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If you're using Cisco products like this you have a support contract with them or one of their partners, so to get support you would open a ticket with them.

acdha 2y ago
Access to their support portal is limited to the handful of people your IT department allows, and in the enterprise space it’s not uncommon for the Cisco people to be defensive about the products they recommended buying or dismissive of problems which aren’t critical or only impact platforms they don’t favor (often Linux or macOS).
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  I don’t like Cisco, but it’s a little much to blame them for your employer hiring and not firing support staff that are actively hostile to the people they are supposed to be supporting.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Few vendors attract the fervor that network dudes carry for Cisco. It’s a weird and unique phenomenon.
    - UltraSane 2y ago
      As a CCNP I think I can offer some insight into this phenomenon. I feel that it arises due to a few reasons: 1) CLI familiarity. Networking Professionals invest thousands of hours in learning router, switch, and firewall CLIs and want a return on this investment and this can only happen if their employer uses the equipment they are familiar with. If someone only knows the Juniper CLI then they will most likely have equal fervor for Juniper hardware. Having to use a CLI you are not familiar with adds stress to an already very stressful job. 2) Operational streamlining. Generally if every device on a Network is Cisco they will work together more reliably than if not. This isn't as true as it used to be but is still true. If your company network is Cisco only then Cisco cannot blame other manufacturers for an issue. Personally I'm fine with having non-Cisco hardware. The Cisco Firewpower "next gen" firewalls are utter garbage compared to palo alto. My company has dozens of Cisco 2960 access switches and Cisco in their infinite wisdom has replaced this very cost effective product with the extremely NOT cost effective 9200 and 9300 series switches. If you only need gigabit ports and VLANs then the 9200 and 9300 switches are an incredible waste of money.
  - acdha 2y ago
    I don’t blame them for the common attitude problems in enterprise IT but it’s a symbiotic relationship. They avoid having to produce solid products with good UX by restricting access to report problems, and they help the gatekeepers stay in charge by telling the C-suite that networking is an unfathomably hard problem you can only solve by hiring people with lots of Cisco certifications. As a simple example, the AnyConnect Mac client has a bug in the socket filter related to IP changes, which means that sometimes when the system wakes it’ll block connections for roughly 5 minutes until it times out and retries (or you kill the process). I would bet that this would be fixed in minutes if it affected Windows because most Cisco people use that and only begrudgingly support Mac or Linux desktops.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Your organization being dysfunctional isn't really Ciscos problem.
  - acdha 2y ago
    How many organizations big enough to be using Cisco give all of their employees TAC accounts? This is the fundamental conflict with enterprise IT where the people making purchasing decisions aren’t bearing the brunt of the user experience, so the feedback loop for poor outcomes isn’t very effective. Cisco could, of course, change that by allowing end users to report problems directly but they clearly don’t want to do that, which is how you end up with people emailing the author of curl because they can’t get support through a more obvious channel.
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      Why would they want end users, which they aren't even providing a service to and have no insight into, to contact them directly? 99% of calls would be we have no idea what's going on and have no ability to see or do anything, talk to your IT. Your org is dysfunctional if users are unable to report things to IT that are then either fixed or investigated and forwarded to Cisco.
      - acdha 2y ago
        Most organizations are dysfunctional by your definition then. Problems which aren’t preventing people from working just aren’t going to get many people to slog through the Helpdesk escalation process to create a ticket, which saves Cisco on support staffing but also means that their software is never going to have as good of an experience as something built by a company which hears from its users.
        Hikikomori 2y ago
        So what do you expect Cisco to do for end users?
nikanj 2y ago
I'm forced to use Cisco AnyConnect to contact customer sites, but I'm about four levels of outsourcing removed from the folks who would actually have the golden keys to access the Cisco portal. I have long ago accepted that small companies will react to your ticket in 30 minutes and deliver a fixed build in 2 hours, whereas sending bug reports to Cisco-sized corporations is about as effective as praying to the ancient gods

acdha 2y ago

Access to their support portal is limited to the handful of people your IT department allows, and in the enterprise space it’s not uncommon for the Cisco people to be defensive about the products they recommended buying or dismissive of problems which aren’t critical or only impact platforms they don’t favor (often Linux or macOS).

bradleyjg 2y ago
I don’t like Cisco, but it’s a little much to blame them for your employer hiring and not firing support staff that are actively hostile to the people they are supposed to be supporting.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Few vendors attract the fervor that network dudes carry for Cisco. It’s a weird and unique phenomenon.
  - UltraSane 2y ago
    As a CCNP I think I can offer some insight into this phenomenon. I feel that it arises due to a few reasons: 1) CLI familiarity. Networking Professionals invest thousands of hours in learning router, switch, and firewall CLIs and want a return on this investment and this can only happen if their employer uses the equipment they are familiar with. If someone only knows the Juniper CLI then they will most likely have equal fervor for Juniper hardware. Having to use a CLI you are not familiar with adds stress to an already very stressful job. 2) Operational streamlining. Generally if every device on a Network is Cisco they will work together more reliably than if not. This isn't as true as it used to be but is still true. If your company network is Cisco only then Cisco cannot blame other manufacturers for an issue. Personally I'm fine with having non-Cisco hardware. The Cisco Firewpower "next gen" firewalls are utter garbage compared to palo alto. My company has dozens of Cisco 2960 access switches and Cisco in their infinite wisdom has replaced this very cost effective product with the extremely NOT cost effective 9200 and 9300 series switches. If you only need gigabit ports and VLANs then the 9200 and 9300 switches are an incredible waste of money.
- acdha 2y ago
  I don’t blame them for the common attitude problems in enterprise IT but it’s a symbiotic relationship. They avoid having to produce solid products with good UX by restricting access to report problems, and they help the gatekeepers stay in charge by telling the C-suite that networking is an unfathomably hard problem you can only solve by hiring people with lots of Cisco certifications. As a simple example, the AnyConnect Mac client has a bug in the socket filter related to IP changes, which means that sometimes when the system wakes it’ll block connections for roughly 5 minutes until it times out and retries (or you kill the process). I would bet that this would be fixed in minutes if it affected Windows because most Cisco people use that and only begrudgingly support Mac or Linux desktops.
Hikikomori 2y ago
Your organization being dysfunctional isn't really Ciscos problem.
- acdha 2y ago
  How many organizations big enough to be using Cisco give all of their employees TAC accounts? This is the fundamental conflict with enterprise IT where the people making purchasing decisions aren’t bearing the brunt of the user experience, so the feedback loop for poor outcomes isn’t very effective. Cisco could, of course, change that by allowing end users to report problems directly but they clearly don’t want to do that, which is how you end up with people emailing the author of curl because they can’t get support through a more obvious channel.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Why would they want end users, which they aren't even providing a service to and have no insight into, to contact them directly? 99% of calls would be we have no idea what's going on and have no ability to see or do anything, talk to your IT. Your org is dysfunctional if users are unable to report things to IT that are then either fixed or investigated and forwarded to Cisco.
    - acdha 2y ago
      Most organizations are dysfunctional by your definition then. Problems which aren’t preventing people from working just aren’t going to get many people to slog through the Helpdesk escalation process to create a ticket, which saves Cisco on support staffing but also means that their software is never going to have as good of an experience as something built by a company which hears from its users.
      - Hikikomori 2y ago
        So what do you expect Cisco to do for end users?

nikanj 2y ago

I'm forced to use Cisco AnyConnect to contact customer sites, but I'm about four levels of outsourcing removed from the folks who would actually have the golden keys to access the Cisco portal. I have long ago accepted that small companies will react to your ticket in 30 minutes and deliver a fixed build in 2 hours, whereas sending bug reports to Cisco-sized corporations is about as effective as praying to the ancient gods