Re: Common operational misconceptions
On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Michael Sinatra mich...@rancid.berkeley.edu wrote: ULA is the IPv6 equivalent of RFC1918 Michael, could you explain this a bit more? In the sense that : a. Anyone can use ULA pretty much as they wish without having to go to their ISP or RIR - same for RFC1918 b. In order to get to the public Internet, with ULA addressing, some kind of translation is required - same for RFC1918 c. Without centralised registration, two different networks could end up using same ULA space - same for RFC1918 There are certainly not identical but I'd think loosely equivalent. What am I missing? -- Mukom Akong [Tamon] __ “We don't LIVE in order to BREATH. Similarly WORKING in order to make MONEY puts us on a one way street to irrelevance.“ [In Search of Excellence Perfection] - http://perfexcellence.org [Moments of TechXcellence] - http://techexcellence.net [ICT Business Integration] - http://ibiztech.wordpress.com [About Me] - http://about.me/perfexcellence
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
You can always call it HelpDesk/Technical Support They both mean the same thing, but create a different feeling in the minds of the customers. Helpdesk is typically perceived to be gentler (more informal / more flexible) providing support on a wider range of technical issues. Technical Support is perceived to be more focused, a bit more formal, and possibly providing support on narrow set of technical issues. We operate in two geographies In Athens, Georgia (College Town about 50 mile NE of Atlanta) the support department is knows as the Helpdesk. (We acquired that operation, and previous owners had chosen that term, so we stayed with it). and in South Florida, we call it Tech Support. As you can see from my email signature, we often use those two terms interchangeably. Good Luck with your choice. Regards. Faisal Imtiaz Snappy Internet Telecom 7266 SW 48 Street Miami, Fl 33155 Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232 Helpdesk: 305 663 5518 option 2 Email: supp...@snappydsl.net On 3/3/2012 2:46 AM, Tarig Adam wrote: I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting. What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call Center. does each term has a specific meaning? And is there any standard structure of this center? And what is the relation of this people with other network/software Engineers? Thanks in advance.
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Tarig Adam tariq198...@gmail.com wrote: I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting. What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call Center. does each term has a specific meaning? Hi Tarig, For what it's work, I think of the terms this way: Help Desk: The place I call when I need my employer's IT department to fix my broken computer. Call Center: The place that wants to administer a telephone survey while I'm trying to eat dinner. Technical Support: The place I call when a technology product or service malfunctions. And is there any standard structure of this center? Varies with size. At one end of the spectrum you have 3 phones with call distribution from the tech support number. At the other you have a dedicated office building containing staff with product specialties. And what is the relation of this people with other network/software Engineers? The engineers are second or third tier support. When Tech Support can't solve the problem, Tech Support calls an engineer for help. Once the engineer does his magic, Tech Support verifies it and then responds to the customer. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
Go with 'Technical Support' unless you want to take all sorts of calls with end users wanting help on operational training issues. THIS DOES HAPPEN! -- Thanks, Joe On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 6:56 AM, William Herrin b...@herrin.us wrote: On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Tarig Adam tariq198...@gmail.com wrote: I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting. What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call Center. does each term has a specific meaning? Hi Tarig, For what it's work, I think of the terms this way: Help Desk: The place I call when I need my employer's IT department to fix my broken computer. Call Center: The place that wants to administer a telephone survey while I'm trying to eat dinner. Technical Support: The place I call when a technology product or service malfunctions. And is there any standard structure of this center? Varies with size. At one end of the spectrum you have 3 phones with call distribution from the tech support number. At the other you have a dedicated office building containing staff with product specialties. And what is the relation of this people with other network/software Engineers? The engineers are second or third tier support. When Tech Support can't solve the problem, Tech Support calls an engineer for help. Once the engineer does his magic, Tech Support verifies it and then responds to the customer. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:04:52 PST, JoeSox said: Go with 'Technical Support' unless you want to take all sorts of calls with end users wanting help on operational training issues. THIS DOES HAPPEN! Which is OK, if that's your business model. I know a few small ISPs that are making a comfortable living selling repackaged DSL plus handholding. pgpBCkHV9cglY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 3/3/2012 10:34 AM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:04:52 PST, JoeSox said: Go with 'Technical Support' unless you want to take all sorts of calls with end users wanting help on operational training issues. THIS DOES HAPPEN! Which is OK, if that's your business model. I know a few small ISPs that are making a comfortable living selling repackaged DSL plus handholding. Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent... Jeff -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk9SPhMACgkQiwXJq373XhZTgwCg7ImBfYfyanvYaAA6PcIVQCRw Ti0AoKSNAmH7RXrT1J0x1Ss1CVhLa76R =HBJ+ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On 3/3/2012 10:57 AM, Faisal Imtiaz wrote: Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent... Jeff Like a heavy Southern Drawl ? Oh yeah, y'all :) The major point was a human answering, at least my home ISP (Charter) has this unbearable voice response... in annoyingly perfect English, although there is a Spanish option when it first starts :) If you have humans answering, you can call them anything you like, you're ahead of the curve. If not, it is going to be called all sorts of things, and Technical Support or Helpdesk is not among the options that come to mind... Jeff
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
Touche! Being in South Florida, (heavy Latin Spanish accents) and having customers in Alabama, Tennessee (Heavy Southern accents) etc, we have had to Tune our ears as well as our Accents, including carefully choosing our words... It is not uncommon for us to have a new support Rep. get on a call and start making strange facial expressions.. saying.. I know the caller is speaking English, but I cannot make out a word of what they are saying !... Which of-course goes both ways, a Southern English speaker has equally hard time understanding heavy Latin and Eastern European accents. The sad part but true reality is, that most folks when they hear a different accent, automatically equate accent with professional competency .. and that is the toughest thing to overcome for phone support work. City folks, will often equate Southern accent with someone who is less proficient and slow, while the Southern folks will equate the Northern Accent with someone trying to be slick and pulling a fast one on them.. And then of course we have our favorite New Yorkers, (Manhattan / Queens etc) who simply equate politeness as a sing of weakness and try to railroad you if you are too polite. It's all good, it's all fun, it's all part of life, and surprising to most, this is COMMON HUMAN behavior across ALL Parts of the World. Not just unique to USA and Indian Call Centers.. :) Regards Faisal Imtiaz Snappy Internet Telecom 7266 SW 48 Street Miami, Fl 33155 Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232 Helpdesk: 305 663 5518 option 2 Email: supp...@snappydsl.net On 3/3/2012 11:26 AM, Dave Pooser wrote: On 3/3/12 9:57 AM, Faisal Imtiazfai...@snappydsl.net wrote: Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent... Jeff Like a heavy Southern Drawl ? Saah, Ah resemble that remahk! :^) I think no matter where you're located, having a tech support rep who speaks your language with an accent not too dissimilar to your own can be a huge help. I've had tech support calls go bad because of unintelligible accents when I was calling centers in India and in Ireland, but also in the US when I found the last of the Clampett clan answering phones for an ISP. (I've lived in Texas almost 16 years-- if you're so redneck that *I* can't understand you, you need a job where all your communication is in writing. Or pictures.)
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
Funny u mentioned Charter, had to call in a support ticket to them this morning. ( Cable down, due to yesterday's nasty storms). Having no accent is always preferred, but not possible. And as to Automated service... we see two kinds of folks... Ones who have a preference for self service, and another who wants human contact. I was actually impressed with the Charter Customer Service Phone front end. It recognized me by my Caller ID phone number, It was clean, crisp, and voice recognition was pretty good and it immediately told me that there was an outage in my area, and they are working on fixing it, plus it offered to call me back once the problem is resolved. After it gave me the info, I asked to speak to a Support Rep, and it transferred me to them. So far this is one the best Customer Service Phone system front end I have come across in a long time. Yes, humans are preferred, but if I can have the system give me updates quickly, vs. having to hold for 20 or 30 min for a human to give me the same info... I prefer the machine :) Faisal Imtiaz Snappy Internet Telecom On 3/3/2012 11:36 AM, Jeff Kell wrote: If you have humans answering, you can call them anything you like, you're ahead of the curve. If not, it is going to be called all sorts of things, and Technical Support or Helpdesk is not among the options that come to mind...
RE: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
-Original Message- From: Faisal Imtiaz Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2012 7:58 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent... Jeff Like a heavy Southern Drawl ? :) Hope you realize that this list a Global list, and not everyone is talking about US Only. Well, it is a North American list. A heavy Southern drawl is perfectly fine in the Southeastern US, and might even be welcome by customers there. It's no worse than a thick New England accent. But there are plenty of places, particularly in the mountain West of the US, where such help is relatively inexpensive and the accent is neutral. A call center in Montana/Utah/Wyoming/Idaho or even the Dakotas/Nebraska/Kansas for a national player isn't a bad idea. Help is relatively inexpensive, the people can be understood nationally, and in Central or Mountain timezone give you decent national coverage without a bunch of overtime. The help center doesn't have to be physically located with your actual network operations infrastructure. In fact, there are good reasons why you don't want that. If your operations have experienced a catastrophic failure (power outage, lightning strike, cable cut), your customers could still reach a real live person. But having customer reps that speak in the same accent as the customers they are serving can be a nice touch, too. If most of your customers are in the Southeastern or Northeastern US, maybe you WANT reps that sound like your customers.
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On 3/3/2012 11:48 AM, Faisal Imtiaz wrote: Touche! Being in South Florida, (heavy Latin Spanish accents) and having customers in Alabama, Tennessee (Heavy Southern accents) etc, we have had to Tune our ears as well as our Accents, including carefully choosing our words... Yes, it goes both ways :) It would be very interesting to get some statistics/reports out of Apple's Siri project as to the hardest cases. My cousin recently got an iPhone with Siri. She has a much worse drawl than mine :) She told it to Call Jeff, and Siri says I see no J F in your contacts. (Imagine a very heavily drawled Jeff more like Jaaay-Yufff, decidedly two syllables there...) She's had mixed results with Siri :) It may be beneficial speech therapy for her, but hard to change decades of Southern :) Jeff
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 7:34 AM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: Which is OK, if that's your business model. I know a few small ISPs that are making a comfortable living selling repackaged DSL plus handholding. In the case I was thinking of, a small Techsupport group answering questions about 'How does my customer get an account. These questions really needs to be answered by their supervisor. But aren't you the 'HelpDesk' I call when I need help!? That makes sense for the DSL business. -- Thanks, Joe
Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits
Common Misconception With Spread Spectrum IP Addressing the 32-bit Source Address Field is Shifted LEFT 2-bits by the originator of the packet. That Folds the IPv4 Legacy Address Space into 1/4th tsize table The lost 2-bits are stored in the Right-Most 2 bits of the 32-bit field and in other places in the IPv4 Header The Destination can easily recover the Source Address - if the proper algorithms are in use Responses blindly sent back to the shifted Source Address may fall into agile hands or not With the advanced Spread-Spectrum techniques, additional addressing bits are created from the noise intentionally stored in the Right-Most 2 bits NANOG Operators buying /8s or /6s may want to look at the Spread-Spectrum CODE in the Linux-based CPE Routers The following table is deprecated and 1/4th the size: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.txt With Spread-Spectrum collisions and mis-directions are OK and expected but other techniques ensure the packets get to the right place. http://NANOG.GURU
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
At a Small-to-Medium ISP I worked for, they went through structuring changes like this all the time. But the following seems to be the best setup: First was Customer Support which dealt with billing and basic instruction (setup mail clients, reset passwords, etc). Second tier was Customer Data Support or CDS, which covered troubleshooting connectivity and doing advanced instruction. Third tier support was the Network Operations Center. CDS escalated to them if there was a particularly difficult or CO Equipment related issue. The NOC could then escalate to the actual Engineering department or to the CO Repair staff as needed. -- The nice thing about this setup was that it grew with the company. Each of those departments started out as one or two people, but grew their own sub-tiers/sub-teams as systems grew and became more complicated. Also, the name didn't really matter too much to the customer. They chose the option for Problems with your connection or if you need technical support from the phone tree, and we just answered with the company's name. We never said Customer Data Support, this is Brett, just CompanyX, this is Brett There are a couple of good System Administration guide books out there that give basic Help Desk structuring and reporting paths. They are usually geared more towards the enterprise, but some good information can be gleaned from them as well. Hope this helps, -Brett Lykins On Mar 3, 2012, at 2:46 AM, Tarig Adam wrote: I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting. What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call Center. does each term has a specific meaning? And is there any standard structure of this center? And what is the relation of this people with other network/software Engineers? Thanks in advance. -- Tarig Adam
Re: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4)
Someone get this man a Xanax! -Original message- From: Guru NANOG nanog.g...@gmail.com To: nanog nanog@nanog.org Sent: 2012 Mar, Sun, 4 00:01:04 GMT+00:00 Subject: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4) Common Misconception - IPv4 is Out of Address Space NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4) The 8-bit TTL field is reduced to 4-bits plus two 11 bits stuck at 1 for a long time The new 8-bit fields are: SD11 Packets without the 11 will enter Deep Packet Inspection processing (slow) SD are new Source and Destination Address bits set via the generic 128-bit records 4+8+12+30+6 = 60 + 68 = 128 VRHL+111.T1.000+Port12+30+Frag6 T1 sets the TTL bits - Use T0 at your own risk - VRHL=0101=5 NANOG.GURU.☺
Re: Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits
--- On Sat, 3/3/12, Jimmy Hess mysi...@gmail.com wrote: From: Jimmy Hess mysi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits To: Keith Medcalf kmedc...@dessus.com Cc: nanog@nanog.org nanog@nanog.org Date: Saturday, March 3, 2012, 2:39 PM On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Keith Medcalf kmedc...@dessus.com wrote: Is it April already? I though April Fools Day wasn't until next month. I did, I did. I did see a snake-oil salesman! It sounds like the IPv3 / IPv8 guy crawled back out of the woodwork. Yeah, April fools is next month, but that's for actual pranks/jokes; I suspect the poster is actually serious, however misguided; April fools is just one day -- misguided folks make nonsensical suggestions ~365.24219 days a year (on average). -- -JH I am reminded of: The mathematical reality of IPv4. At least that made for interesting bed time reading... disposition: removed. ./Randy
Re: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4)
He has a point. The IPv4 exhaustion problem was manufactured by the illuminati to usher in their IPv6 protocol (note the use of the number 6, the number if the beast. Combined with the tuple of source, destination address and protocol type this is 666!). The illuminati want us to deploy IPv6 so they can use it to control people ready for the new world order. It was all predicted by Nostradamus. Innit. -- Leigh Porter On 3 Mar 2012, at 23:27, Robert Glover robe...@garlic.com wrote: Someone get this man a Xanax! -Original message- From: Guru NANOG nanog.g...@gmail.com To: nanog nanog@nanog.org Sent: 2012 Mar, Sun, 4 00:01:04 GMT+00:00 Subject: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4) Common Misconception - IPv4 is Out of Address Space NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4) The 8-bit TTL field is reduced to 4-bits plus two 11 bits stuck at 1 for a long time The new 8-bit fields are: SD11 Packets without the 11 will enter Deep Packet Inspection processing (slow) SD are new Source and Destination Address bits set via the generic 128-bit records 4+8+12+30+6 = 60 + 68 = 128 VRHL+111.T1.000+Port12+30+Frag6 T1 sets the TTL bits - Use T0 at your own risk - VRHL=0101=5 NANOG.GURU.☺ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __ __ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com __
Re: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4)
Someone has been drinking the bong water Sent from my iPhone On 2012-03-03, at 5:03 PM, Guru NANOG nanog.g...@gmail.com wrote: Common Misconception - IPv4 is Out of Address Space NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4) The 8-bit TTL field is reduced to 4-bits plus two 11 bits stuck at 1 for a long time The new 8-bit fields are: SD11 Packets without the 11 will enter Deep Packet Inspection processing (slow) SD are new Source and Destination Address bits set via the generic 128-bit records 4+8+12+30+6 = 60 + 68 = 128 VRHL+111.T1.000+Port12+30+Frag6 T1 sets the TTL bits - Use T0 at your own risk - VRHL=0101=5 NANOG.GURU.☺
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
A newsgroup I used to read a decade back used to call it helldesk But seriously, live humans with whatever location or accent, answering an actual phone, are the costliest sort of ticket an ISP has to handle. The focus needs to be on providing the customer enough self help tools, wikis, user forums, email support, IVR .. before they even need to phone your helpdesk and have a human open or work a ticket for them. It is that or watch your margins get shredded due to spiraling support costs. --srs On 3/3/12, Jeff Kell jeff-k...@utc.edu wrote: On 3/3/2012 10:57 AM, Faisal Imtiaz wrote: Especially if a human answers promptly without a horrible accent... Jeff Like a heavy Southern Drawl ? Oh yeah, y'all :) The major point was a human answering, at least my home ISP (Charter) has this unbearable voice response... in annoyingly perfect English, although there is a Spanish option when it first starts :) If you have humans answering, you can call them anything you like, you're ahead of the curve. If not, it is going to be called all sorts of things, and Technical Support or Helpdesk is not among the options that come to mind... Jeff -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.li...@gmail.com)
Re: NANOG Operational TTL Alert for 160-bit Headers (aka IPv4)
On 3/3/12 3:02 PM, Guru NANOG wrote: Common Misconception - IPv4 is Out of Address Space You couldn't wait just 29 more days to post this? It would have been so much more appropriate. -- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - j...@impulse.net Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/ Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
is 74.218.84.10 a road runner IP address?
ab...@rr.com doesn't seem to think so. -Dan
Re: Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits
http:// http://www.timecube.com/www.timecube.com/http://www.timecube.com/ Goes together well.. On Mar 3, 2012 1:34 PM, Guru NANOG nanog.g...@gmail.com wrote: Common Misconception With Spread Spectrum IP Addressing the 32-bit Source Address Field is Shifted LEFT 2-bits by the originator of the packet. That Folds the IPv4 Legacy Address Space into 1/4th tsize table The lost 2-bits are stored in the Right-Most 2 bits of the 32-bit field and in other places in the IPv4 Header The Destination can easily recover the Source Address - if the proper algorithms are in use Responses blindly sent back to the shifted Source Address may fall into agile hands or not With the advanced Spread-Spectrum techniques, additional addressing bits are created from the noise intentionally stored in the Right-Most 2 bits NANOG Operators buying /8s or /6s may want to look at the Spread-Spectrum CODE in the Linux-based CPE Routers The following table is deprecated and 1/4th the size: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.txt With Spread-Spectrum collisions and mis-directions are OK and expected but other techniques ensure the packets get to the right place. http://NANOG.GURU
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
The focus needs to be on providing the customer enough self help tools, wikis, user forums, email support, IVR .. before they even need to phone your helpdesk and have a human open or work a ticket for them. i might toss in a solid reliable working service randy
Re: is 74.218.84.10 a road runner IP address?
According to Whois that's a commercial roadrunner connection, and it falls in one of their netblocks. Plenty of info here: http://bgp.he.net/ip/74.218.84.10 goe...@anime.net mailto:goe...@anime.net March 3, 2012 9:45 PM ab...@rr.com doesn't seem to think so. -Dan
Re: Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits
On Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:34:20 CST, Guru NANOG said: http://NANOG.GURU I knew the ICANN expansion of TLDs would lead to no good... pgpVMBmMlxMkf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: is 74.218.84.10 a road runner IP address?
So anyone have a roadrunner contact with some clue? -Dan On Sat, 3 Mar 2012, Alex Conner wrote: According to Whois that's a commercial roadrunner connection, and it falls in one of their netblocks. Plenty of info here: http://bgp.he.net/ip/74.218.84.10 goe...@anime.net mailto:goe...@anime.net March 3, 2012 9:45 PM ab...@rr.com doesn't seem to think so. -Dan
Re: Spread Spectrum IP Addressing - SOURCE Address Field ROTATED|shifted? Left 2 Bits
On Mar 3, 2012 1:34 PM, Guru NANOG nanog.g...@gmail.com wrote: Common Misconception With Spread Spectrum IP Addressing the 32-bit Source Address Field is Shifted LEFT 2-bits by the originator of the packet. [ [sneck ]] A unique way to get his two bits in. I trust he remembers to set the evil bit -- for mandatory RFC 3514 compliance.
Re: which one a Technical Support or Help Desk
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Tarig Adam tariq198...@gmail.com wrote: I am working for a new Small ISP and we are trying to establish a center for receiving technical calls and inquires from customers and the technicians in this center may do some basics troubleshooting. What is the suitable title for this center and what we should call this people who do this job? Technical Support, Helpdesk, or Call Center. does each term has a specific meaning? And is there any standard structure of this center? And what is the relation of this people with other network/software Engineers? Is your organization adopting any governance frameworks? In ITIL-speak, the function you are describing is called the Service Desk (but could actually be called anything you'd like-- i.e, The Genius Brothel, etc) From the ITIL description of the Service Desk function: The Service Desk acts as the central point of contact between service providers and users on a day to day basis. It is also a focal point for reporting incidents and for service requests. It can also provide an interface, for other service management activities (such as change, problem, configuration, release and continuity management). I'd add to this description that it's a single point of contact (first in, last out) for any and all types of requests, including change management and internal requests. They also recognize that some organizations would also have local premises service desks where people could actually walk up to or be helped in a matter of minutes-- and that this function would be considered a help desk, but only as *part* of a larger service desk. For more details on how ITIL structures this function, check the wikipedia page- they have some basic info that can get you started. -Dan
