Stupid Client Quote #5270

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I was onsite with a client teaching a training class. We were having problems reaching some of the computers on the clients network. Additionally we kept having duplicate IP address being assigned to workstations causing network errors. Clients pay a fixed fee for 3 days of my time for these classes. If we don't finish due to client issues, its not generally my problem.



Looking at the clients network, I found they had purchased to DSL lines into their site, to provide outside Internet access, and were using two DSL modems. These modems each was conected to its own firewall/router. Each firewall router was using its own subnet. All the workstations were statically assigned IP addresses on one of the two subnets.



We were unable to get the test machines to communicate with each other, because they were on separate subnets. I explained that the two machines had to use the router to reach the other subnet. The clients director of IT, loudly explained that he didn't have any routers on his network. I tried gently to explain that his firewalls, were in fact acting as routers gateway-ing traffic between the two subnets.



He accused me of lying and said the software didn't work, I said it did work on a single subnet, when we didn't have IP conflicts . I suggested that he use DHCP, he claimed DHCP didn't work on his network, (not surprisingly since he had two different subnets on the same flat ethernet segment, and no "routers"). I suggested that he purchase a router that could handle two connections for fail over, so he could utilize a single subnet, and was accused of trying to sell him something he didn't need, because everything worked "just fine". (Except for the IP conflicts and some machines not being able to connect to printers or shares on other systems because of the router/firewalls).



With any luck for that company, he has retired and no longer violating every sane practice for small networks.

