Workshop

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Hour 20
Network Troubleshooters Just Wanna Have Fun
Curse you! You know our goal is to give you the opposite of what you want! Since you want
nothing we must give you everything!
—Mordac, “The Preventer of Information Services”
Scott Adams’ Dilbert, September 17, 1998
Let’s say you’ve been tasked by your boss to get good at network troubleshooting. So far, she’s been
wonderful and has bought you this book, sent you to a class or two, and things are just great. Only problem
is that nothing’s broken in almost forever. It’s as if the network gremlins know that you’re prepared for
them and are waiting until your guard is down—they’re waiting until you forget the stuff you’ve learned
before they pounce.
Well, you can foil their crafty little plans by plying your troubleshooting trade to help the masses have a
little bit of fun. This hour deals with stuff you’ll need to know in order to play various games and use
non—work-related toys through your firewall or proxy server. And why not? You’ve worked hard, you
deserve it.
For those of you who’ve paged directly to this hour—don’t! This hour assumes that you’ve already
engaged in the sweat involved in the past 19 hours and that you have a basic grasp of TCP/IP
troubleshooting, particularly the concepts involved in Hour 18, “In-depth Application Troubleshooting,”
and Hour 19, “’Lots of Different People in Your Neighborhood’: Internet/Intranet Troubleshooting.”
Seriously, learning how to use games (during your own time, of course) and toys on the Internet is a great
incentive to practice your Internet and client/server troubleshooting. It teaches you how to perform these
types of troubleshooting techniques on a noncritical basis—in other words, you’re unlikely to get stressed
out helping somebody do something that’s strictly optional. What’s more, you’re then more of an expert at
this type of troubleshooting technique when real trouble arises. Let’s face it, network troubleshooters and
IT (Information Technology) people, in general, have a bum rap for being sociopaths. Helping people do
fun things has the following benefits:
• It’s enjoyable.
• It’s a good learning experience.
• It’s helpful in establishing a rapport with users.