Need some advice on learning networking

[KenB]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

If you're mostly a hardware/maintanance guy but interested and open to new fields of expertise you probably find it less hard to learn if you gain that knowledge during practical work. I have different departments with IT specialists and hardware-techs but do encourage our hardware guys to maintain a certain level of connectivity knowledge so basicly everyone is capable to set up a new MFP with the basic stuff. Techs and trainees are welcome to accompany our IT guys when there's a new MFP set up in our showroom or help them out during rollouts omn customers sites. Unfortunately this won't work vice versa - once a tech dig in IT too deep I feel they don't like dirty hands anymore so I never had an IT guys asking to help out in the repair shop^^

It's true that most customers have own IT departments but I regulary encounter them as pretty incompetent when it comes to printer administrations. Like they are using windows 10 defaults "craptastic" drivers, low performance WSD port instead of TCP/IP port. Some even don't know to set up DNS properly in order to work with smtp URLs and so on...

X2 to all of that!

A lot of IT guys can't tell (or don't want to know) the difference between PostScript and PCL. The exception is where it's a customer who produces a lot of graphics.

I can't tell you how many times I've had an IT person download and install drivers for a particular MFP from the manufacturer's site...and they had a Fiery.

Like, oops!

[KenB]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

Ricoh recommends disconnecting the network cable and the phone line if the MFP has a FAX option installed.

It's really to make sure no print or fax jobs come through during the update.

Funny how they say that. If there's @Remote involved, and it's set to update firmware, both will remain connected during the process. While @Remote will normally update during off-hours, there can be no guarantee of that.

Regarding DHCP...The client will request a renewal at each half of its lease period. In other words, if the lease is set for 72 hours, it will request at 36. If there is no renewal, it will request again at 18, 9, etc...

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

Sometimes I feel like I stepped into this weird universe (computer networking) where no one can understand me and I can't understand them. English has been replaced with binary digits and there are a lot of rules for getting from point A to point B. And if I forget one of those rules, well, it just ain't gonna work. And then there are all these settings and I must remember how to find them all. But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel.

This morning when I saw the next thing on the list to learn was DHCP, I thought, well, this is gonna be easy because I'm never gonna use DHCP for a copier. WRONG. Not only will it be used in certain situations, but I need to know the IP address range. I need to know where the range is coming from and that some DHCP addresses can be reserved.

As it turns out, learning every nuance of DHCP is really important.

[KenB]

[KenB]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

DNS is a very important protocol to understand.

Overly simplified, it resolves host names to IP addresses, and is used throughout every network as well as the Internet.

Quite often it’s the culprit when scanning to folder or email doesn’t work. It also allows you to print to a machine by name, rather than its IP address. That can be HUGE when DHCP is used to assign MFP addresses without reservations.

I once had my butt kicked by DNS when a customer had 4 new Ricoh machines fail to work properly with GlobalScan, and I never thought to check DNS. It turned out that there was no A Record for the any of them, and GlobalScan depended on that. The DNS server had crashed a few weeks before the machines were installed, and had not been properly restored. Once the A Records were manually added, GlobalScan was happy.

[slimslob]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

I have had DNS lookup for Host name printing came in quite handy when I have had customers that liked to change their ISP every couple of months. ISP installers did not think about the fact that when you change the subnet computers could no longer find printers without changing the IP address in the driver. With printing to host name the IP address might change bu as long as the printer got one from the DHCP the host name could be found.

When a school district upgraded their servers to Server 2016 one Ricoh MFP stopped scanning to folder. It was the only one that one of the other techs had setup using IP address. I tried setting up host name but still could not scan, unable to connect. I checked the error log and noted DNS request rejected. Checking the interface settings I found a typo in the domain name. Corrected that and all was happy.

[n25an]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

typically you will come into a situation with regards to emails where the customer has an email they want to use or they dont but they want scan to email setup...

it used to be in the old days... you could just create an email address based on their internet service provider with no authentication and that would work... but the isp providers have wised up and blocked that loop hole... there used to be a free smtp server software that you could use but that has since stopped working... there is exchange and hmail but that is about it and just overkill... there may be others but I have never used them...

(you are never going to use your personal email account for client purposes...but you will have to at times generate an email account

typically... when you goto a customer site... they either have an email account ready or not...
if they have an network admin then they have an exchange email account or an email account provided from a decent service... if not then gmail is your goto provider... there are others... but gmail is by far the most reliable... atleast from my experience...
now lets go down the rabbit hole that they don't have an email account...
if not... then you typically explain that the most convenient way to get them going is with a gmail account...
then you ask them how they want the gmail account configured...
naming it and the password...
you don't want this email account to be one that they use regularly... but you want them to have the credentials so that if in the future they need to get a new copier... then its simple to change things over...
once thats done... its all setup... after which... you leave the credentials with them and make a note in the file you have for the customer...

thats typically how we get this stuff done as copier IT support...

knock on wood... have not had any issues yet... been doing this for over 15 years...

now I have had customers that have declined scan to email... and scan to folder... but never an issue about setting it up when they did want it... and if the email account stopped working... it was a simple fix to either change the password or change the email address...

no lawsuits...

so stop freaking out the newbie...

Setting yourself up for a lawsuit using your own email account.

[n25an]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

curious about the A records?

whats the procedure for setting up global scan?

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking


Man, I got learn how to do that. It's a damn good thing I have all of you to lean on or I'm afraid I'd be in trouble.

[bsm2]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

typically you will come into a situation with regards to emails where the customer has an email they want to use or they dont but they want scan to email setup...

it used to be in the old days... you could just create an email address based on their internet service provider with no authentication and that would work... but the isp providers have wised up and blocked that loop hole... there used to be a free smtp server software that you could use but that has since stopped working... there is exchange and hmail but that is about it and just overkill... there may be others but I have never used them...

(you are never going to use your personal email account for client purposes...but you will have to at times generate an email account

typically... when you goto a customer site... they either have an email account ready or not...
if they have an network admin then they have an exchange email account or an email account provided from a decent service... if not then gmail is your goto provider... there are others... but gmail is by far the most reliable... atleast from my experience...
now lets go down the rabbit hole that they don't have an email account...
if not... then you typically explain that the most convenient way to get them going is with a gmail account...
then you ask them how they want the gmail account configured...
naming it and the password...
you don't want this email account to be one that they use regularly... but you want them to have the credentials so that if in the future they need to get a new copier... then its simple to change things over...
once thats done... its all setup... after which... you leave the credentials with them and make a note in the file you have for the customer...

thats typically how we get this stuff done as copier IT support...

knock on wood... have not had any issues yet... been doing this for over 15 years...

now I have had customers that have declined scan to email... and scan to folder... but never an issue about setting it up when they did want it... and if the email account stopped working... it was a simple fix to either change the password or change the email address...

no lawsuits...

so stop freaking out the newbie...

That's BECAUSE YOU NEVER had a company that had to provide email records in a lawsuit!
NEVER create or use your own account for emails PERIOD

[n25an]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

you do understand I never said I used my own account right...????

That's BECAUSE YOU NEVER had a company that had to provide email records in a lawsuit!
NEVER create or use your own account for emails PERIOD

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking


I thought about this and you're right. I do plan to learn wireshark but at this point in the process, I don't want to put the cart before the horse. There are other things I need to learn at this time. Honestly, I question how much of a need I'll ever have for wireshark. To this point, we've never had to use it.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

I want to learn how to do this because I can see where it would come in handy but I'm having a hard time grasping how this is gonna work for a copier. I get that a DNS server ties an IP address to a webpage but how does it tie a copier IP address to the copier hostname?

I see nothing on youtube about it.

How do I set this up?

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

Okay, I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that the client is gonna need a DNS server and that an entry will need to be made for the copier IP address. Am I right?

[KenB]

Re: Need some advice on learning networking

curious about the A records?

whats the procedure for setting up global scan?

It was authentication that wasn't failing, but instead of being almost instantaneous, it would take about 35-40 seconds, far too long for a user to stand and wait. (Also, please realize that this was in a large law office, so...)

The customer's IT manager never did give me a clear explanation as to what happened to the faulty DNS server. I think he was afraid to admit that he messed up somewhere.

GlobalScan would try to respond to the MFP using its hostname first, then after trying about 30 seconds, fall back to its IP address.

Another simple fix (although not the best) would have been to put entries for the MFPs in the GlobalScan server's host table.

I also have a hunch that setting the MFPs to get all addressing, including DNS, via DHCP would have also worked, then set up reservations for the copiers in DHCP. That would also explain why the workstations had no issues, as they were all DHCP.

BTW...The easy test (which I thought of far too late) was to ping an MFP by its IP address with the -a switch, which will show its hostname; that test would pass. Pinging it using the hostname would fail, indicating a DNS issue. That test is one that is also commonly used when you can't access a website.