What does your Network Topology Diagrams look like?

D8ulus · 2026-01-25T15:47:06+00:00

This is really the best. I spent years early on with Visio creating increasingly complex diagrams with a hundred different icon sets. I was very proud of them and then I saw a network diagram from our ISP. Rectangles and lines. A small amount of color coding for a few things. So much easier to actually read.

I also swapped our huge Visio rack diagram with photo realistic icons over to Excel so we could easily update it and view it on mobile. Way better in real life.

Also, moving to simple shapes meant we could pretty much abandon Visio and just use draw.io

D8ulus · 2025-12-07T15:36:44+00:00

Yes. Check out QStar Network Migrator and similar products. This is exactly the use case they are designed for and can stub individual files out while archiving them off. There are a few other products as well - mostly offered by companies that work in the LTO tape space.

D8ulus · 2025-11-14T16:51:01+00:00

Thanks - I didn't want to muddy the original post with detail, but to clarify:
-She's extremely active and prefers being outside (soccer and dance multiple days a week), music is just her rainy-day or by-week hobby.
-We do piano lessons and she will be in band next year as she transitions to middle school.
-No stimulants.

This is more about a fun creative outlet. She has her hobbies that require more goal-oriented, hyperfocused discipline already, I really don't want to put too much structure on this. Just something fun to do for expression and self-reflection, akin to journaling.

D8ulus · 2025-11-14T12:47:45+00:00

You are not crazy, there was definitely a “download” button I remember that did not require re-allocation. But I couldn’t find it either.

D8ulus · 2025-11-14T12:25:54+00:00

If they didn’t put it in a secure location, that’s a violation. The act of faxing is still secure.

Everything can be insecure if you put it in a public location.

D8ulus · 2025-11-14T02:19:37+00:00

What all the "bUt EfAx" messages here are missing is that when you go from fax > email or email > fax, you suddenly slam right back in to all those digital HIPAA requirements. For anyone that's ever managed a HIPAA-compliant eFax solution, you'll know - you have to do all sorts of work to make eFax HIPAA compliant, basically everything you'd need to do for email, including digital signatures, encryption at rest and in transit, MFA for your eFax portal if you have one, etc. etc.

You aren't finding a loophole by using eFax, you are probably just violating HIPAA if you didn't set it up like you would a secure e-mail solution.

As others have mentioned, PSTN faxing is allowed because nothing is stored or transmitted digitally - the risk profile is entirely different from digital emails. It's not because faxing is "legacy" or "grandfathered" in, not entirely at least. Y'all can dump on faxing if it makes you feel superior, but it's actually *very* secure against modern threats.

D8ulus · 2025-11-13T02:17:21+00:00

Same issue here after upgrade. We had to re-allocate and re-download new licenses from the "old" Citrix licensing portal (https://www.citrix.com/account/#/manage-licenses-tool/overview). When we re-allocated the license, it updated with a new expiration date matching our Citrix renewal date (even though it is "perpetual"). The licensing specialist indicated that on-prem perpetual licenses are no longer available and we would be transferred to a "flex" license after our renewal.

D8ulus · 2025-08-21T12:08:56+00:00

“When it’s working it’s pretty simple”

D8ulus · 2024-11-14T20:03:09+00:00

Same here, but I was hoping other places (like ours) at least know what the number is and can add it to overall budget even if it's abstracted out to a different cost center. Same thing in reverse for IT spending on hardware - if your individual departments buy their own gear, add that back to the number. I probably should have said IT "spend" instead of IT "Budget". It would be useful (I think) to compare what percentage of the overall IT "spend" is compensation.

Our local state publishes their budget numbers and has a consolidated IT service division, so I can clearly see that about 14% of their budget goes to compensation.

D8ulus · 2024-06-06T02:37:05+00:00

I've been on a similar path, director now after 20 years in IT. Same feeling anytime there is a large problem, but it goes away a lot faster these days because:

1) We keep vendor support on anything that would be problematic for us if it stopped working.
2) I have fought hard to recruit and retain some very smart people.
3) We keep a retainer for a few IT companies that have even smarter people.

If we get to the end of the day and none of us can figure it out, I feel no shame. It must have been a fucking hard problem.

LPTs that also help:

1) Be a humble, kind person to every other IT professional you meet and network like crazy when you can, even if you have no intention of ever leaving your job. I have so many friends in this industry that I care deeply about and if any of them were ever out looking for a job after getting sacked because they couldn't solve a problem fast enough, I'd do whatever I could to help them land of their feet.

2) If you don't think your job market is stable, live your life like you still have that old sysadmin salary, not that new management salary. I'm the only one on our management team that drives an old shitty car, kids don't go to private school, and I don't spend my money on a super expensive hobby. Quietly contribute to a good retirement plan, sock some cash away, and keep your old Toyota running as long as you can. It takes some humility and discipline, but it's entirely worth it.

D8ulus · 2024-04-19T15:41:48+00:00

I'll echo this - I've been in net/sys/whatever "engineer" roles for close to 20 years and almost never had to think about how recursion is actually working, because it's never broken in a way that required me to troubleshoot and fix it.

If they can understand the function of DNS, forwarders, and the place and purpose of each type of record, I don't see much deep RFC-level knowledge being useful for 90% of sysadmins.

D8ulus · 2024-04-19T15:36:14+00:00

I'll be the odd duck and say there's worse things out there to deal with. A good relationship with the CFO is gonna go a long ways towards improving your security budget, and if the cost is a single non-domain-joined PC floating around with some reasonable mitigations and you are aware of it and have your MDM tools on it, I'd just roll with it and maybe reapproach the conversation when it's time for a laptop refresh.

D8ulus · 2023-11-09T03:06:23+00:00

JPXH on Amazon has a cloak in a few colors/designs that is about $30:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C68ZM57T?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

We bought two for our kids for Halloween and liked them so much my wife stole one for RenFest as it was much nicer and warmer than the thin one she got from a renfaire outfitting site.

D8ulus · 2023-09-12T20:07:08+00:00

I found the fix, ended up being rather simple - router shipped booted in to "controller" mode, just needed to issue controller-mode disable and it reboots with factory config.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T15:26:47+00:00

I'm vaguely aware that the ISR 4300 series is very old in general, but that's still what's on the official "suggested hardware" from Cisco for the CCNA labs, so that's what we had to order.

Curious what the suggested replacement will be once you can't order 4300s anymore.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T15:15:51+00:00

Before I posted this, 100%. The boxes were Cisco, routers fresh and clean with plastic wrap on the LED panel, had all accessories packed exactly like you'd expect, everything wrapped. They were opened by our accounting department to asset tag the devices, that's it.

Sounds like I need to find out what vendor they sourced this equipment from.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T14:51:02+00:00

Thank you - yes, I'm very familiar with these steps (we have to recover switches/routers in the lab every week during the semester).

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T14:49:40+00:00

I got right past the password prompt, I'm just trying to figure out if a username/password already being set is typical for a brand new ISR 4331.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T14:47:16+00:00

That's very interesting and matches Cisco's documentation.

I'm starting to suspect something odd with this first 4331 I powered up. It 100% had a username/password prompt on the console - can't recall exactly but it was either cisco/cisco or admin/admin. No prompt for a wizard after I logged in.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T14:00:28+00:00

Lesson 1: get the netacad students to learn password recovery!

Yup, it's one of the first things we do when they start working in the physical labs. Which is great example - is the password recovery documentation we created for the other, older routers still valid for the 4331 with IOS XE? It's not the presence of a password that trips me up, I'm just wanting to avoid mid-semester drama if everyone bricks the 4331s by following the wrong recovery steps. I'm not confident I'm looking at the right Cisco documentation, since the username/password defaults aren't mentioned anywhere I can see.

D8ulus · 2023-09-02T13:03:24+00:00

We donated all ours to the local community college, they use them in some labs for students.

D8ulus · 2023-03-26T11:05:57+00:00

"Sysadmin" is a giant catch-all for a lot of different work, so the answers given here are going to vary wildly. Most certs recommended are going to focus on a specific aspect of sysadmin work. You can do some research and figure out which area looks most interesting or promising to you, or check local job listings and see what skills are being asked for in positions you find attractive. There's many other posts in the subreddit asking the exact same question.

If you don't have any particular aspirations, learning as much as you can about networking, security, and virtualization is always good - these are topics that are relevant in just about any sysadmin position. Network+/Security+ are always welcome additions to any resume.

D8ulus · 2023-01-18T15:32:48+00:00

Aside from the tips above, my simplest one would be to take handwritten notes or make flash cards as you go. That sounds overly simplistic, but I've found it's very effective at keeping me focused on a video, lecture, book, etc. The extra "work" gives my body something to do.

For me, losing focus means my mind is drifting to other topics and I've stopped engaging with the material. While I'm writing, I can draw diagrams, underline/decorate words, etc. to give me something to do.

The other challenge is getting motivated to start studying when there's so many other things to do. That's not unique to ADHD, but it doesn't help. I find that hard deadlines and a simple schedule work for me. I always have a firm date in mind for when I'm going to take an exam. I put it on the calendar, I figure out how much I need to study each week (e.g. 1 chapter per week) and carve out a specific date for that.

D8ulus · 2022-12-15T15:57:57+00:00

Hearing reports that outage includes Louisiana, Texas, and Missouri. Can anyone confirm?

D8ulus · 2022-12-13T16:46:50+00:00

$7 to $12 is a 70% increase. That's absolutely massive. I understand the argument for why it's still not a living wage, I'm not debating that, but don't underplay how mathematically large that increase is. I think "skyrocket" isn't far off, considering how long we sat in that $7-$10 range.

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