c/commercial-networking

Saw a small coffee shop switch from Cat6 to fiber and their whole day changed

Their old Cat6 run was over 300 feet through the ceiling and had interference from the kitchen equipment. The owner told me they were losing maybe 10 transactions a day before the switch.

Keep seeing people daisy chain switches in office buildings without thinking about the power budget

I was helping a buddy wire up a small office in Chicago last Tuesday and he had 3 switches plugged into one UPS. Each switch was pulling around 30 watts and the UPS was rated for 150 watts max. He thought it was fine until the breaker tripped during a presentation. I always check the total draw before plugging anything in now. Has anyone else run into this with their setups?

Shocked to learn that 60% of office network downtime is caused by bad patch cables

I read this stat in a White Paper from Fluke Networks last week while troubleshooting a slowdown at a client's site in Austin. It made me realize I've been blaming the switches when it's probably just a loose crimp or a broken tab. Has anyone else found cheap patch cables causing more problems than they're worth?

Tried Meraki vs Ubiquiti for a 3-story office build last month

Went with Ubiquiti after the Meraki quote came in $2,800 higher for the same coverage. Had to reboot the main switch twice in the first week though. Anyone else have reliability issues with their gear in a busy environment?

That conversation with the IT director at a coffee shop in Denver

I was hauling cable through a drop ceiling for a small office retrofit last month with my helper when their IT director walked over and started asking about our terminations. He mentioned that every bad crimp he's seen over 15 years could have been caught by just tugging the cable before you leave the ladder... said it's the only test that matters for patch cables. I'd always used a fluke tester before, but his point about time spent was hard to argue with... has anyone else switched to just manual pull testing for short runs?

Debate: Should you fail over to backup WAN or let users suffer through a partial outage?

We had a 10G fiber cut in our Denver office last Tuesday around 2pm. The primary link dropped hard but our Meraki SD-WAN didn't fail over to the 1G cable backup because the circuit wasn't technically "dead" - just packet loss above 40%. So users could load some pages but nothing worked right for about 45 minutes before I flipped the failover manually. My boss says that's the right call - let users know something's broken so we push the ISP to fix it faster. I think if we have backup bandwidth, we should use it automatically even if performance sucks. What do you guys do with your setups? Stick with strict failover thresholds or flip over at the first sign of trouble?

That week in November when our whole network went down for 3 days

I work at a mid-size company in Austin and we had a switch stack fail on a Tuesday. Our MSP kept saying it was a firmware issue but turns out it was a bad power supply on the main switch. Took them until Friday to get a replacement shipped and by then we had lost almost $12k in sales because our POS systems were down. Has anyone else dealt with a vendor that takes forever to diagnose hardware problems?

Found a simple VLAN tagging trick for unmanaged switches

I had 3 security cameras and a guest WiFi on the same flat network at my small office in Austin. Tried a cheap managed switch but setup was too complex for me. Anyone know a better way to segment traffic without buying expensive gear?

A quick chat at the Denver airport turned into a solid lead

I was waiting for a delayed flight last month and got talking to the person next to me about the usual travel stuff. When I mentioned I run a small B2B software shop, she said, 'Oh, my team has been looking for something exactly like that for six months.' We swapped cards right there at gate B42. Just got the signed contract back yesterday. Anyone else have a networking win come from the most random place?

Update: I spent $500 on a 'premium' networking event that was a total bust

Last month I paid for a ticket to a big industry mixer in Chicago that promised 'high-level connections.' It was just a crowded bar with a cash-only drink line and zero structure. I talked to maybe three people, all trying to sell me their own services. On one side, maybe these events work if you're super outgoing. On the other, I could have saved that cash and just messaged people online directly. Has anyone actually gotten a solid client from a paid mixer, or are they just a money grab now?

A client straight up said my follow-up game was weak. Fixed it.

I was doing my usual thing after a trade show, sending a generic 'nice to meet you' email to everyone. A guy I really wanted to work with, a manufacturing rep from Cleveland, wrote back. He said, 'Look, I get 50 of these a week. You talked about my new product line. Why not mention that?' It hit me hard. I was just checking a box. Now, I spend 5 minutes per contact right after the event. I jot down one specific thing we discussed, like a project timeline or a material they use. My follow-up email leads with that detail. My reply rate went from maybe 10% to over 40% in three months. It's more work, but it's actual networking, not just broadcasting. Anyone else have a simple trick to make follow-ups less of a chore?

I used to think networking events were just about handing out business cards, but a coffee chat in Denver last month changed my whole approach.

Spectrum Enterprise vs Cronus Internet for a corporate event space?

Hey everyone, I'm setting up the IT infrastructure for a new mid-sized corporate event and conference center in the city. We need to lock in our ISP soon. Looking at commercial internet service detroit options and it's down to Spectrum Enterprise or Cronus Internet. Any thoughts on how they handle massive spikes in concurrent users?