Spend $1,500 to save $150


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    A client of ours recently wanted to expand wifi to one of their retail spaces, which would necessitate pulling some cable and installing some access points. I spec'd out some mid-price access points, and the client rejected them. "Too expensive. I will pick up an access point for the space."

    Of course, he goes to BestBuy and picks up whatever is cheapest from LinkSys. I used to love LinkSys, before the Cisco takeover. Their WRT-54G was one of the best consumer level routers ever made. The one I used to use would still function...just pretty slowly compared to today's standards. Their new stuff is shit. They want you to sign up for an account to manage it, etc. Bah!

    On three separate occasions, I send out technicians to setup these crappy access points. On all three occasions, they come back and say that the AP's lock up when they try to shut off NAT, DHCP, etc. Completely stop responding. I think to myself, there is no possible way that 3 of these damned things could be defective, so I go there for round 4.

    Sure enough, as soon as I turn off any functionality, the unit locks up. Web config will not respond, it just pops up a "Waiting..." dialog that stays there indefinitely. Reboot the AP, as soon as you go to login, "Waiting..."

    Well...shit. Check for updated firmware, it is running the latest. Reset, try again. On the third try, it bricks itself on reset. (Just as had happened to my techs, not that I doubted them) Every one of these was brand new. We popped the plastic on the packaging every time we went out there.

    So I suggest to the Executive Director that I replace this POS with what I had spec'd in the first place.

    "Too expensive. These are almost $150 less than what you had specified."

    "With all due respect, you have spent about $1,500 on these sacks of monkey shit access points. I think that savings is gone now."

    So I cut him a deal, sold him the AP and we are going to set this one up gratis.

    This is in addition to all the other WTF's on this little incubator startup project. He thought our price on pulling cable to the new retail space could be saved by having the electricians pull the cable and we would terminate it. Then he decided to pull it himself, kinked the cable all to shit and broke some of the conductors so we ended up having to pull it anyway...through finished space and trenching all of the drywall. All of that cabling rework ended up costing many multiples of what I had originally bid it for in the first place and also pushed the schedule back a day or two.

    Also, I really have no idea how the hell this retail startup is planning on making money monetizing their business plan. I would go in to the details of that, but I cannot give too much away. Let's just say that the majority of their business plan involves selling something that anyone can download on the internet for free, and that a brick and mortar retailer 1/2 block away...also gives away for free.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Intercourse said:

    business plan involves selling something that anyone can download on the internet for free

    is it porn?

    @Intercourse said:

    that a brick and mortar retailer 1/2 block away...also gives away for free.

    oh, it's not porn.

    is it...?



  • AOL CDs?



  • @darkmatter said:

    oh, it's not porn.

    is it...?

    It's a brick and mortar retailer, so I guess it's some sort of building supply.


  • BINNED

    I had to deal with a LinkSys ATA that:

    • Wouldn't even try to connect to the PBX until it managed to reach the NTP server and update it's time (good luck with that next to paranoid sysadmins)
    • Has ports labeled "Internet" and "Network". Turns out that you set the "Internet" port IP in the "LAN" settings tab and "Network" port in "WAN" settings tab
    • Needs to reboot for every change, and the reboot takes 5 minutes

    Not touching anything else by them under a threat of death at this point.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Keith said:

    It's a brick and mortar retailer, so I guess it's some sort of building supply.

    nominate for... @nagesh badge.



  • Can we assume that when you checked for the latest firmware, you checked http://www.dd-wrt.com/ and not the LinkSys website?

    Not sure I would use a LinkSys for a commercial application, but with DD-WRT it still a very nice consumer grade option.

    Unless the newest hardware models don't work with DD-WRT anymore. Been a while since I checked.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Onyx said:

    I had to deal with a LinkSys ATA that:

    Wouldn't even try to connect to the PBX until it managed to reach the NTP server and update it's time (good luck with that next to paranoid sysadmins)
    Has ports labeled "Internet" and "Network". Turns out that you set the "Internet" port IP in the "LAN" settings tab and "Network" port in "WAN" settings tab
    Needs to reboot for every change, and the reboot takes 5 minutes

    Not touching anything else by them under a threat of death at this point.

    This POS would not even start configuration unless it was hooked up to the internet. Slight problem, I needed to turn off NAT as this would be used as just an AP. So, every time we had to reset the POS and try again, I had to disconnect the entire office from the internet and plug it in to the modem. Just hooking it to the network would not work, due to the double NAT that occurred.

    That is the first time I have ever run in to that. I have pre-configured firewalls, routers, switches, access points, etc, so that I could drop them in and replace them with minimal downtime. This one absolutely insisted on being connected to the network in order to work and automatically assigned itself the IP of 192.168.1.1, which is the same as the default gateway there. If it had not been for that, I could have changed the IP address off the network and then plugged it in.

    I will never touch one of them again. Linksys is dead to me, and they used to be such a good brand back in the day.

    @cdosrun1 said:

    Can we assume that when you checked for the latest firmware, you checked http://www.dd-wrt.com/ and not the LinkSys website?

    Not sure I would use a LinkSys for a commercial application, but with DD-WRT it still a very nice consumer grade option.

    Unless the newest hardware models don't work with DD-WRT anymore. Been a while since I checked.

    Linksys EA3500, not supported. I checked, as that was going to be a possible solution if it had worked. I love DD-WRT. I have been running that firmware on my home network since the WRT-54G days.


  • BINNED

    @Intercourse said:

    This POS would not even start configuration unless it was hooked up to the internet.

    Oh. Yeah, dealt with their switch that did that. Fortunately, I didn't have the mess of a network to deal with like you did. My condolences.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    C'est la vie.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @darkmatter said:

    oh, it's not porn.

    is it...?

    No, but that would be easier to make money monetize.

    I seriously cannot give specifics as to what they are wanting to do, but selling something that people are giving away for free is a really shitty business plan. As I was in the office, I hear them talking about their business plan and I ask the simple question, "So how are you going to make money?" I was not condescending about it, simple question. One of the little hipster douchebag asshats replies, "You mean how do we plan on monetizing our business?"

    No, you little shithead. I hate that term. "Monetizing your business" is one of those new startup phrases that I hate even more than referring to "the cloud". How do you plan on making money?? Then he goes on explaining, but not explaining and references how their idea has raised $10K on Kickstarter. Blah, blah, blah. I don't fucking care. Somebody just raised over $50K to make potato salad on there. $10K literally means fuck-all.

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad


  • BINNED

    @Intercourse said:

    Somebody just raised over $50K to make potato salad on there.

    I think I may be in the wrong line of work.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @antiquarian said:

    I think I may be in the wrong line of work.

    I think that some days also...



  • @antiquarian said:

    I think I may be in the wrong line of work.

    What people put money behind and what they actually need are two separate things.



  • @Intercourse said:

    I will never touch one of them again. Linksys is dead to me, and they used to be such a good brand back in the day.

    They're currently owned by Belkin...


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I thought it was Cisco?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Nope. Belkin. That explains why there are so many layers to this onion of wtf-ery.



  • Cisco sold Linksys to Belkin:


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I was agreeing with you. :)



  • Yeah, just wanted to note (for general public consumption) that Cisco did at one point own them.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Fair enough. Their products still wreak of Cisco. Back when Cisco was still CLI only, I always thought their syntax was horrible. Configuring firewalls was always counterintuitive to me.



  • Never having done anything high-end or data-centery, I've never really seen the point of Cisco. Spending $1500 to save $150 is of course moronic, but spec Cisco and you're spending $15000 instead and all you get for that is an uninspired logo and shitty UI.

    Belkin makes good Ethernet patch cables, but that's about the extent of their technical competence as far as I've ever been able to tell. In my experience, if Belkin makes it and it has a processor inside it, it's fucked up.

    Ubiquity: now there is a vendor. Had nothing but good experiences with any of their gear.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I have always liked Netgear products. They have always been rock solid, and their configuration is very straight forward and common sense. No weird incantations, no backwards syntax, no Cisco bullshit.

    I have never seen a Belkin networking product that I have liked. They may be OK for consumers, but they always feel cheap.



  • @Intercourse said:

    I have never seen a Belkin networking product that I have liked.

    I had a desktop hub once that was OK. I don't know if I'd trust them with a switch, though. Even their cables feel cheap.

    Filed under: If I wanted quality, I'd shop at RadioShack


  • 🚽 Regular

    @flabdablet said:

    I've never really seen the point of Cisco

    It-just-works™. I've had major issues trying to get two switches from other major names to simply talk spanning-tree to each other without failing miserably.

    The interfaces are quite nice too. The web based stuff generally just works which is a novelty and the CLI is quite straightforward and works well. The SBSC people are pretty good as well.

    It does help if you're specifying their kit with someone else's money though.

    Edit: It also carries on working too...for ever. I've only had a couple of GBICs fail so far, everything else has been replaced due to obsolescence.



  • https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad

    and I will say your name out loud while making the potato salad.
    He has over 5000 backers. That's going to be a long cooking session.

    Also, I see Discourse oneboxed this with an iframe. Is this something we could exploit?


  • BINNED

    If you started a Kickstarter with the title of "Breaking Discourse, please ignore" I'm sure you'd still get backers.



  • @Onyx said:

    If you started a Kickstarter with the title of "Breaking Discourse, please ignore" I'm sure you'd still get backers.

    I'd donate.



  • You know, I kind of feel like I could make a killing by setting up a Kickstarter to build a decent PHP forum software.


  • BINNED

    Or you could take this opportunity to learn a new language and write it in something that doesn't suck.



  • Maybe we should fund a project to make a new programming language that will replace C and C++. We shall call it Stop. (Because it will stop people making classic memory allocation and use-after-free mistakes of course.)



  • @antiquarian said:

    Or you could take this opportunity to learn a new language and write it in something that doesn't suck.

    I still think shared Excel spreadsheets are the answer.


  • BINNED

    I'm not sure if that belongs on the bad ideas thread or the evil ideas thread.



  • @antiquarian said:

    Or you could take this opportunity to learn a new language and write it in something that doesn't suck.

    I've been trying to learn C# and do the Unity thing but that's almost as much of an exercise in frustration.

    At least I'm already competent in PHP and can generally turn out reasonably bug free software on the first attempt.



  • @LoremIpsum said:

    Maybe we should fund a project to make a new programming language that will replace C and C++. We shall call it Stop. (Because it will stop people making classic memory allocation and use-after-free mistakes of course.)

    I'm not smart enough to design a language to be honest.



  • @antiquarian said:

    I'm not sure if that belongs on the bad ideas thread or the evil ideas thread.

    Excel is an Evil Bad Idea.



  • @Arantor said:

    Excel is an Evil Bad Idea.

    But think of the WTF opportunities you could embrace with spaghetti code inspired macros.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @antiquarian said:

    I'm not sure if that belongs on the bad ideas thread or the evil ideas thread.

    Fucking ivory tower bullshit.



  • @Keith said:

    But think of the WTF opportunities you could embrace with spaghetti code inspired macros.

    Been there, done that.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Fucking ivory tower bullshit.

    Please tell me you're not defending Excel. I'll lose, like, ➡    ⬅ this much respect for you.


  • BINNED

    Badge Request: Pipe-smoking Intellectual
    Criteria: 5 posts displaying a combination of theoretical knowledge and lack of any connection with practical reality
    Image: Ivory Tower


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Arantor said:

    Please tell me you're not defending Excel. I'll lose, like, ➡    ⬅ this much respect for you.

    Am I? Or am I not?


    Filed Under: Do it my way or leave it, IHBT



  • :trollface:



  • Now you folks have me trying to remember what the Belkin product I had that I liked was.

    ...Oh, now I remember. Belkin Nostromo Speedpad n52. Definitely not networking. But a good enough product in terms of design that even after one of the keys started registering multiple presses sometimes, I was happier to change how I positioned my hand for gaming a little bit than to stop using it.


  • BINNED

    @Keith said:

    I still think shared Excel spreadsheets are the answer.

    That depends on your question. Doesn't it?



  • @Luhmann said:

    That depends on your question. Doesn't it?

    Less than you'd think.



  • @Luhmann said:

    That depends on your question. Doesn't it?

    When all you have is a hammer, you can always make pie charts of the nails.


  • BINNED

    @Arantor said:

    When all you have is a hammer

    You can still power pivot the hammer ...



  • @Luhmann said:

    You can still PowerPoint the hammer ...

    FTFY


  • BINNED

    +1 etc.


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