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I've been up all night analyzing the core of the network for problems.

1. NAM - The tool of choice.

2. Sniffer Distributed with "The Expert" - Yes, there is a "The" in there.

3. OSI Model and the CLI.

4. Yep... even went to the ASA's and resolved everything but making a filter for the current hackers of the world... My Border Router Template will fix them. I just need a change control approval to implement it.

5. Got a few symptoms and a lot of places to go.... rubble rubble rubble:

- DNS - always fun... scavenging is not an option. Need approval for a manual prune.

- Files permissions - The older the network - the more common the problem.

- Older machines with older enterprise AV is a always a treat.

- Filters by design - Yep - Had to root them out too.

- Some time server sync stuff.

- Lotsa misc issues.

- Even had to investigate SQL Enterprise Manager on my nPO Visualizer - Had to tweak it a hair. (yes, I got some DBA-Blood in me too.... ) I should have gotten certified in it a little when I was doing it a lot more often.... You know I was a whiz with Crystal Reports some time back... when I wasn't progamming lasers to laser-etch the American Flag while listening to the Star-Spangled Banner music produced at the same time. some peole have too much time on their hands.

- You know I'd find a potential fault with the WAN circuit too...

6. A Wireless Issue which I missed in my design and resolved tonight... and now my AP's register correctly!!!

conf t
ip forward-protocol udp 12223

int x/x
ip helper-address x.x.x.x

Works like a charm.

Anyway this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.

There are a few other things I probably failed to mention since I've been working all night (from home of course).

Follow-up:

Ok it looks like my horses are heading for the water.

I always hear people in healthcare IT shops speaking of how challenging the terrain is - PACS, EPIC, and others...

Well... I gotta tell you... For me it is still all 0's and 1's and it works.

I had some spurious logs in my ASA's for quite a while. I used last night to resolve all but 2 small sets of them.

My recent AP cutover was slightly flawed and I was not sure how to "force" my AP's to home to a certain controller 100% reliably.

Well last night I worked that one out too and took my sweet time cutting over 40 sites to use this technique and it worked beautifully and reliably.

Next step in that line of thinking it saying goodbye to the DNS entry - no longer needed. Got that worked out.

Same thing for the master controller tick in the box.

DNS is my next high value target and then I start my analysis on the CORE. This is where I work with the other teams to identify "everything" and take a least privilege approach to troubleshooting.

Remember, I worked at SunGard and I'm sort of accustomed to a few things:

1. Only ports needed are allowed to and from each server/service.

2. Least privilege prevails.

3. Command and Control.

4. Teamwork.

Let's see how this works folks. I've been quiet for a while now taking it in... now it is time to get things done.

It's never wise to walk into a new network and tell people "how you used to do it over there"...

Better to take some time, sum it up, and preferably be invited to be a part of the solution - else you might find you are really a part of the problem. Employers have been known to fix "problems" too.