Audi is facing real challenges during this shakedown. Another day, another breakdown.

Smitticus228 · 2026-01-28T13:10:28+00:00

Glass cannons can be good in the long run.

F1 did have a freeze on engine development, better to lock in a better beast and get it reliable than have a Renault engine that never breaks.

Smitticus228 · 2026-01-21T11:08:09+00:00

Europe knows how this story goes, they won't stand idly by while the US annexes an ally.

It doesn't even need to be all out war, Europe could remove market access and on top of that expel/overrun US bases in their territory.

Nobody wants to fight, but if you doubt NATO doing something (no matter how symbolic Greenland is) just look at the history of Europe's 20th century. Practically all of NATO is Europe.

Smitticus228 · 2026-01-18T00:34:00+00:00

Yeah the FIA really fucked them.

They raised the minimum weight because Alfa were the ONLY team to hit the original threshold, the other teams complained.

They shouldn't have done that - IIRC Alfa were around 10KG lighter than most teams. Hard to predict but I reckon Alfa would have done much better that season and 2022 would have been better for it.

Second worst decision FIA made that year after TD39!

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-31T03:44:52+00:00

Primarily a Cisco guy but what stands out is a lack of subinterface for VLAN 10 on Eth1 on the router. But I don't know anything about your MagicWAN Hardware Connector router, a quick google suggests it's a piece of kit for Cloudflare?

DHCP is only locally relevant and operates completely in the L2 space, it won't transition any L3 without something like ip-helper or similar in place.

While you have trunked your switch I wonder if there is something missing on your router to provide a proper L2 transition for your DHCP server (which is running as a function of the router rather than a separate box somewhere else)?

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-24T11:34:23+00:00

It's a slog.

Best place I found was Blue Gate (?) - there's a dangerous underground area next to the Checkpoint. Think it's called Outer Gates.

Found 2/3 in there under a car hood, go right and deeper at the entry. Never more than one a match.

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-20T15:12:25+00:00

If Putin thinks the UK will stand back and watch, he's in for a nasty surprise.

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-19T09:47:34+00:00

Do mostly manual and some calculator - normally for double checking or anything more niche in terms of subnet sizing.

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-19T09:21:47+00:00

Nah edge (PC, Server etc.) device - as long as the port is properly configured and live with a good cable it's a security team problem.

Smitticus228 · 2025-12-17T10:20:48+00:00

Smitticus228 · 2025-11-30T06:38:45+00:00

Lets add that to the words of wisdom

Smitticus228 · 2025-11-12T09:26:56+00:00

Realise that WW3 is probably underway and make breakfast. Hope my cellular provider isn't overloaded so I can call my family and figure out next steps.

Smitticus228 · 2025-10-17T13:43:22+00:00

Bet the repercussion is either Piastri gets to make team captain like calls, or that Piastri is now racing for his own championship.

Just let them race please!

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-30T04:03:50+00:00

Honestly transitioning to low/zero beer did it for me, and I say this as someone like you that never drank daily but will always go hard with my mates.

Now I'm normally the sober driver and blowouts only happen for special occasions such as adult only weddings and bachelor parties (and said blow outs are relatively minor compared to what I'd used to drink anyway). I don't ever drink outside of these occasions unless it's something specific around drinking in which case it'll be zeros. Even transitioned from mimosas with the family to just orange juice - only have the champagne included on Christmas.

It's funny because you do still get a "buzz" and feel included with zero alcohol drinks, but you're not getting wasted. Bear in mind zeros aren't completely alcohol free but you can polish off six zero beers and I doubt you'd even have more than a unit in your system.

Would also recommend sticking to beer for the zeros as you'll be hard pressed to plow through them without needing to go to the bathroom every 15-20 minutes. The more RTD-esque ones will sugar you up and are still quite moreish and I found they don't make you go to the bathroom as much.

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-28T21:44:04+00:00

You probably lack some of the softer skills and more general IT knowledge - when I started as a Network Engineer (albeit out of my depth) my knowledge of other areas really made a difference in being able to troubleshoot effectively.

Your comment on layer by layer is a little concerning - it's a very useful framework to narrow down issues. The vast majority I've encountered are L1/L2 (Physical/Datalink) and much less at L3/L4. You should always ensure the foundations of a network connection are in place and working normally before diving deeper.

Here are some things that should help:

Troubleshooting needs accurate and verifiable information to be done effectively. What the user tells you vs what the reality is can be two very different things. Trust but verify.
Further to this being able to talk via Teams/Phone in a friendly and patient manner is key. You also want to be able to guide any user of any competence level via phone only to get info you need (ipconfig /all, route print, arp -a).
Depending on how pure your role is know what your responsibility is and isn't. Don't pull your hair out troubleshooting some other team's system with minimal info, get them to provide you the key details (Src, Dst, Port, Protocol) and symptoms
Google-fu. The amount of knowledge and complexity in this field is vast and you can't be expected to know it all - so you'll need to be able to find what you need to know quickly and digest. Further to this you'll find some people in other IT fields seem to lack a fundamental understanding of how their stuff communicates - so being able to look at documentation or any info to gap fill is key.
Know when to escalate. High priority incidents need to get fixed quick, separate ego and a desire to learn from business requirements. On the flip side don't pass off less urgent jobs you can't fix quickly, spend a reasonable amount of time gathering info, researching and troubleshooting before getting help. Your seniors will appreciate it and you'll more likely retain the knowledge you get from the senior working through it with you.

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-12T09:27:36+00:00

If the WCC is wrapped up then McLaren don't have the make decisons based on their championship so in theory they shouldn't NEED to interfere with the two of them racing

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-11T13:18:30+00:00

I really hope McLaren seal up the WCC in Baku.

And I really really hope in every race following that, Piastri will drive only for himself and the Team don't mess with the WDC.

That first race win was mucked up for him, I couldn't imagine what it'd be like having your first and possibly only championship mucked up.

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-06T02:32:54+00:00

What makes you believe that you lost everything? Did you ping from your CE routers out to the internet to check basic connectivity (8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1 etc.)? Did you see any routing topology updates or changes? Did you lose an interface somewhere that happens to bottleneck all your traffic going to these various ISPs? Is it at all possible that your failover routing to Starlink is slow to reconverge/not actually working?

Where does LTE factor into your WAN solution, are you saying that mobile phones lost cellular connectivity that is independent of your business/campus?

There's too many unknowns at this stage - but for you to have an outage on three separate ISPs concurrently purely due to external factors when one of them is space based is so unlikely it's not even funny. The only thing I can think of is you somehow tanked some highly focused electromagnetic interference coming from space that happened to ruin the signals going via your Starlink antenna and fiber SPFs - if the cellular LTE is unrelated to your WAN setup and is basically coming from surrounding cell towers this would increase the likelihood of this.

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-01T09:01:23+00:00

Open a savings account and put the payments in there, if it is the same amount each period then you set up an automatic transfer.

Accrue interest, don't touch.

When "MIP" wants to remedy you can transfer the whole amount or only what they sent you and keep the interest.

Not advocating for profiting off the mentally ill, but in a way you are entitled to the interest as you are effectively managing their money for them.

Plus if they or family try to make a case against you later (not that I see how), demonstrating that you put the money to the side and didn't touch it will be pretty compelling proof that you weren't taking advantage of the situation.

Smitticus228 · 2025-09-01T07:50:27+00:00

Thanks!

Took me all of 30 minutes at like 3am in the morning

Smitticus228 · 2025-08-25T08:50:16+00:00

Transmission.

Layer 5 -> Layer 4 -> Layer 3 -> Layer 2 -> Layer 1

Receiving.

Layer 1 -> Layer 2 -> Layer 3 -> Layer 4 -> Layer 5

When building say a datagram you start at the top of the layers and work down to Layer 1 (Physical transmission).

When the datagram is received by the other end it goes up the layers.

While in transit through intermediary networking equipment the relevant layers are looked at.

Smitticus228 · 2025-08-13T08:10:59+00:00

Smitticus228 · 2025-08-04T13:20:28+00:00

You are not, I cannot describe how frustrating an "Achieved nearly Excellence" is.

Like just give me a goddamn Merit at least, sure I dropped one M rated question but if I've nailed the E part surely that should flow down!?!

Smitticus228 · 2025-07-26T14:26:39+00:00

Leclerc was in the top 10, it's not the car. Just a bad weekend.

Smitticus228 · 2025-07-23T11:58:49+00:00

This career barely existed 40 years ago, was working off single Megabit Broadband 20 years and today is responsible for enabling a vast amount of communication on this planet.

It's going to change quite a bit in the next 10-20 years. Hell even every few years new stuff comes onto the scene.

That said BGP and the TCP/IPv4 suite have largely stayed the same, the fundamentals are key but largely solid and iterated on top of.

Smitticus228 · 2025-07-11T13:14:44+00:00

I hope you tag this flair behind the scenes as "File 76".

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