BOFH: Rerouting responsibility via firewall configs

Two lines of code for an arbitrary office reshuffle sounds too much like work

Episode 11 There are whispers that HR wants to move down a floor. The Beancounters heard those whispers and started their own whisper chain about wanting to move up a floor.

The Beancounters are practically fizzing at the prospect of an elevated view, while the HR crew is effervescent over the idea of having aircon with more settings than air fryer or arctic winter.

Both parties assume the PFY and me will be "embracing the toenail clippings" by ferreting under desks to remove and replace cabling, before physically moving anything and everything that has a processor in it.

"Oh, I'd LOVE to help," I gush, when the Boss raises it, "but I've got all these firewall rules to change now. And the PFY will reconfigure the backup firewall – to save time."

"What needs doing on the firewall?" the Boss asks.

"Oh, there's all the VLAN rule changes, the changes to the Link State Rules, DNS changes – it's not like it's just two lines of code."

It is, though. Or one, if I merge both VLANs together – because there's always time to do a job shabbily.

"Then we're going to have to reconfigure the distribution switches, the wireless LANs – I mean, that's going to be a hell of a job."

Though with a single VLAN...

"So, what, they need to get someone in?" the Boss asks.

"I suppose so."

...

The thing about getting someone in is that a one-man-band outfit is usually cheap but slow, but with a large company it's done in a day but will cost more than a third-world dictator's embezzlement fund.

I'm pegging we'll go SME, likely more S than M.

The next hurdle is which team they'll send – the A team or the B team. So we'll either get the shirt and tie brigade or some cosmetically waxed neanderthals.

...A day later...

"I'll let the cafe know to buy more bananas," the PFY murmurs when the crew arrives.

And he's right. The team leader informs us that each person has their own specialty, though it looks like the skills of bum scratching and asking stupid questions may be over-represented.

"So we're going to be moving some equipment then?" one asks.

Told you so. I'm pretty sure IT companies deploy these people to sites just to prevent them from damaging their own infrastructure.

And the move progresses. As expected with a B team, the attrition rate is high. Why push a desk hard up against a wall socket with a data cable coming out of it when you can push 12 desks hard up against their wall sockets and break and entire batch of sockets?

"Looks like there's a network problem," one of them says, popping into Mission Control. "It's probably a network switch thing."

"Yes, probably their insistence on requiring all four pairs to be connected," I observe.

"And we've moved all the wireless access points from upstairs to downstairs, and the downstairs ones to upstairs."

I check, and sure enough, both sets of access points are now showing as "down."

"Anyway," he continues, "they didn't start up automatically so I factory-reset them so that they'd rediscover their settings."

"Great idea," I say, thinking about how we'd HAND-CONFIGURED custom hardware addresses into each of the WAPs to prevent them from being joined to the network if they were factory-reset by an enthusiastic Beancounter who'd watched too many YouTube videos.

In any case, I'm sure it'll be the matter of a moment for the PFY and myself to find the addresses, plug each WAP in, one at a time, and reconfigure them via their clunky, flash-based web interface, from a laptop running a back-rev browser that doesn't complain about certificate errors.

Oh, the fun we'll have!

"So the people are wondering when the network will be back? If it helps, I can take a look at your network switch config? I'd just need the management credentials."

I could say that he'd get our management credentials when he pries them out of my cold, dead hands, but I foresee only one set of cold, dead hands in the immediate future...

And the hits just keep on coming. While they're doing billable hours, they decide to upgrade everyone to Windows 11 after the move, which means around a quarter of our users have lost the only Windows interface that understood them, while another quarter are wanting upgrades to machines that can support Windows 11.

"These don't feel like my problems," I tell the Boss. "I mean, I'm working on the firewall thing. And the wireless thing. And the broken sockets thing."

"One of the IT guys wondered if it would be easier for us to outsource the upgrades entirely?" the Boss says.

"Which IT guy was that, Stephen or me?" I ask.

"No, I mean one of the profes... the other guys," the Boss says, hastily backing up.

"Well, while they're here, we do need some machines moved around in the basement," I say.

"No we don't," the Boss says, knowing full well that they'd not need a return ticket for that trip.

"Well, maybe they could just bring the problematic desktop machines up here and put them over there," the PFY says.

"By the window?" the Boss asks. "No, I don't think so."

"Well, they only need to bring them to this floor."

"In the lift?" the Boss asks again. "That's not going to happen."

So we're looking a bit snookered. Unless...

"So, those network credentials," I say to our geek. "The username is admin, and the password is, uh... Reichenbach. Here, I'll spell it for you."

...

"There's been a terrible accident!" I say to the Team Leader about ten minutes later.

"What?"

"One of your people has fallen down the comms riser," the PFY gasps. "He obviously didn't realize that we've not had floor grills at each level for years, since we ran new cabling. Cabling that seems to have completely covered the light switches!"

"Is he OK?" the Team Leader asks.

"I... don't know!" I say. "I mean, he could have fallen all the way to the basement. We thought it best to tell you straight away."

"HOW DO I GET TO THE BASEMENT!?"

"Oh, the lift's just over there," the PFY says, helpfully.

• BOFH: Previous episodes on The Register
• The Compleat BOFH Archives 95-99