The most important thing about problems (the eyeball)

Often I see technicians dealing with issues and problems while sitting firmly on the seat of their pants at their desks. Call me old school, but I do not think this works! There is no substitute for the eyeball.

When I was a technical account manager at Madge I received a call about a problematic branch at Standard Bank. It was their flagship branch in Sandton. No expense had been spared and it was clad top to toe in marble. However, the staff at branch regularly reported that the network became toast. As is token-ring's self healing nature it would correct itself automatically. The temporary outages were causing a great deal of frustration and technicians at the bank had been unable to diagnose the fault. I decided to investigate.

On the first visit that I was at the branch I plugged in my notebook and did a health check of the network. It was running as smooth as a Husqvarna sewing machine. I left and resolved to come back later. On my second visit, I was sitting at my notebook in the room where the MAUs (token-ring hubs) were racked sifting through network traces looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The room where the network equipment was racked also served as the stationary store and had some mainframe printers. My thoughts were disturbed by one of the mainframe printers kicking into life. The print job completed and a few minutes later a staff member arrived to retrieve the print job. She walked over to the printer and the next moment the hubs started "shotgunning". "Shotgunning" is the distinctive sound a token-ring network makes as the relays open and close when a fault occurs. The self healing nature of the network kicks in as it start attempting to isolate the fault. The manager of the branch ran into the room and excitedly asked if I had seen and diagnosed the fault. I assured him that I had captured the fault on my equipment and if he could give me a moment to analyze it, I would provide some feedback.

But first, I walked over to the printer. It was located at the end of the room and a passage was left to reach it between piles of stationary boxes. Half way down this passage was a piece of carpet covering a token-ring fly lead. Suspiciously I lifted the carpet, and immediately eyeballed the problem. The human traffic over the carpet to the printer had badly frayed the fly lead and each time someone went to fetch a print job the frayed fly lead would cause a fault. We replaced the fly lead and moved the printer to a more suitable location and the problem was solved.

Without being present and doing visual inspection a large number of problems will remain unsolved. Thus the most important aspect of problem management, in my opinion, is the EYEBALL! One of the most fasinating aspects of the issue, is that many techies insist on using laptops but leave them statically connected to their desktops, secured with Kensington locks, for 99.999% of the time. These laptops, need to earn their keep and start showing some hard working wear and tear as their owners do some eyeballing.