Several brands of home routers have an Internet light that changes color when
the Internet is reachable, for example Netgear and DLink do this. I don’t know
about Belkin but they probably phone home to the mothership. I think the
method depends on whether the Internet connection is set for DHCP, PPPoE or
static IP. With PPPoE it monitors for an active PPPoE session. I think the
other two maybe they check if the DNS servers are reachable.
This method is not foolproof, because cheap routers tend to lock up and they
may lock up with the light saying Internet is good. But it’s better than
nothing.
As far as notifying customers, ComEd here has an outage map that’s pretty nice.
You can bring it up on your phone and the starting location will be your phone
location, outage locations are shown with an estimated number of customers
affected, problem description (like wires down), status (like crew onsite or
being dispatched), and ETA. Not saying that’s what we need, but from a
customer perspective, it’s useful.
From: Chuck McCown via Af
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 12:05 PM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's
What would be the determining factor? Ping DNS server OK?
From: Jason McKemie via Af
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 11:03 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's
A red/green led would probably suffice for this purpose.
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Gino Villarini via Af <af@afmug.com> wrote:
We need a “device” that plugs between router and internet connection with a
big screed that says Internet OK! Or Internef BAD… filter out calls with
customer having issues with wifi
Gino A. Villarini
President
Aeronet Wireless Broadband Corp.
www.aeronetpr.com
@aeronetpr
From: "af@afmug.com" <af@afmug.com>
Reply-To: "af@afmug.com" <af@afmug.com>
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2014 at 1:47 PM
To: "af@afmug.com" <af@afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's
*An app for my phone? Yuck
*Something that pushes to cutomers letting them know we're having issues?
Yuck
*Something that let's the customer verify their particular service is
good/not? That'd be great!
*Web portal for billing, easy peasy
Why a node fails probably won't be detectable by a machine - in some cases
it's difficult for a person to narrow it down (radio, connectors, cables,
ethernet, surge, etc) but I'd like to see ideas on this of course.
I use/suggest an outgoing message. IF the customer is having issues and they
do call us, they hear we're having issues and hang up. This means that we're
not telling 100 people there are issues when 25 are effecting ending up with 75
calls next month saying we owe them a credit when they had nothing to do with
an outage.
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373
On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 12:43 PM, Sterling Jacobson via Af <af@afmug.com>
wrote:
What I really want is an integrated system that isn't stuck in the 90's.
I want the customer to have an app on their phone that tells them when
their network is having issues and why.
I want it to also remind them to pay their bill and provide a lazy/easy way
to do that.
I want that same system to have an engineer app that tells us when nodes
fail and why.
So if a node goes down and it's important, it should show up on my phone
and I can take action.
One of those actions would be to message to outage impacted customers the
ETA to fix etc.
Emails from Cacti don't count.
