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

Krembs, Jesse jkrembs at fairpoint.com
Thu Nov 17 13:14:47 UTC 2011


http://www.appneta.com/ might fit your need sets.

Jesse Krembs - Data Network Architecture & Planning
FairPoint Communications | 800 Hinesburg Rd, South Burlington, VT 05403
| jkrembs at fairpoint.com
www.FairPoint.com| 802.951.1519 office | 802.735.4886 cell

-----Original Message-----
From: A. Chase Turner [mailto:chase at stumpy.com] 
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 7:59 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Query : seeking a (low cost & secure) turnkey plug-and-play
appliance to report network outages

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.

Key requirement is the micro hardware appliance will be installed by
non-technical elderly end-users -- so, it must be pre-configured and
literally plug and play without need for the person installing the
appliance to open a web browser to configure.  And it must be a secure,
good-reputation stand-alone hardware appliance ... because the heartbeat
cannot / must not be a service installed on the end-user's computer
where it becomes a support burden (e.g., did the end-user turn off their
computer?  Is their antivirus software blocking the outgoing heartbeat?
That the end-user needs to enter a username/password/destination to
enable the heartbeat, etc)

There is a commercial turnkey solution that meets all the requirements
except one -- that the solution cannot exceed $100 per remote appliance
:
	http://www.myconnectionserver.com/learnmore/quality.html

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?

MOTIVATION FOR THE ABOVE

Ten elderly neighbors to my mother in a rural area suffer frequent
internet outages from their one (and only) incumbent cable internet
service provider.  All of them have learned they will encounter one of
the following responses :

 "You are the only one reporting a problem"
OR
 "We need three reports before we take action"
OR
 "We fixed it.  You need to re-boot your modem.  (moments later after
rebooting cable modem).  It must be your computer that is the problem."
OR
 "We know there is a problem.  We'll send a crew out to repair the issue
next week"

These 10 elderly neighbors are fuming ... and they recently formed a
call tree -- so that when one person suffers an internet outage, they
call other neighbors in the call tree to see if they too have an outage
... and if so, each calls in an outage report (often 20 minutes of being
placed on hold)

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...


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