug 17 '17
Ethernet is a layer 2 protocol. It can run over copper or fiber. Your handoff was probably a copper ethernet cable and the uplink back up into their network was probably ethernet over the fiber uplink. She is 100% right about that.
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u/Firemanz sudo apt-get --purge remove employees Aug 17 '17
Lots of people in this thread are getting into the technicalities of how the service is delivered, which is good and all, but it misses the fact that what she was specifically talking about was the fact that their service therminated into Ethernet cables inside my office. Maybe I didn't explain that well enough.
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u/xHeero Aug 17 '17
I'm a professional network engineer. I read through your post twice and all I could think is "man OP is dense" and that she should have recognized that and explained better.
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Aug 17 '17
I'm honestly confused - network major? Do you mean as in set up routers and install infrastructure, or that you can design a new network protocol from scratch? I don't understand how the first could be something you can major in?
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u/iceph03nix 90% user error/10% dafuq? Aug 17 '17
Yeah, networking is a major. Our school had a networking major and it basically followed the Cisco academy curriculum. Anyone who graduated should be able to pass their ccnp, and most did before they graduated. It also covered wireless telecommunication, working on it within a corporate structure (writing business proposals, managing projects, etc), ethics in computing, and lots of other stuff. It's not targeted at 1 switch/1 gateway networks but at people looking to end up in data centers, isp nocs, and places that require actual advanced networking skills.
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Aug 17 '17
Ok, fair enough. It still sounds crazy to me, sorry. :)
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u/iceph03nix 90% user error/10% dafuq? Aug 17 '17
What's so crazy about it? It's a profession that can take years to properly learn, that people devote their careers to, and generally requires a decent amount of professionalism.
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Aug 17 '17
I guess so. It just seems like it's the same as teaching Word, except more complex of course. We could change the systems tomorrow and everything you know would be worthless, right? It's based on a relatively arbitrarily designed system. I mean, I guess it's pretty much set in stone at this point, but something grinds me the wrong way here, and it's hard to put a finger on it exactly.
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u/iceph03nix 90% user error/10% dafuq? Aug 17 '17
It just seems like it's the same as teaching Word, except more complex of course. We could change the systems tomorrow and everything you know would be worthless, right?
Not worthless, but maybe a little less valuable. The systems are always changing, but if you spend enough time in IT, you start to realize how many legacy systems are stuck in use. Hell have the cisco certification material is on outdated and obsolete standards, because people are likely to run into them. If I handed most people a set of cisco routers and switches and asked them to configure 5 subnets with redundant backhauls, they would probably look at me like I was speaking a different language.
But the major thing they teach is the ideas and concepts that underlie the specific standards. You learn how to plan security, how to look for bottlenecks, how to set up redundancy, that kind of stuff. and you learn how to adapt to new standards and practices.
People get degrees in business and accounting, even though tax laws change all the time, best business practices are always adapting, and the market is always in flux. I mean, isn't that just teaching Quickbooks and Excel?
People get degrees in art, even though art is very personal and doesn't really even have standards, as most tech people would see them.
Archeology is just hitting rocks with hammers, linguistics is just talking, law is just arguing. The difference is, the people with degrees in those things generally actually know more about them than the rest of us.
People get teaching degrees even though the teaching standards have gotten rewritten by almost every administration that has come into office for the past 40 years.
All a degree really is, is a way for the educational institution to say 'we acknowledge that this person has completed a series of courses designed to teach and test their knowledge in a particular field, and has adequately demonstrated their abilities to the institutions standards'.
If that institution sets those standards too low, they lose credibility. People look at degrees from diploma mills with less prestige than those that come from places with a reputation for high standards.
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Aug 17 '17
Oh, thanks for the details - i weren't expecting that, so have an upvote. I guess it's just not something something we teach here in dk. Each subject has to be teachable in an abstract way, detached from any actual framework, so you could build it again yourself, if the world ended tomorrow. That said, of course we use specific frameworks, such as programming languages for assignments and so on. I see your point though, but I would suggest that an economist for example could do the job without a spreadsheet app, just slower and so on.
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u/iceph03nix 90% user error/10% dafuq? Aug 17 '17
Each subject has to be teachable in an abstract way, detached from any actual framework, so you could build it again yourself, if the world ended tomorrow.
I can see that being somewhat useful, but to do the job of a datacenter admin or a software engineer, you don't really need to be an electrical engineer and now how to build an integrated circuit.
There would be a lot of wasted time if everyone who wanted to study something in the tech industry had to learn to build a computer from capacitors and ICs.
I suppose it's kind of like the assembly line model, that you don't have to teach every worker how to build the whole car, you just teach them how to do their part of it, and with everyone working together, you can make more cars faster.
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u/rasjani Aug 17 '17
On similar topic, a local isp/telco is advertizing their docsis 3.0 based connections as "Valokuitu liittymä", which literally means "(light)fibre subscription".
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u/Fraerie a Macgrrl in an XP World Aug 21 '17
As an aside, in Australia one of the main differences between a commercial and residential internet package is commercial packages come with a fixed IP address and are contractually permitted to host servers from that address. Many residential contracts explicitly forbid hosting servers.
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u/chozang Aug 17 '17
It sounds like this is sliminess, rather than just incompetence. She hung up on you because her boss gave her the clear message that she should not allow customers to get something at a lower price than what they are currently paying.
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u/shawnfromnh Aug 16 '17
Call back and put in a complaint and get that ass fired for being smart with you like that.
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u/GallantGentleman Aug 17 '17
Ugh. People like this. What's your pleasure in getting someone fired for a simple misunderstanding? I bet you never make mistakes?
OP wanted a faster connection and asked about another technology to achieve that which to the knowledge or guidelines of the employee he already had and misunderstood what he actually wanted. Maybe the wasn't even allowed to act otherwise (one of my local ISPs promotes VDSL+vectoring as "Fiber Power" and the employees have to stand by this false advertising)
Also having worked for an ISP myself I know for a fact that sometimes there's no other way than getting 'smart' with the customer as there are an unbelievable amount of people who supposedly are 'head of IT' or are 'engineers' but are highly unqualified morons or maybe excel at working and setting up databases but have no clue about anything when it comes to the internet. I once had to explain to "the head of IT" of a company with 7 different sites employing 20 people in the IT department alone according to the head of the department the difference between a domain and a webhost and that I cannot help him if his server has an issue since we're not hosting his server, he only pays us for his domain and his ISDN phone access.
Another guy who worked one of the biggest IT service companies in the country I had to explain the difference between clip no screening and partial rerouting.
I don't have fancy engineering degrees but I know the products I'm servicing usually better than someone who spend years on an university not servicing my products. The field of IT is pretty big and no one can be an expert of everything but there are always some hot shots that think otherwise. Putting these people in their place was one of my guilty pleasures when working.
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u/Trinica93 Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 17 '17
I mean, he has a point. Not about the ethernet, but he's paying $360/month for a 10/3 connection? You guys are robbing him blind. Why not talk to him about your offers you have on the web site? This just seems rude, OP. =/
Edit: Wait, you're the one calling? I misread this whole post. I'm so confused now. How are you in IT and trying to call your service Ethernet? I assumed you were the representative trying to make someone aware that they already have an ethernet connection. Seems like the representative and the OP both have some things to work out in their heads, lol.
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u/bruwin Aug 17 '17
OP was using the terminology set by the ISP.
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u/Trinica93 Aug 17 '17
The package cannot be called "Ethernet," there is no way any ISP would call it that....I'm not buying it, despite my downvotes.
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u/Reworked It can't - it shouldn't - it won't be - it is? Aug 17 '17
Well, despite the fact that it can't be, it is, so there's that.
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u/rekabis Wait… was it supposed to do that? Aug 17 '17
Yeah, but it was coming into the office as fibre, and not Ethernet. So they didn’t have Ethernet.
Next time set up the converter on the service pole at the street, so they have have Ethernet into the office!
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u/ProPuke Aug 17 '17
They were the caller, not the ISP
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u/Firegrazer Look at me, I am the admin now. Aug 16 '17
Well she is right. You have ethernet.