Re: Muni Fiber Last Mile - a contrary opinion
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010, Owen DeLong wrote: [Frank Bulk] Some MSOs (including ourselves) have power systems (e.g. Alpha) in place throughout the plant to provide backup power for at least some time. Does that back up the cablemodem in the residence? If not, game over. Thing is, not enough noise was made about that in the Australian National Broadband Plan until late in the game. I'm patiently waiting for a time when a major power outage incident occurs and the cellular network system locally fails. Adrian
Re: SDSL circuits in UK?
On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 21:51 +, Paul Cupis wrote: There are a number of network operators capable of supplying SDSL (Annex B) in the UK depending on the location. Really? I heard BT were phasing out SDSL due to the low take-up, and the likes of TalkTalk are providing Annex M services with 2Mbps upstream, capped to 2Mbps downstream, to provide SDSL-like speeds. 21CN Ethernet Access Direct circuits are probably a better choice than SDSL, and bonding two Annex M circuits, a la Be/O2, is probably a better choice than SDSL. Peter
Re: Muni Fiber Last Mile - a contrary opinion
On Monday, December 27, 2010 01:04:33 am Owen DeLong wrote: On Dec 26, 2010, at 7:35 PM, Frank Bulk - iName.com wrote: Does that back up the cablemodem in the residence? If not, game over. Owen All of the Arris eMTA models have a version with built in battery backup, and as I recall drop net access and continue to provide phone power for some time. I know in our lab the one of the first things we make sure of, is that the batteries are not in them so we can do powercycle testing. --- Brian Raaen Network Architech Zcorum
Public Wireless access (ticket / token / schedule based)
What is everyone using for enterprise grade wireless authentication for simple public access (i.e. users that are non-employee that need internet access (non-PCI) while in your building). Obviously I will hang this off a DMZ switch outside of my private LAN. Looking for something vendor driven, don't have time for anything home grown or unsupported / community based. Thanks, Bill Lewis Hot Topic
ipfix/netflow/sflow generator for Linux
The latest version of Host sFlow adds support for ULOG traffic monitoring (with ingress/egress ifIndex numbers): http://host-sflow.sourceforge.net/ Cheers, Peter My only issue is that I can't seem to find any good software for Linux that works with multiple interfaces to generate the flow information. I've tried ndsad, nprobe, softflowd, host sflow, and ipcad without much luck. Most of the software only works on one interface (which is useless as I need to do accounting for numerous interfaces).
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
On Dec 27, 2010, at 7:10 AM, Mike wrote: Hi, Well as is customary in our part of the country (Northern California), with the stormy weather comes brownouts and blackouts comes a massive influx of end users with locked up and malfunctioning home networking equipment. Every single time the power sneezes, massive waves of customers just 'go down' and then I get to pick the pieces all up by talking to each individual and instructing them how to pull the power and then plug it back in, or worse, their cpe needs to have it's settings restored since the internal flash memories got cleared or corrupted. Yep... We see this in the cheap home gear all the time. Makes me mad since linksys/netgear/motorola got away with the customers money and incurs ZERO support costs or any apparent liability for their product, where we in turn get to deal with upset subscribers who have been 'down for days...' while all the time the solution - powercycling - was within reach. I think your only option potentially effective option would be to engage the great american tradition of legal reparations. (IOW, sue them for causing you harm by unleashing a product with a known defect and foreseeable harmful consequences). Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear (eg: cisco 26xx, 8xx, pix, and the like), and doubly especially those with working standby UPS, we never ever hear from and they have extreme uptimes, but home users aren't willing to hear $500 - $800 in gear is required to 'make it work all the time'. They interpret that to mean that there's just something wrong with us since WE 'require' such expensive and exotic equipment in order to work right, and they would be better off somewhere else. Amusingly, I could turn this around in my situation... My gear comes from the providers in both cases. In one case, I purchased the cheap DSL modem from the provider (which, admittedly, has been rock solid through many power outages). In the other case, I'm renting the CMTS box from Comcast which doesn't even require a power failure to lose its mind periodically. (Apparently there is a known problem where every time Comcast does a firmware update to the boxes, N% of them loose their minds). Arguably, at $5/month, over the life of my service I will likely pay quite a bit more for the CMTS box than I did for the DSL modem ($40). In fact, being a little more than a year since I got Comcast Business Class, I have already done so. Indeed, the running joke is I need fast reliable internet service, so, I get fast service from Comcast and Reliable service from Raw Bandwidth. Unfortunately, as amusing as the quip may be, it's also an absolutely true statement about my network. Owen
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
Send each customer out to buy this: http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BE350G problem solved. Andrew On 12/27/2010 10:10 AM, Mike wrote: Hi, Well as is customary in our part of the country (Northern California), with the stormy weather comes brownouts and blackouts comes a massive influx of end users with locked up and malfunctioning home networking equipment. Every single time the power sneezes, massive waves of customers just 'go down' and then I get to pick the pieces all up by talking to each individual and instructing them how to pull the power and then plug it back in, or worse, their cpe needs to have it's settings restored since the internal flash memories got cleared or corrupted. We see this in the cheap home gear all the time. Makes me mad since linksys/netgear/motorola got away with the customers money and incurs ZERO support costs or any apparent liability for their product, where we in turn get to deal with upset subscribers who have been 'down for days...' while all the time the solution - powercycling - was within reach. Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear (eg: cisco 26xx, 8xx, pix, and the like), and doubly especially those with working standby UPS, we never ever hear from and they have extreme uptimes, but home users aren't willing to hear $500 - $800 in gear is required to 'make it work all the time'. They interpret that to mean that there's just something wrong with us since WE 'require' such expensive and exotic equipment in order to work right, and they would be better off somewhere else. Any comments? Mike-
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
On 12/27/2010 10:10 AM, Mike wrote: Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear If power glitches are the problem, doing a bulk buy of UPS units and offering them cheap/at your cost to your customers as a bonus of them doing business with you, may solve the problem. --Patrick
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
On 12/27/2010 7:10 AM, Mike wrote: Hi, Well as is customary in our part of the country (Northern California), with the stormy weather comes brownouts and blackouts comes a massive influx of end users with locked up and malfunctioning home networking equipment. Every single time the power sneezes, massive waves of customers just 'go down' and then I get to pick the pieces all up by talking to each individual and instructing them how to pull the power and then plug it back in, or worse, their cpe needs to have it's settings restored since the internal flash memories got cleared or corrupted. We see this in the cheap home gear all the time. Makes me mad since linksys/netgear/motorola got away with the customers money and incurs ZERO support costs or any apparent liability for their product, where we in turn get to deal with upset subscribers who have been 'down for days...' while all the time the solution - powercycling - was within reach. Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear (eg: cisco 26xx, 8xx, pix, and the like), and doubly especially those with working standby UPS, we never ever hear from and they have extreme uptimes, but home users aren't willing to hear $500 - $800 in gear is required to 'make it work all the time'. They interpret that to mean that there's just something wrong with us since WE 'require' such expensive and exotic equipment in order to work right, and they would be better off somewhere else. Any comments? Mike- Yes - you need to have a basic troubleshooting guide for the victims of the manufacturers bad documentation. The most important thing is to tell the client how to reboot whatever device is providing their DHCP leases so that they can restore their service. The other thing which is of value we find is to close that sheet out with a request that the customers contact the manufacturer directly to tell them what they think of their product and you give them the proper email/web links to make that happen. Trust me if at Netgear Patrick Lo gets 500 emails from upset customers they will change that process immediately. Todd
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
On 12/27/2010 11:53 AM, Owen DeLong wrote: On Dec 27, 2010, at 7:10 AM, Mike wrote: Hi, Well as is customary in our part of the country (Northern California), with the stormy weather comes brownouts and blackouts comes a massive influx of end users with locked up and malfunctioning home networking equipment. Every single time the power sneezes, massive waves of customers just 'go down' and then I get to pick the pieces all up by talking to each individual and instructing them how to pull the power and then plug it back in, or worse, their cpe needs to have it's settings restored since the internal flash memories got cleared or corrupted. Yep... We see this in the cheap home gear all the time. Makes me mad since linksys/netgear/motorola got away with the customers money and incurs ZERO support costs or any apparent liability for their product, where we in turn get to deal with upset subscribers who have been 'down for days...' while all the time the solution - powercycling - was within reach. I think your only option potentially effective option would be to engage the great american tradition of legal reparations. (IOW, sue them for causing you harm by unleashing a product with a known defect and foreseeable harmful consequences). Is there anyone who has a script or process or policy concerning unreliable customer equipments and how to effectively deal with unsophisticated home users? I mean, users with business oriented gear (eg: cisco 26xx, 8xx, pix, and the like), and doubly especially those with working standby UPS, we never ever hear from and they have extreme uptimes, but home users aren't willing to hear $500 - $800 in gear is required to 'make it work all the time'. They interpret that to mean that there's just something wrong with us since WE 'require' such expensive and exotic equipment in order to work right, and they would be better off somewhere else. Amusingly, I could turn this around in my situation... My gear comes from the providers in both cases. In one case, I purchased the cheap DSL modem from the provider (which, admittedly, has been rock solid through many power outages). In the other case, I'm renting the CMTS box from Comcast which doesn't even require a power failure to lose its mind periodically. (Apparently there is a known problem where every time Comcast does a firmware update to the boxes, N% of them loose their minds). Arguably, at $5/month, over the life of my service I will likely pay quite a bit more for the CMTS box than I did for the DSL modem ($40). In fact, being a little more than a year since I got Comcast Business Class, I have already done so. Indeed, the running joke is I need fast reliable internet service, so, I get fast service from Comcast and Reliable service from Raw Bandwidth. Unfortunately, as amusing as the quip may be, it's also an absolutely true statement about my network. Owen yep!
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
Happened a few years back to one ISP I know. The common ADSL Modem given away free with the accounts (Dynalink DSL302G is the one I'm using right now, might be a few other models) had a problem that if authenticated failed (due to the account being locked say) and logins failed continuously for several minutes in a row the box would lock up and could only be fixed via a power cycle (NOT a restart from the the menu options). So the ISP had a few little problems and the authenticated servers were unhappy for a few hours and 10-20% of the not-trivial customer base ended up in this mode. Took the helpdesk about a week to get everybody working again - They had to talk people though resetting the right piece of equipment (not rebooting their computer etc) and obviously some had changed their passwords or settings to try and make it work so those had to be fixed. Dynalink put out a firmware fix for that bug and the ISP pushed it to customers after that and made sure the newer equipment didn't have it. -- Simon Lyall | Very Busy | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/ To stay awake all night adds a day to your life - Stilgar | eMT.
RE: Muni Fiber Last Mile - a contrary opinion
Cable modem is no different than a DSL modem, right? ;) If it's an eMTA, it may have battery backup, though the operational default is to disable the Ethernet port after a few minutes to provide the maximum amount of dial-tone. Frank -Original Message- From: Owen DeLong [mailto:o...@delong.com] Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 12:05 AM To: frnk...@iname.com Cc: NANOG; Jared Mauch Subject: Re: Muni Fiber Last Mile - a contrary opinion On Dec 26, 2010, at 7:35 PM, Frank Bulk - iName.com wrote: snip You are likely already at the mercy of some local hut for your dialtone. Very few things home run to the co these days. It's unlikely any hut has more than 24 hours of battery. I know this is true where FTTN overlays have been built. However, in the majority of California, at least, that is still more the exception than the rule and there is usually a Cat-3 Copper home-run for local dialtone. [Frank Bulk] Here in the midwest each and every of the telcos that I've talked to or worked with feeds dialtone for their DSL customers from the same equipment that serves the DSL. To do otherwise would require a splitter shelf in each node. In California, that is, by and large, the CO. snip However, 24 hours of dialtone after something happens still exceeds the average cablemodem duration after the power flickers. [Frank Bulk] Some MSOs (including ourselves) have power systems (e.g. Alpha) in place throughout the plant to provide backup power for at least some time. Does that back up the cablemodem in the residence? If not, game over. Owen
Re: Public Wireless access (ticket / token / schedule based)
Bill Lewis ble...@hottopic.com writes: What is everyone using for enterprise grade wireless authentication for simple public access (i.e. users that are non-employee that need internet access (non-PCI) while in your building). Obviously I will hang this off a DMZ switch outside of my private LAN. Looking for something vendor driven, don't have time for anything home grown or unsupported / community based. Assuming that this is for your offices not your retail outlets... Is there some reason you can't run it wide open without even so much as a captive-portal-check-the-box thing? All of the commercial boxes I've seen for doing what you say you want to do have been Deeply Unsatisfactory in some way (Nomadix is at the top of the list here). If you lose the authentication altogether and just make sure that there is a bandwidth lid on per host overall usage plus more conservative limits for things like the usual torrent ports and of course blocking certain other ports entirely... you've just eliminated the administrative overhead of issuing credentials to your visitors and streamlined your entire process. Doable? -r
Re: Public Wireless access (ticket / token / schedule based)
On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 11:50 PM, Robert E. Seastrom r...@seastrom.com wrote: Assuming that this is for your offices not your retail outlets... Is there some reason you can't run it wide open without even so much as a captive-portal-check-the-box thing? All of the commercial boxes I've seen for doing what you say you want to do have been Deeply Unsatisfactory in some way (Nomadix is at the top of the list here). yea, just buy a dsl line from your local telco, plug in a dlink and ... call it done.
