What do we do?
- Sorta like a Emergency Room in a Hospital;-) Always in a reactive mode.
- Don't know how many will come in nor do we know how long it would take to resolve a problem
- Interact with 3-5 new issues on any given day.
- Engineers have a broad understanding of networking but get to specialize by focussing on a narrow area (Don't be surprised if a Routing Protocols specialist does not know to troubleshoot a IPSec/Crypto issue)
- Problem centric focus
- Unable to make "recommendations" involving code or design, usually
How do we go about doing it?
- Divide a 24-hr day into 4 blocks of 6 hrs each, covered from Research Triangle Park, NC, San Jose CA, Sydney Australia, Bangalore India and Brussels Belgium
- Selections done during SR opening routes the SR to the specialist teams
- The problem details governs for most part to get a better understanding
- Focus on one problem in one TAC engagement
How to get the best out of your TAC engagement?
- Provide as much details as possible when the SR is logged.
- Support problem with as much evidence as possible. Please keep in mind that when a device is reloaded, it is sorta like a crime scene that has been wiped clean.
- Question the TAC engineer's diagnosis as you would, to your physician. Ask for a 2nd opinion.
- Log everytime someone is on a router for troubleshooting.
- Get the engineer to email you the findings/analysis.
