Troubleshooting … it can get personal and when it does I get messy … it gets to my head and I do a million thing at a time and of course I forget to breathe …

Two types of connection in the network, logical and physical … the network consists of many components from switches, router, firewall, Intrusion Detection, Bandwidth regulators, network traffic monitors and they can all be on your way from inside the network to the outside …

The more you have … the longer the troubleshooting process …

New system in our network, not working … it doesn’t make sense because everything is opened both ways through the firewall …

As to eliminate the causes, we need to connect to the external network but we are over 100 meter, 7 thick walls and 4 doors away from the external switch…

OK do we have transceivers, we can use the fiber cables … no transeivers …

That’s it, direct physical connection not applicable

Logical … configure a VLAN, and connect the closest switch to the external and that’ll be our gateway … configure ports and check connection … NOT WORKING … OFFFF ..

Most probably I lost some weight from the running around –despite the fact I need to shed off a lot of KGs-

Had to troubleshoot step by step and work my way up to the point that is 100 meter, 7 thick walls, 4 doors away … what’s the problem … wrong gateway IP on the new system’s LAN connection … so my initial external setup was correct … -tears- that’s the reason, seriously !!! It’s just that there were too many wrongs … I quit believing ;P

After slapping myself .. victory dance .. OH YEAH … added a new feature to the network, simple configuration needed and you are directly bypassing everything and jumping to the external ;D

New system worked … what remains … WTH is wrong with the firewall … maybe disabling some features or upgrading … because it doesn’t make sense … NOT to worry now … leave it to another day … four hours to finish this … rest well earned ;P

And the weird thing about what I mostly feel during situations like these, is I want to take off my shoes, roll up my sleeves, maybe the pants leggings also … and why is so damn hot in here .. woman you are in the computer room, it’s freezing here … and stop talking to yourself and making faces …

Lesson learned: Keep it professional and focus

Update: I disabled the connection directly to the external, you never know how will an outsider compromise this