VPN and your ISP



  • I work for our Network Acces and Security division of our smaller company and one of my responsibilities is VPN.

     The other day I got a call that went from a user stating that their VPN was not working.  I looked at their password and all was well there, it hadn't expired.  Our VPN concentrators were all up and running so that wasn't the issue. I decided to ask a few questions.

    ME: "Ok, the VPN end of the world looks good on my end, let's see if perhaps there is an issue with your end of the world, how is your PC doing"

    USER: "The PC seems to be running fine"

    ME: "Great, can you connect to the internet?"

    USER: "No, my internet connection is down, I already have a call into my ISP to get that fixed"

    ME: "Um, you know you need an internet connection to VPN in to work don't you?"

    USER: "Yes"

    ME: "Then why did you call me, there is nothing I can do to help!"

    USER: "Um, well, how long do I have to wait before I have to come in to work"

    It's a wonder we hire these people at a software company!


  • ♿ (Parody)

     @kgingras said:

    USER: "Um, well, how long do I have to wait before I have to come in to work"
    Wait 15 minutes, then put your name on the board, right?



  • I used to do helpdesk for a company that was outsourced by several ISPs. One of them was for ethernet over power lines. I don't know how the technology is doing these days, but four years ago it was certainly plagued with problems in this particular testing area.

    Anyway, I got a call from this one guy that often stayed at a hotel that was using this type of connection, and he often ran into problems connecting when he got there. So, he decided to call up support and wanted troubleshooting to be done on his laptop days before he was even at the hotel. Somehow making sure he could connect on his home network made him figure that he would be able to connect on a completely different site.



  • Its sad, users think one help desk knows everything



  • @indrora said:

    Its sad, users think one help desk knows everything
     

    Yes. You really need to call three or four to get your problems solved these days. One bunch of people without all the information just isn't enough, after all.


Log in to reply