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We've had quite the uphill struggle with internet and wireless this year with students.
First, it started with bandwidth. We have a 20mg pipe coming in. So that's 20 mgs for over 1000 students, about 100 on campus faculty and 250 staff members.
That's roughly .0675 per person. Add priorities to that, which the students are at the end of the line of, and you've got one slow connection. YouTube has been pretty much unusable since the beginning of school. For the MONTH (last 4 weeks), we have an average in on 73.4%. That's not really even a fair assessment of our network, as that includes Thanksgiving, where we didn't have fac/staff for 3 days, and minimal students for 5.
That was our average in for the month. Our CURRENT in is at 98.8%. By 2pm, we'll be up to 99.8%. For those interested, here's a 24 hour snapshot of our MRTG usage stats.
That has made the student not so happy. Add that to those who believe that if the website doesn't load at the snap of a finger, it's "broken". Sigh.
If that wasn't bad enough, about half of our wireless access points decided to start slowly dying. We kept the students informed of what was going on, and was resetting the access points in question, well, almost every hour. There was much rejoicing in IT when we got those replaced.
The third problem is what is leading to what I'm actually here to post.
The problem is with the proliferation of wireless printers and ad hoc networks. We have it set that as soon as we see an ad hoc showing up in our buildings, we set it so the students can't actually connect to it. The problem is that these devices are sending OUT signals on the same channels we're using for OUR wireless. This creates interference, and badness.
In comes Student. Student comes in, complaining that she can't connect in her room. We go over her laptop with a fine tooth comb, update her wireless driver, triple check her card settings, and when that fails, Server Admin and I go to her room. Sure enough, she can connect to the wireless, but can't pull web pages.
I start my general troubleshooting and ta daaaa!!! Her roommate has a wireless printer. We turn it off, and bam! She can get pages to load. We turn it back on, and awww, no more interwebz. With permission from roommate, I turn off the wireless on the printer. All is well in the wireless world.
Two weeks later, it happens again. She can't load pages. I LITERALLY drop EVERYTHING I was working on, and head back to her room. I spend TWO HOURS there, fiddling with everything, talking to the network admin on MY cell phone, using MY minutes, as Big Boss has declared me not important enough for a company cell phone. We finally have her up and running, again. But it's pretty clear the problem is ad hocs and absolutely NOTHING to do with the wireless network. However, I noticed some speed problems that my laptop did not. Later, (as in today), I learned this was probably due to me being in a higher priority group than her, but I got looking and saw signs of malware. So, I explained everything to her AGAIN, listened to her whine for awhile, and then told her to bring the laptop into the helpdesk in the morning, while she was doing her work study, so I could scan it, and clean up anything affecting her speed.
This was the day before Thanksgiving break. She had work study from 10-2, so she was going to bring it in right before that. She was leaving campus for break afterwards, so I would have 4 hours to run my usual 3 scans. (I say 3, because hijackthis doesn't really count, as it's not scanning the entire computer). These scans usually take about an hour and a half EACH, usually much more.
Now, since the back to school rush ended, and we got our heads untangled, manager decided I was wasting a lot of time just running scans on student laptops, when it was simple work students could do. So, I'm supposed to have student workers run the scans for me. Anything weird happens, and they punt it to me. However, as soon as Student's boyfriend brought in the laptop at **11am**, I grabbed it and started scans. IIRC, I even skipped lunch, so I wouldn't lose time inbetween scans.
Thankfully, she didn't have many files on it, so the scans went quickly, and I got it back to her in time. Internet was loading MUCH faster. Since it was break, I was able to go 5 whole days without dealing with her. In fact, it was like 4pm on Wednesday, when she called back in, and of course AAFH (Admin Asst from hell) was out, so I got the call while working with a girl who happened to be friends with Student.
Student calls, and says she's having the same problem again, and she knows it's a wireless printer because she only has problems when there's an HPSetup network listed in her wireless list. So, could we come down and find the printer and make the students turn it off?
She then said that she's put signs on the door, and talked to everyone but no one would admit they have a wireless printer. And, she knows that I told her I needed more people to call in, and people in her building had been complaining about the wireless on facebook, but they just aren't calling in!!!
So, I finally get to where I can put her on hold and talk to the network admin. He said we have no really good way of hunting down a wireless printer. He said with several hours of walking up and down the hallway, he could get close, but not really determine WHICH room it was in. Not that it really mattered, because when we had a similar problem several years ago, one that was taking entire BUILDINGS down, Residential Life decreed we were not allowed to enter a student's room to look for rogue access points. BUT, I did want to let the network admin know there was the problem in case there was something he could do to fix it.
I got to go back and tell her the "good" news. T'was nothing to be done. All I could tell her was to keep talking to her housemates about their printers, to try to use the wired connection when she can, and that what COULD be done is the CAs (RAs or Resident Advisors, to the rest of the world) can come on over to the Helpdesk, and we can show THEM how to tell a wireless printer from a regular one, and how to turn off broadcasting. The CAs can go into student rooms and do whatever they want. **WE** can not.
AND, as I stress to all the students, I told her she would get a much BETTER signal if she used a network cable and plugged in. I'm sure most of you in tech support can imagine the response I got. (Heck, I could barely convince a fellow WoWer to plug in HIS DESKTOP to play WoW.)
So, as you can tell, I laid out several alternatives to her. I did everything in my power to help her, including telling her how she can help herself.
She complained for a few minutes before hanging up on me.
Due to her tone right before she hung up, I made a mental note to tell the dept head about the incident when he came in the next morning, as he was out that day.
Oh, did I mention she called at like, 20 to 30 minutes before close????
Of course, I figured, at the time, that like most of the stuff I tell manager or dept head, will be me being paranoid, and nothing will come of it.
Well, I didn't get my chance to tell anyone. The student who was with me at the time was SUPER COOL. I mean, she was one of those people who really make tech support rewarding. Firstly, she had a very strange issue. I LOVE problems I haven't seen before. After 9 friggin' years in tech support, I don't get to see a new problem often.
So, I took the computer from manager, and had her come over to my office. She hung with me during the phone call I mentioned above, and a semi-panicked phone call from the head librarian. (Google Chrome home pages are very very important.) She was chatty but not distracting. Which is a hard thing to find a happy medium. She was interested in what I was doing, but not annoying. She was just all around COOL. And appreciative!! I just LOVE that "OMG! You're the BEST!!" reaction. People just get sooo happy!! I ended up staying here, off the clock, for an HOUR, to make sure super cool student could get openoffice.org downloaded and installed, also, I made sure the program I installed for her to pull her music off her iTouch, and back onto her new computer.
So, I went home in a very very good mood.
Little did I know that Student was lambasting me and the dept on Facebook.
Something I didn't know. Apparently University Relations hires someone to search Facebook for mentions of the uni. Apparently, Miss Troublemaker of the Year did NOT attend my presentation on Facebook Security. Thus, her vent about us being worthless was forwarded straight to the Vice President of the university. Anyone who's spent more than 5 minutes on this forum know that shite rolls downhill.
I could see it roll when I received the email about the problem. VP, to CIO, to manager, to me.
The email we received, however, did NOT state the student's name. So, first thing, I started to tell Manager about Student's phone call. I only got started when dept head (CIO) walked in, and I started over. Just got started again when the network admin came in, said there was a student out in the helpdesk area, and shut my door. We decided to move to the Manager's office, as she has a couch, and more seating area than I do in my office. (Curse you, desk!!)
So, once again, I started my story of the phone call. Manager interrupted me, when she saw that AAFH had IMed her not only the student's name from the FB comment, but the link to her wall. Sure enough, it was the same student.
So, I got out my story, liberally interrupted by the network admin to explain something I couldn't, or something that he thought was important, but really made no sense, and didn't help the situation at all.
Manager printed out the page for dept head. I read it again, and just started to get upset. As I've said earlier, I've been in tech support for 9 years. A lot of parts of me have been killed off in those 9 years, but I've not yet learned how to not get personally invested in my work, and those I work for.
To be told, after TWO visits to her room, for at least 2 hours each, that I don't even believe she has a problem??? Um.... HELLO??
That she's called 6 times and all we've ever told her is that we can't do anything? Yesterday was the first time that I've worked with her, which has been more than the two times I've gone to her room, that I didn't leave her computer in perfect working order. She's got the bloody access point RIGHT outside her door!! you'd have to kill to get a better signal!
I've given her alternatives, tips, tricks, and everything I could possibly do for a student. It physically HURT to read that post.
Not one to leave well enough alone, I did my own FB search, and found several other students complaining about the wireless that Student commented on.
No, I did NOT tell you that we wouldn't work on the problem unless other students called in. I explained, quite clearly, that the problem was NOT the wireless, but the computers and the wireless printers. I explained that I needed the other people to call in, so we can get to THEIR computers, where the problem IS!
No, I did NOT tell you that you were wrong when you said the building was terrible for wireless. I explained WHERE the problem was, and that we were NOT allowed to do anything about it via Res Life. (Trust me, I had dreams of a squad of ITers and sledge hammers.)
In the end, we decided to send out another email about turning off the wireless feature of printers, and disabling ad hoc connections. I, of course, don't need to tell anyone who's been on this forum for more than five minutes how many people I expect to read said email. I'm sure less than a quarter of them will actually follow the directions within. I'm sure less than a quarter of those will know to remove the quotes from the command prompt commands. Sigh.
I happened to go out to lunch with dept head and the server admin. During the ride, the conversation turned to the earlier events, and the bandwidth situation. Dept head said he'd love to go by our usage agreement from our ISP and block out anything not education related. Namely Facebook, MySpace, NetFlix, XBL, etc.
As we got out of the car, I said, innocently, "If you block Facebook, what am I going to do all day?"
"I'll make you babysit Student."
I shuddered. "Seriously, if you do block Facebook, you're buying me body armor first. Or a big burly but cute bodyguard."
"I don't know where I'd get the bodyguard, but I can probably spring for body armor."
Am I screwed? Probably.
Manager, Dept head and Network admin had a meeting with Student and Student's ever present boyfriend. Afterwards, Manager told me that Student is much calmer now, and she thinks she regrets posting the vent. Hopefully, she'll realize she needs to lock down her FB.
I think that's all I got. Plus, I'm due at a side job right now. More if I can think of anything to add.
First, it started with bandwidth. We have a 20mg pipe coming in. So that's 20 mgs for over 1000 students, about 100 on campus faculty and 250 staff members.
That's roughly .0675 per person. Add priorities to that, which the students are at the end of the line of, and you've got one slow connection. YouTube has been pretty much unusable since the beginning of school. For the MONTH (last 4 weeks), we have an average in on 73.4%. That's not really even a fair assessment of our network, as that includes Thanksgiving, where we didn't have fac/staff for 3 days, and minimal students for 5.
That was our average in for the month. Our CURRENT in is at 98.8%. By 2pm, we'll be up to 99.8%. For those interested, here's a 24 hour snapshot of our MRTG usage stats.
That has made the student not so happy. Add that to those who believe that if the website doesn't load at the snap of a finger, it's "broken". Sigh.
If that wasn't bad enough, about half of our wireless access points decided to start slowly dying. We kept the students informed of what was going on, and was resetting the access points in question, well, almost every hour. There was much rejoicing in IT when we got those replaced.
The third problem is what is leading to what I'm actually here to post.
The problem is with the proliferation of wireless printers and ad hoc networks. We have it set that as soon as we see an ad hoc showing up in our buildings, we set it so the students can't actually connect to it. The problem is that these devices are sending OUT signals on the same channels we're using for OUR wireless. This creates interference, and badness.
In comes Student. Student comes in, complaining that she can't connect in her room. We go over her laptop with a fine tooth comb, update her wireless driver, triple check her card settings, and when that fails, Server Admin and I go to her room. Sure enough, she can connect to the wireless, but can't pull web pages.
I start my general troubleshooting and ta daaaa!!! Her roommate has a wireless printer. We turn it off, and bam! She can get pages to load. We turn it back on, and awww, no more interwebz. With permission from roommate, I turn off the wireless on the printer. All is well in the wireless world.
Two weeks later, it happens again. She can't load pages. I LITERALLY drop EVERYTHING I was working on, and head back to her room. I spend TWO HOURS there, fiddling with everything, talking to the network admin on MY cell phone, using MY minutes, as Big Boss has declared me not important enough for a company cell phone. We finally have her up and running, again. But it's pretty clear the problem is ad hocs and absolutely NOTHING to do with the wireless network. However, I noticed some speed problems that my laptop did not. Later, (as in today), I learned this was probably due to me being in a higher priority group than her, but I got looking and saw signs of malware. So, I explained everything to her AGAIN, listened to her whine for awhile, and then told her to bring the laptop into the helpdesk in the morning, while she was doing her work study, so I could scan it, and clean up anything affecting her speed.
This was the day before Thanksgiving break. She had work study from 10-2, so she was going to bring it in right before that. She was leaving campus for break afterwards, so I would have 4 hours to run my usual 3 scans. (I say 3, because hijackthis doesn't really count, as it's not scanning the entire computer). These scans usually take about an hour and a half EACH, usually much more.
Now, since the back to school rush ended, and we got our heads untangled, manager decided I was wasting a lot of time just running scans on student laptops, when it was simple work students could do. So, I'm supposed to have student workers run the scans for me. Anything weird happens, and they punt it to me. However, as soon as Student's boyfriend brought in the laptop at **11am**, I grabbed it and started scans. IIRC, I even skipped lunch, so I wouldn't lose time inbetween scans.
Thankfully, she didn't have many files on it, so the scans went quickly, and I got it back to her in time. Internet was loading MUCH faster. Since it was break, I was able to go 5 whole days without dealing with her. In fact, it was like 4pm on Wednesday, when she called back in, and of course AAFH (Admin Asst from hell) was out, so I got the call while working with a girl who happened to be friends with Student.
Student calls, and says she's having the same problem again, and she knows it's a wireless printer because she only has problems when there's an HPSetup network listed in her wireless list. So, could we come down and find the printer and make the students turn it off?
She then said that she's put signs on the door, and talked to everyone but no one would admit they have a wireless printer. And, she knows that I told her I needed more people to call in, and people in her building had been complaining about the wireless on facebook, but they just aren't calling in!!!
So, I finally get to where I can put her on hold and talk to the network admin. He said we have no really good way of hunting down a wireless printer. He said with several hours of walking up and down the hallway, he could get close, but not really determine WHICH room it was in. Not that it really mattered, because when we had a similar problem several years ago, one that was taking entire BUILDINGS down, Residential Life decreed we were not allowed to enter a student's room to look for rogue access points. BUT, I did want to let the network admin know there was the problem in case there was something he could do to fix it.
I got to go back and tell her the "good" news. T'was nothing to be done. All I could tell her was to keep talking to her housemates about their printers, to try to use the wired connection when she can, and that what COULD be done is the CAs (RAs or Resident Advisors, to the rest of the world) can come on over to the Helpdesk, and we can show THEM how to tell a wireless printer from a regular one, and how to turn off broadcasting. The CAs can go into student rooms and do whatever they want. **WE** can not.
AND, as I stress to all the students, I told her she would get a much BETTER signal if she used a network cable and plugged in. I'm sure most of you in tech support can imagine the response I got. (Heck, I could barely convince a fellow WoWer to plug in HIS DESKTOP to play WoW.)
So, as you can tell, I laid out several alternatives to her. I did everything in my power to help her, including telling her how she can help herself.
She complained for a few minutes before hanging up on me.
Due to her tone right before she hung up, I made a mental note to tell the dept head about the incident when he came in the next morning, as he was out that day.
Oh, did I mention she called at like, 20 to 30 minutes before close????
Of course, I figured, at the time, that like most of the stuff I tell manager or dept head, will be me being paranoid, and nothing will come of it.
Well, I didn't get my chance to tell anyone. The student who was with me at the time was SUPER COOL. I mean, she was one of those people who really make tech support rewarding. Firstly, she had a very strange issue. I LOVE problems I haven't seen before. After 9 friggin' years in tech support, I don't get to see a new problem often.
So, I took the computer from manager, and had her come over to my office. She hung with me during the phone call I mentioned above, and a semi-panicked phone call from the head librarian. (Google Chrome home pages are very very important.) She was chatty but not distracting. Which is a hard thing to find a happy medium. She was interested in what I was doing, but not annoying. She was just all around COOL. And appreciative!! I just LOVE that "OMG! You're the BEST!!" reaction. People just get sooo happy!! I ended up staying here, off the clock, for an HOUR, to make sure super cool student could get openoffice.org downloaded and installed, also, I made sure the program I installed for her to pull her music off her iTouch, and back onto her new computer.
So, I went home in a very very good mood.
Little did I know that Student was lambasting me and the dept on Facebook.
Something I didn't know. Apparently University Relations hires someone to search Facebook for mentions of the uni. Apparently, Miss Troublemaker of the Year did NOT attend my presentation on Facebook Security. Thus, her vent about us being worthless was forwarded straight to the Vice President of the university. Anyone who's spent more than 5 minutes on this forum know that shite rolls downhill.
I could see it roll when I received the email about the problem. VP, to CIO, to manager, to me.
The email we received, however, did NOT state the student's name. So, first thing, I started to tell Manager about Student's phone call. I only got started when dept head (CIO) walked in, and I started over. Just got started again when the network admin came in, said there was a student out in the helpdesk area, and shut my door. We decided to move to the Manager's office, as she has a couch, and more seating area than I do in my office. (Curse you, desk!!)
So, once again, I started my story of the phone call. Manager interrupted me, when she saw that AAFH had IMed her not only the student's name from the FB comment, but the link to her wall. Sure enough, it was the same student.
So, I got out my story, liberally interrupted by the network admin to explain something I couldn't, or something that he thought was important, but really made no sense, and didn't help the situation at all.
Manager printed out the page for dept head. I read it again, and just started to get upset. As I've said earlier, I've been in tech support for 9 years. A lot of parts of me have been killed off in those 9 years, but I've not yet learned how to not get personally invested in my work, and those I work for.
To be told, after TWO visits to her room, for at least 2 hours each, that I don't even believe she has a problem??? Um.... HELLO??
That she's called 6 times and all we've ever told her is that we can't do anything? Yesterday was the first time that I've worked with her, which has been more than the two times I've gone to her room, that I didn't leave her computer in perfect working order. She's got the bloody access point RIGHT outside her door!! you'd have to kill to get a better signal!
I've given her alternatives, tips, tricks, and everything I could possibly do for a student. It physically HURT to read that post.
Not one to leave well enough alone, I did my own FB search, and found several other students complaining about the wireless that Student commented on.
No, I did NOT tell you that we wouldn't work on the problem unless other students called in. I explained, quite clearly, that the problem was NOT the wireless, but the computers and the wireless printers. I explained that I needed the other people to call in, so we can get to THEIR computers, where the problem IS!
No, I did NOT tell you that you were wrong when you said the building was terrible for wireless. I explained WHERE the problem was, and that we were NOT allowed to do anything about it via Res Life. (Trust me, I had dreams of a squad of ITers and sledge hammers.)
In the end, we decided to send out another email about turning off the wireless feature of printers, and disabling ad hoc connections. I, of course, don't need to tell anyone who's been on this forum for more than five minutes how many people I expect to read said email. I'm sure less than a quarter of them will actually follow the directions within. I'm sure less than a quarter of those will know to remove the quotes from the command prompt commands. Sigh.
I happened to go out to lunch with dept head and the server admin. During the ride, the conversation turned to the earlier events, and the bandwidth situation. Dept head said he'd love to go by our usage agreement from our ISP and block out anything not education related. Namely Facebook, MySpace, NetFlix, XBL, etc.
As we got out of the car, I said, innocently, "If you block Facebook, what am I going to do all day?"
"I'll make you babysit Student."
I shuddered. "Seriously, if you do block Facebook, you're buying me body armor first. Or a big burly but cute bodyguard."
"I don't know where I'd get the bodyguard, but I can probably spring for body armor."
Am I screwed? Probably.
Manager, Dept head and Network admin had a meeting with Student and Student's ever present boyfriend. Afterwards, Manager told me that Student is much calmer now, and she thinks she regrets posting the vent. Hopefully, she'll realize she needs to lock down her FB.
I think that's all I got. Plus, I'm due at a side job right now. More if I can think of anything to add.
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