I went on a date with a girl who said she was going to school for communication.
We were at a bar and grill, so I misheard her and started deep diving into networks, fiber, PTP and OTA, my favorite switches and routers, why I hate and love Cisco, but why I prefer Brocade and Ruckus, was even starting to get into AM and FM when she finally stopped me:
not communications, communication. Like, you know, talking.
Oooooh. That’s cool.
And somehow I saved the date and we were together for a good five years.
Didn’t even get to satellites. She did really appreciate that she didn’t have to pay to have her macbook repaired, or any other IT shit.
God, I agree so hard. And they rename shit rather than sticking to IEEE standards. And while GSM3 is free, the firmwares aren’t.
It is cheaper to buy a $100 48 port brocade off eBay than a $5000 24 port that then requires you to pay to learn how to use it.
Cisco is the network devil, as well as Fortigate, Juniper, and Sonicwall. Ubiquiti is almost getting to be as bad but in a different way: let’s make shit so user friendly that CEOs love it, but user unfriendly so that network guys are like, "dude, this should be fucking simple! I have to dig into all these menus and then find the field buried in a pretty format.
“Just give me the terminal. Oh, I can ssh in but I don’t have sudo. Nope, you need to use the convoluted web UI to so that.”
As someone who wants to get into networking and also doesn’t want to give Cisco money, what do you suggest I do. I currently have some of the comptia certs (net and sec). With my 2-3 years in IT (workjng with networking and servers), how can I improve myself to get another job?
I would rather just get a $100 brocade off eBay. Ubiquiti edge routers (at least four years ago) were nice but good god: don’t let them lose power.
Fortunately, the router runs off a thumb drive, but when you are trying to fix a network that is in production and the FNG figures he can just power cycle it like Comcast taught him with his router at home… fml. Especially on a WAN (like ISP), it is a fucking nightmare.
I have found Sophos and Netgate to be good solutions for small businesses, except setting VLANs on Netgate is a pain, but so is setting a VPN on Sophos. And Sophos is also a licensing bitch.
I went on a date with a girl who said she was going to school for communication.
We were at a bar and grill, so I misheard her and started deep diving into networks, fiber, PTP and OTA, my favorite switches and routers, why I hate and love Cisco, but why I prefer Brocade and Ruckus, was even starting to get into AM and FM when she finally stopped me:
not communications, communication. Like, you know, talking.
Oooooh. That’s cool.
And somehow I saved the date and we were together for a good five years.
Didn’t even get to satellites. She did really appreciate that she didn’t have to pay to have her macbook repaired, or any other IT shit.
propaganda
What?
Do tell me your opinions on Cisco. My work is somewhat adjacent and sometimes there’s an overlap but I know very little about it.
Proprietary network protocols
e.g. VLAN trunking.
If you use Cisco anywhere in your infrastructure, then you kind of need to use it elsewhere.
Overpriced. Overrated. And I hate dealing with their licensing.
God, I agree so hard. And they rename shit rather than sticking to IEEE standards. And while GSM3 is free, the firmwares aren’t.
It is cheaper to buy a $100 48 port brocade off eBay than a $5000 24 port that then requires you to pay to learn how to use it.
Cisco is the network devil, as well as Fortigate, Juniper, and Sonicwall. Ubiquiti is almost getting to be as bad but in a different way: let’s make shit so user friendly that CEOs love it, but user unfriendly so that network guys are like, "dude, this should be fucking simple! I have to dig into all these menus and then find the field buried in a pretty format.
“Just give me the terminal. Oh, I can ssh in but I don’t have sudo. Nope, you need to use the convoluted web UI to so that.”
As someone who wants to get into networking and also doesn’t want to give Cisco money, what do you suggest I do. I currently have some of the comptia certs (net and sec). With my 2-3 years in IT (workjng with networking and servers), how can I improve myself to get another job?
Its hard right now. Fortinet is one of my favorites for hardware. Tailscale for SDN. Ruckus is underrated.
Edit: For a career move, do Tailscale.
Who _doesn’t_have shitty licensing?
I loved Cambium, buuuuut they just got fucked.
Ubiquiti! But I also wouldn’t run in an enterprise capacity.
Cisco licensing is getting… better. I got us on an EA agreement and it’s making annual renewals a lot easier.
I would rather just get a $100 brocade off eBay. Ubiquiti edge routers (at least four years ago) were nice but good god: don’t let them lose power.
Fortunately, the router runs off a thumb drive, but when you are trying to fix a network that is in production and the FNG figures he can just power cycle it like Comcast taught him with his router at home… fml. Especially on a WAN (like ISP), it is a fucking nightmare.
I have found Sophos and Netgate to be good solutions for small businesses, except setting VLANs on Netgate is a pain, but so is setting a VPN on Sophos. And Sophos is also a licensing bitch.