We are looking for an experienced IT Help Desk Technician to add to our existing team, providing excellent technical support to our customers. You will be responsible for being the first line of support on technical issues and be able provide solutions to resolve them. An excellent Help desk technician must have good technical knowledge and be able to communicate effectively to understand the problem and explain its solution to the end user. We are looking for candidates who are both technically capable, highly customer oriented, and can integrate with a well-established team environment.
Note: The technician who applies must be able to speak English, Spanish and must have a vehicle.
An ideal candidate will have both the skills and patience to deal with difficult customers and diffuse a bad situation if need be.
Responsibilities:
Serve as the first point of contact for customers seeking technical assistance via phone or email
Perform troubleshooting using monitoring and management tools
Determine the best solution based on the issue and details provided by customers
Walk the customer through the problem-solving process
Direct unresolved issues to the next level of support personnel
Provide accurate information on IT products or services
Record events and problems and their resolution in logs with daily reports of everyday activities
Follow-up and update customer status and information
Pass on any feedback or suggestions by customers to the appropriate internal team
Identify and suggest possible improvements in procedures
Requirements:
Tier 1 Support (Help Desk) – Leyer 1
1. Cable Problems
Damaged or Broken Cables: Physical damage to cables can cause network disruptions. This includes cuts, bends, or frays in fiber optic or copper cables.
Incorrect Cable Types: Using the wrong type of cable for a specific application, such as using Cat5 instead of Cat6 for high-speed networks, can reduce performance or cause failures.
Cable Length: Exceeding maximum cable lengths (e.g., 100 meters for Cat5/6 Ethernet) can lead to signal degradation and data loss.
2. Signal Interference
Electromagnetic Interference (EMI): Nearby electrical devices like microwaves, fluorescent lights, or even heavy machinery can interfere with network signals, especially in poorly shielded cables.
Radio Frequency Interference (RFI): Wireless signals from routers, radios, or other broadcasting devices can interfere with network communications, particularly for unshielded cables.
3. Improper Termination or Connectors
Loose or Faulty Connections: Poor or loose connections between cables and network devices can result in intermittent connectivity or signal loss.
Incorrect Termination: Incorrect termination of twisted-pair cabling (e.g., improper pinouts or wiring standards) can cause network failures or signal crosstalk.
4. Insufficient Bandwidth or Throughput
Bandwidth Bottlenecks: Overloading a physical link with too much traffic can cause slowdowns, packet loss, or network congestion.
Outdated Infrastructure: Older cabling or hardware (e.g., Cat3 cables or hubs) might not support the data rates needed by modern networks.
5. Faulty or Improperly Configured Hardware
Malfunctioning Network Interface Cards (NICs): Defective NICs or faulty port configurations can lead to poor data transmission or failure to connect.
Misconfigured Switches or Routers: Misconfiguration at Layer 1 can cause physical port issues that affect network performance or availability.6. Attenuation
Signal Loss Over Distance: The longer the cable, the weaker the signal becomes. This is a common issue with copper cables and can lead to dropped packets or complete communication failure.
7. Crosstalk
Interference Between Wires: Crosstalk occurs when adjacent cables or wires interfere with each other’s signals, often due to improper cable shielding or poor termination.
8. Faulty Transceivers or Media Converters
Fiber Optic Transceiver Failures: Faulty transceivers or incorrect wavelength selection can disrupt communication over fiber links.
Media Converter Issues: When converting between fiber and copper (or other media types), faulty converters can cause communication failures.
9. Poor Cable Management
Untidy or Unlabeled Cables: Poor cable management can result in accidental disconnections, difficulty in troubleshooting, and signal interference if cables are twisted or stretched.
10. Environmental Factors
Extreme Temperature or Humidity: Physical layer components like cables, switches, and routers can degrade or malfunction if exposed to extreme temperatures or high humidity.
11. Fiber Optic Specific Issues
Connector Misalignment: Misaligned fiber connectors can result in light signal loss, causing network issues.
Dirty Connectors: Dust or dirt on fiber connectors can significantly degrade the signal strength.
Microbends or Macrobends: Bending fiber optic cables too sharply can cause light leakage and signal degradation.
12. Power-Related Issues
Power Loss or Fluctuations: Loss of power or inconsistent power supply to network devices such as switches, routers, and hubs can cause temporary or permanent communication disruptions.
Power Over Ethernet (PoE) Failures: Issues with PoE can arise if cables or devices aren’t rated to carry the required voltage.
13. Rack & Install
Installing Active Component Equipment (ACE) into cabinets/racks (IDF/MDF) on premises. Layer 2, or the Data Link Layer, is responsible for node-to-node data transfer and error detection/correction in the OSI model. It handles communication between adjacent network devices.
Here are common Layer 2 issues:
1. Switching Loops (Broadcast Storms)
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) Failures: Without proper STP configurations, redundant paths between switches can create switching loops. These loops can flood the network with broadcast traffic, causing network slowdowns or complete outages.
Broadcast Storms: A switching loop can lead to broadcast storms, where network traffic spirals out of control, consuming bandwidth and overwhelming devices.
2.MAC Address Table Overflow
CAM Table Exhaustion: A Content Addressable Memory (CAM) table stores MAC addresses for switching. When the table overflows due to too many devices or attacks like MAC flooding, the switch might start broadcasting packets to all ports, leading to performance issues or security risks.
3. VLAN Misconfigurations
Mismatched VLAN Configurations: Incorrect VLAN tagging, or trunk port configurations can prevent devices from communicating within the same VLAN or across VLANs, causing connectivity issues.
VLAN Hopping Attacks: If VLANs are not properly secured, attackers can send traffic to a different VLAN by exploiting trunk port vulnerabilities, leading to security breaches.
4. Duplex Mismatches
Half vs. Full Duplex: When one device is configured for half-duplex and another for full-duplex, packet collisions can occur, leading to increased network latency and packet loss. This is common when network interfaces are not auto-negotiating properly.
5. MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) Mismatches
Fragmentation Issues: If the MTU settings are inconsistent across the network, packets may need to be fragmented, which can result in reduced performance or packet drops if the network equipment doesn’t handle fragmentation well.
6. Port Security Violations
MAC Address Violations: Port security features on switches limit the number of MAC addresses per port. If the limit is exceeded (due to new devices or attacks), the port can be shut down, causing network outages for legitimate devices.
7. Trucking and Tagging Issues
Native VLAN Mismatches: If the native VLAN is different on either end of a trunk link, it can lead to untagged traffic being sent to the wrong VLAN, causing network segmentation problems.
Incorrect Trunk Port Configuration: Misconfigured trunk ports can prevent VLAN traffic from passing between switches, disrupting inter-VLAN communication.
8. EtherChannel/Link Aggregation Failures
Misconfigured LACP/PAgP: Link aggregation protocols like LACP or PAgP can fail to properly bundle links between switches if configurations are inconsistent, resulting in traffic load imbalance or link failures.
9. ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) Issues
ARP Spoofing/Poisoning: Attackers can manipulate ARP messages to associate their MAC address with another device’s IP address, leading to man-in-the-middle attacks or DoS (Denial of Service).
Stale ARP Entries: Devices may have outdated or incorrect ARP cache entries, leading to communication failures until the ARP cache is refreshed.
10. Frame Errors
Frame Check Sequence (FCS) Errors: Corruption of Ethernet frames during transmission can cause FCS errors. These errors can indicate faulty cabling, physical layer issues, or faulty network cards.
Runt Frames: Frames that are smaller than the minimum allowed size (64 bytes) can indicate collisions or faults on the network.
11. STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) Configuration Issues
Incorrect Root Bridge Selection: If the wrong switch is elected as the root bridge in an STP network, suboptimal paths may be used, causing increased latency or even network instability.
STP Convergence Delays: During network changes, if STP takes too long to converge, it can cause temporary outages or loops.
12. Switch Firmware or Software Bugs
Unpatched Vulnerabilities: Outdated firmware on switches can introduce bugs or vulnerabilities that may affect network performance or security.
Memory Leaks: Over time, some switches may experience memory leaks or resource exhaustion, causing unexpected behavior or crashes.
13. Redundant Links Without Proper Configuration
Link Failures: If redundant links between switches are not properly managed using protocols like STP, they can cause loops or inefficient use of network resources.
14. Multicast Flooding
Incorrect Multicast Configuration: Without proper IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) snooping, switches may flood multicast traffic to all ports instead of forwarding it to the correct recipients, causing unnecessary bandwidth usage.
15. Ethernet Auto negotiation Issues
Auto negotiation Failures: When switches or network devices fail to properly negotiate link speed or duplex settings, it can result in degraded network performance or link instability.
16. Private VLAN Configuration Problems
Misconfigured Private VLANs (PVLANs): Incorrect setup of private VLANs can lead to traffic leakage between isolated segments, compromising network security.
17. STP Blocking Legitimate Ports
Unnecessary Blocking: Misconfigured STP can block ports that should be forwarding, leading to unintended network disruptions or performance degradation.
– Addressing these Layer 2 issues involves proper configuration, regular monitoring, and updated security practices to ensure reliable and secure network operations
Nice to Have:
Basic Server Knowledge Cisco Networking, Rukus,
Basic Understanding of Hyper-V and/or VMware ESXi
Basic Linux Knowledge
Additional Certifications
