Matt,

That response works but I believe you also need to suggest options for them
to achieve the same thing like purchasing the USB ethernet adapter for
example.

I find customers like options or more than one choice.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 11:52 AM Matt Hoppes <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Our answer:
>
> I'm sorry but if you can't plug in to test we can send a tech out if
> you're 100% certain there is an issue, but if it turns out to work fine
> when plugged in there will be a $50 dispatch fee.
>
> On 1/24/20 12:35 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, what do you tell customers who say they don’t own a
> > computer?  Not being hypothetical or argumentative, I am actually
> > getting that maybe 50% of the time now.
> >
> > If they say their computer is a laptop without an Ethernet jack, I tell
> > them to buy a $5 Ethernet cable and a $20 USB-Ethernet dongle at Best
> > Buy for testing purposes.  But I don’t have a good response to the
> > people who have no computer at all, other than a truck roll to test it
> > ourselves, which of course is what we want to avoid unless there’s an
> > actual problem.
> >
> > *From:* AF <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Darin Steffl
> > *Sent:* Friday, January 24, 2020 11:22 AM
> > *To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
> > *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> > I think I replied what we tell customers. We don't support any speedtest
> > except what our guide says to do. I'll attach it here. This means no
> > Google wifi tests or orbi, etc.
> >
> > We will still troubleshoot and check Calix for any performance issues
> > but if the complaint is simply a speedtest and we aren't getting what we
> > pay for, we send them our guide and only accept results following it.
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 11:03 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >
> >     Maybe start a new Calix thread?  My original post was about the
> >     speedtest built into Google routers and if anyone knew how it worked
> >     and whether it has accuracy problems.
> >
> >     I dislike the Google/Nest routers and discourage customers from
> >     using them, but saying I should deploy Calix everywhere doesn’t
> >     really address my question which comes from customers reporting
> >     alleged problems reported by their Google automatic speedtests.
> >     That’s a little harder to troubleshoot than a customer calling
> >     because they are having trouble streaming Disney+ right now, or
> >     getting bad speedtest.net <http://speedtest.net> results right now.
> >     It’s more like my Google report says I haven’t been getting what I
> >     pay you for over the past couple weeks.
> >
> >     Especially confusing, this customer claimed the bad results started
> >     right around the time we added his tower to our Preseem system.
> >     That’s strange since we’ve been gradually rolling out Preseem for a
> >     year now and it has made things better not worse.  Also Preseem
> >     gives us lots of additional graphs which show this customer’s speed
> >     and latency on real traffic has been picture perfect.  If I look at
> >     Google FAQs and blog posts regarding their speedtest, there seems to
> >     be two variants.  The M-Lab one appears to be quite old, with some
> >     questionable approaches like single TCP connection and avoiding
> >     nearby servers, as well as currently undergoing a major TCP/IP
> >     algorithm change based on a change in philosophy regarding what
> >     constitutes congestion, and packet loss vs bufferbloat.  But it
> >     sounds like the speedtest built into the Google routers may test to
> >     Google servers, specifically Youtube.
> >
> >     If built in automated speedtests are a trend, I expect to hear more
> >     of these complaints.  Even if you provide a managed “residential
> >     gateway” type of solution, you can’t stop people from putting their
> >     own networking devices behind it.  All the major vendors are trying
> >     to sell smart home ecosystems that integrate with or are controlled
> >     by a router type device.  If you’ve bought into the Google Nest
> >     ecosystem, you have your Nest Thermostat, Nest Hubs, Nest Minis,
> >     Google Home, all talking to your Nest WiFi mesh system.  You tell
> >     your Nest Hub “Hey Google, check my Internet speed” and the Nest Hub
> >     tells the Nest WiFi to run a speedtest and then the Hub says “your
> >     Internet sucks” or whatever.
> >
> >     *From:* AF <[email protected]
> >     <mailto:[email protected]>> *On Behalf Of *Mike Hammett
> >     *Sent:* Friday, January 24, 2020 10:28 AM
> >     *To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]
> >     <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >     *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >     I'm not coming up with my own anything. I'm not having to code
> >     anything. It's standards. Standards that Calix took and pay-walled.
> >
> >     The software I'm using is the same software Calix forked.
> >
> >
> >
> >     -----
> >     Mike Hammett
> >     Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> >     <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><
> https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><
> https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> >     Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> >     <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><
> https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> >     The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> >     <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> >
> >
> >     <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> >
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >     *From: *"Darin Steffl" <[email protected]
> >     <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >     *To: *"AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]
> >     <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >     *Sent: *Friday, January 24, 2020 9:59:49 AM
> >     *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >     I'd say I have the technical ability to do something other than
> >     Calix but you are correct, I do not have the desire to do anything
> else.
> >
> >     I'm busy adding revenue into the company by upgrading the network,
> >     increasing plan prices, adding TV & Phone, targeting business
> >     customers, etc. All of this is way more important to grow the
> >     business than trying to come up with our own Management router
> >     platform. It would only hurt us to not use something like Calix that
> >     works out of the box. I suggest you try to think less like a
> >     techie/geek and more like a business person who likes profit. This
> >     would change your mindset I think into using easy management
> >     platforms that cost a little money. We pay $0.51 per month/sub for
> >     Calix Cloud which is extremely affordable to me. For that small
> >     amount, I don't need any servers, VM's, or coding knowledge.
> >
> >     On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 9:26 AM Mike Hammett <[email protected]
> >     <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >
> >         That would be incorrect. I have Calix DSLAMs and have worked
> >         with Calix for a few years. Their paid support leaves much to be
> >         desired. Obvious SNMP bug is obvious and they don't care.
> >
> >         I'm not going to say the Calix product is a bad product, but
> >         there's a severe amount of fanboyism around it that I believe is
> >         unwarranted. I don't believe people actually looked into
> >         alternatives.
> >
> >         I have to setup and manage a server? So? It's just another VM on
> >         the existing platform.
> >
> >         Saving money isn't my only drive. Having a more flexible system
> >         has its advantages.
> >
> >         It seems as though you don't have the technical desire to do
> >         something not Calix...  and that's fine, but it's not the only
> >         (or even best) way to skin the cat.
> >
> >
> >
> >         -----
> >         Mike Hammett
> >         Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> >         <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><
> https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><
> https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> >         Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> >         <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><
> https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> >         The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> >         <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> >
> >
> >         <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> >
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >         *From: *"Darin Steffl" <[email protected]
> >         <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >         *To: *"AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]
> >         <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >         *Sent: *Friday, January 24, 2020 8:54:12 AM
> >         *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >         Mike,
> >
> >         It's apparent to me that you have not demoed or had physical
> >         Calix products in your hand before. What you just proposed
> >         requires much more hands-on setup and support than Calix which
> >         is all handled by them with a technical team to back it up. Your
> >         solution requires you to deploy one or more servers, set them
> >         up, make sure they don't go down, then pray that you or the
> >         vendor can help fix an issue when it shows up. I guarantee that
> >         all costs much more money than what we pay Calix in terms of
> >         actual license costs and labor savings.
> >
> >         Plus I'm positive Calix hardware performs better than any other
> >         router you find like Comtrend and the mesh solution won't be as
> >         pretty or seamless either. Probably not one-touch like Calix is.
> >
> >         You think you're going to save money with your own solution but
> >         all you'll do is spend more time and money than I do and have a
> >         worse platform. There's a reason why so many telcos deploy Calix
> >         and it's because it's cheaper in the long run from labor
> >         efficiencies and better customer experience.
> >
> >         I keep preaching to WISP's that doing everything yourself is
> >         hurting your business. Outsource what doesn't make you money.
> >         Managing servers and playing with Linux, etc does NOT make you
> >         money. Adding new customer revenue does that for you so deploy
> >         solutions that require as little of your time as possible so you
> >         can focus on selling and increasing revenue. Calix allows us to
> >         do that as well as Preseem & Azotel. If we tried to do what
> >         you're doing, we would be stuck in the mud messing around and
> >         not making as much money.
> >
> >         On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 8:45 AM Mike Hammett <[email protected]
> >         <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >
> >             The road we're going down is likely Comtrend routers with a
> >             Finepoint ACS.
> >
> >             The Calix system is just a fork of an earlier Finepoint
> product.
> >
> >             TR-069 and TR-143 manage most of the fancy features people
> >             that love Calix love to boast about.
> >
> >             The advantage of something like this is that there is no
> >             vendor lock-in. One dashboard to support any device in the
> >             field, though the capabilities of that management would
> >             depend on what the device manufacturer has decided to
> implement.
> >
> >             There are standards such as IEEE 1905 and the WiFi
> >             Alliance's Easy Mesh that intelligently handle cross-vendor
> >             meshing, so nothing special about the Calix meshing either.
> >
> >
> >
> >             -----
> >             Mike Hammett
> >             Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><
> https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><
> https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> >             Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><
> https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> >             The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> >
> >
> >             <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> >
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >             *From: *"Tushar Patel" <[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             *To: *"AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             *Sent: *Friday, January 24, 2020 8:32:59 AM
> >             *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >             And the Alternatives are?
> >
> >             Tushar
> >
> >             *From:*AF [mailto:[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Mike
> Hammett
> >             *Sent:* Friday, January 24, 2020 8:31 AM
> >             *To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >             There's no way Calix will get a dime from me. Everything is
> >             so expensive compared to alternatives.
> >
> >
> >
> >             -----
> >             Mike Hammett
> >             Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><
> https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><
> https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
> >             Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><
> https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><
> https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
> >             The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
> >             <https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
> >
> >
> >             <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
> >
> >
>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >             *From: *"Jason McKemie" <[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             *To: *"AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]
> >             <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             *Sent: *Thursday, January 23, 2020 12:29:01 PM
> >             *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Google/Nest WiFi speedtest
> >
> >             What does Calix get you for on the management?  I've been
> >             looking into some options for managed routers, and I like
> >             the 844E, but Calix is pretty proud of their management
> >             platform and it just doesn't make a lot of sense for the
> >             number of managed routers we would be deploying right now.
> >
> >             I'm wondering if anyone out there has any experience with
> >             Ubiquiti's Dream Machine (unfortunate name, since Sony has
> >             been using it for a couple of decades).  At least Ubiquiti
> >             has a management platform that I don't need to sacrifice my
> >             firstborn for.
> >
> >             On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 11:47 AM Darin Steffl
> >             <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
> >             wrote:
> >
> >                 Guys,
> >
> >                 Start heavily pushing managed routers. We're all Calix
> >                 with 804mesh and we include the first router free in all
> >                 our plans.
> >
> >                 Makes a huge difference.
> >
> >                 Google wifi is bad because there's no way to manually
> >                 set the 5ghz channel away from our radio. We have one
> >                 customer we told this and that their service will stink
> >                 until they switch to our router or get a different mesh
> >                 system like orbi where you can still set the channel
> >                 manually.
> >
> >                 We also do not support any speedtest except
> >                 speedtest.net <http://speedtest.net> and selecting one
> >                 server we like. Also they have to be hardwired to the
> >                 POE or we won't respond to their tests. This eliminates
> >                 much of the back and forth wifi speedtests.
> >
> >                 On Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:34 AM Matt Hoppes
> >                 <[email protected]
> >                 <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> >
> >                     I've had a slew of wifi related calls this week.
> >                     Plug in, no issue.
> >                     WiFi -- interference - customer needs to get a dual
> >                     band router, or it's
> >                     so bad it's just not fixable.
> >
> >                     I really just want to tell folks "WiFi is not
> >                     supported on our service,
> >                     use at your own risk"... but of course, I can't do
> that.
> >
> >                     On 1/23/20 11:54 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
> >                     > Anybody know if the speedtest built into the
> Google and Nest WiFi mesh
> >                     > routers use the same M-Lab speedtest as the one a
> Google search sends
> >                     > you to?  Their FAQ seems to indicate it is
> different and tests to
> >                     > Youtube servers.
> >                     >
> >                     > Apparently they have a feature where customers can
> set it up to
> >                     > periodically test their speed, and now I have
> customers calling in to
> >                     > report that their router says they aren’t getting
> the speed they’re
> >                     > paying for.  We burn a bunch of time checking all
> the stats, including
> >                     > Preseem which shows no problems at all and actual
> traffic consistently
> >                     > to the speed plan they’re on.  When asked what
> they were trying to do
> >                     > that was slow or when they ran the speedtest, they
> can’t cite any
> >                     > problems and the speedtests were done days ago and
> they are just
> >                     > reviewing the Google report.
> >                     >
> >                     > One guy said the Google report indicated his dish
> moved in a windstorm
> >                     > so we needed to come out and fix it.  We have all
> sorts of graphs on his
> >                     > signal, SNR, etc. and his dish had not moved.  We
> had however moved this
> >                     > tower onto Preseem for bandwidth management around
> that time.  Everyone
> >                     > else is seeing better performance as a result,
> video streaming, gaming
> >                     > and web browsing now play nice together.  I’m
> wondering if somehow the
> >                     > Google speedtest doesn’t like the Preseem
> algorithms (FQ-CODEL + AQM),
> >                     > or if their speedtest is just flakey.
> >                     >
> >                     > I don’t have a Google or Nest WiFi to test with.
> We have a whole list
> >                     > of other reasons why we hate them.  Generally we
> tell customers not to
> >                     > buy them unless they are on a 3.65 GHz AP, but
> customers like to say
> >                     > screw you and then still expect you to be
> responsible for their bad
> >                     > decisions.  (Like the customers who select the
> cheap plan despite being
> >                     > told it is too slow to watch streaming video, and
> then call to complain
> >                     > about streaming video.)
> >                     >
> >                     > Other reasons we hate them:
> >                     >
> >                     > - no dedicated backhaul channel, compared to (for
> example) Netgear Orbi
> >                     >
> >                     > - only 1 or 2 Ethernet ports
> >                     >
> >                     > - requires Google account and app
> >                     >
> >                     > - requires cloud
> >                     >
> >                     > - uses Google DNS by default
> >                     >
> >                     > - tell me they’re not doing data mining
> >                     >
> >                     > - puck and point terminology is goofy, reminiscent
> of Apple and their
> >                     > airports and time capsules
> >                     >
> >                     >
> >
> >                     --
> >                     AF mailing list
> >                     [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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> >
> >                 --
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> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >         --
> >
> >         Darin Steffl
> >
> >         Minnesota WiFi
> >
> >         www.mnwifi.com <http://www.mnwifi.com/>
> >
> >         507-634-WiFi
> >
> >         <http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi> Like us on Facebook
> >         <http://www.facebook.com/minnesotawifi>
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> >     --
> >
> >     Darin Steffl
> >
> >     Minnesota WiFi
> >
> >     www.mnwifi.com <http://www.mnwifi.com/>
> >
> >     507-634-WiFi
> >
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> >
> >
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