That’s our policy also. Then we get to manage them. Need a dual band AirGateway next that’s less than $100. We are seeing about 40Mbps through the AirGateways which is more than most people need but I’m ready for a 5GHz version.
From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of That One Guy via Af Sent: Friday, November 21, 2014 10:16 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's yeah, air routers are so cheap to give the customer its not worth not doing On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Travis Johnson via Af <[email protected]> wrote: Hi, This is why we just included a "free" WiFi router with all of our installations. It wasn't a separate item on their bill, it was just part of our service. Then we had control of the router, and could actually test clear to the router from our NOC. The customers liked it because they didn't have to worry about the router, and when it failed we just replaced it, no charge. Again... customer service is what wins the day. :) Travis On 11/21/2014 9:00 AM, Ken Hohhof via Af wrote: I really question if customers want a device to help them troubleshoot. More like if we (a bunch of network admins) were the customer, that’s what we’d want. It’s like the guys on Big Bang Theory trying to imagine what a regular person would want. The hurdle seems to be getting them to pay someone to fix problems in their internal network. If you can monetize this by selling an onsite support plan, or by dispatching from a separate side of your business that charges for service calls, that is good, as long as you can say this is not an Internet service problem, it is a customer network problem. Otherwise, refer them to a local computer shop that does house calls. What amazes me is the reluctance to pay us $5/mo for a managed Mikrotik router that comes with free replacement, phone support and onsite support. All of a sudden it’s not so interesting to have us solve the problem for them. Yet they will go to Best Buy and let the kid talk them into a $200 Linksys AC router as the solution to all their problems. I guess that points back to me being a poor salesman compared to the kid at Best Buy. Probably because I know the managed router is a good deal for the customer, so if they don’t want it, I’m only going to push it so hard. While Best Buy makes tons more money on a $200 router than they do on a $50 router and doesn’t give a rat’s ass what’s good for the customer, so they sell the hell out of the expensive router. And people like going to stores and buying cool gadgets. Maybe I need to rub some “new car smell” on the Mikrotik routers or something. So I guess if your proposed gizmo has a “new car smell” or “latest iPhone” aura to it, people might buy it. Just make sure that red light doesn’t have false detects, or it will just make people complain their Internet is down because the red light is on. From: David via Af <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2014 9:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Network Monitoring in the 2010's Yeah we put a little thought into ours on that behalf. The customer will have to go to the trouble of signing up for these alerts and it will only show alerts associated with their tower or CPE. Even any scheduled work being done on that site. Alerts for outages on their connection only is all that will be displayed. We are not doing this for anyone on our FSK network only the 450 net. We already have the Portal for billing. On 11/20/2014 11:47 AM, Josh Luthman via Af wrote: *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 <[email protected]> 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. -- All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
