I am not a sysadmin either but I had exact same reaction as nazgulnarsil. I would think a sysadmin's thought process would follow the path of distance->latency->timeout pretty quickly. In other words, I understand what you are saying about sysadmins having to deal with non-technical users, but in this case I actually think the "customer was right". From what I've gathered from this story, the end user was highly analytical in figuring out the exact issue and made an intelligent and acccurate analysis. The sysdamin's emotional filter was the problem, if anything.