Query : seeking a (low cost & secure) turnkey plug-and-play appliance to report network outages

Thu Nov 17 16:36:06 UTC 2011

On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 06:58:46AM -0600, A. Chase Turner wrote:
> I am seeking a $100 turnkey micro hardware appliance to plug into a LAN
> hub (behind a consumer-level cable modem) whose only purpose in life is
> to send heartbeat (and simple quality of service metrics) to a
> pre-configured central aggregation service on the WAN.

> Question to the list: do you know of an alternative hardware solution
> under $100 that would suffice -- and be of such quality that an
> incumbent internet service provider will not thumb their nose at me when
> I call in to report remote users are down based upon the loss of
> heartbeats from the remote users?

Pretty much any programmable/flashable little device would be sufficient, I
think.  Besides WRTG wireless routers as mentioned elsewhere, the smallest
device I've set up so far was one of those Seagate docking stations (I think
it was a "FreeAgent"?) which I got for $25 new; flashing it to Linux was
straightforward, albeit non-trivial.  Other cheap devices that are potentially
flashable abound (Raspberry Pi, anyone?), including possibly teensy
terminal servers, IP phones, used eBay old smartphone with a cracked screen for
$20, etc.  The ability to run PoE might also be an attractive feature.

> The call tree is working (somewhat) to improve accountability and
> response by the cable service provider ... but it is a waste of their
> time as there is no formal "record" of outage events to spur the
> provider to provide refunds for unscheduled service outages.   Thus, I
> am seeking a turnkey quality of service micro appliance that automates
> (and documents) service outage notifications .. so as to allow me
> (living in a city and my being on a different internet service provider)
> to take on the role of calling the rural cable service provider and
> claim (with authority) that I know that 10 individuals systems (who have
> the heartbeat appliance installed) are down and that the cable service
> provider needs to fix the issue...

In this scenario, it sounds like you're depending on end-to-end connectivity,
so remember that loss of ping/heartbeat isn't a guarantee that the failure
isn't due to something else, though...

-- 
Henry Yen                                       Aegis Information Systems, Inc.
Senior Systems Programmer                       Hicksville, New York