Connection Pro? More like Connection No.
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@Polygeekery said in Putting the world on hyper-welfare:
@polygeekery said in Putting the world on hyper-welfare:
Don't rely on wind or solar for primary power generation. Currently they are supplemental power. They cannot do primary power generation because of issues like this. That is why I think this is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. You are treating symptoms but not really solving problems.
This all reminds me of one of the ongoing issues we have with a client. Their internet goes down constantly. My suggestion was that we bring in another internet provider and install a firewall capable of Multi-WAN so that when Comcast goes down they can fail over to a slower DSL link and stay up. We have done it for other clients. That was shot down because of the expense involved.
On one of their numerous calls to Comcast about the issues some salesperson gets involved and sells them on their new Connection Pro product...which is a 4G backup to their internet. So now Comcast is selling a product at an additional cost to the customer to solve problems that are their own fault. It is staggering. Even more staggering is that our client went for it.
To top it off, it doesn't even work for them. We went in there after hours and tried multiple times to get it to failover. Nothing. Just dead air. After an hour on the phone with them I finally find out that it will not work with static IP addresses. Instead of routing the traffic through the primary modem and allowing usage of a static IP address (for outbound traffic, obviously inbound traffic is going to fail), it just hands it off to the backup modem that runs on DHCP. So, we had to install that fancy firewall anyway to get it to work with the solution that Comcast gave them for the problems that Comcast caused.
Now we are dealing with a whole new set of issues that all would have been solved if we had just brought in a DSL link to the building instead of giving Comcast more money to solve problems they are causing to begin with.
Two months later, after not fixing the issue, we are ripping out the Connection Pro today and bringing in a DSL backup line.
That freaking POS has caused massive amounts of downtime over the past two months. Glad to be done with it.
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OK, so this turned in to another clusterfuck entirely, but we are in the home stretch now.
When I called to inquire about getting DSL service to their building ATT told me they were entirely unable to service that address. When the building was built out they never brought ATT in to the building, and the way that things were constructed in that area made it entirely impossible for us to get DSL service.
God...damnit.
They referred me over to their dedicated internet department. They are able to service the building...for some reason that is different than DSL? I don't know. That makes no sense to me. Whatever.
So they send over a proposal. It is $686/month for 50/50 service, which should be plenty for them. But they have been on some sweetheart deal with Comcast for a while now where Comcast is supposed to be giving them something ungodly like 300Mbps for $175/month. They aren't getting that much bandwidth, but that is what was sold to them. So I take that to the client and he nearly has kittens. I try my best to explain to him that if the cheap Comcast solution is not working he is burning the rest of that $500/month and more in lost time. 25 employees, even an hour of downtime is double that. But he can't see the big picture.
Whatever. We are IT. I am not his business consultant. But I decide to dive further. I ask their accountant to send me over the Comcast bills for the last few months. He...doesn't have any. The previous accountant set up auto bill pay and he would have to login to see the bills and he has never done that.
You're a fucking accountant. Do your fucking job. Look over the bills. The previous accountant left two years ago. He hasn't reviewed a single Comcast bill in over two years!!I dive down another layer of hell and call up Comcast on their behalf (this is not some sort of charitable thing, I billed them for every single hour of my time and there were a lot of them on this). I get Comcast to send me the bills, emailed straight to my inbox. They are paying ~$600 for phone service. Why you ask? At this point I have no fucking clue. Down another layer in this spiral of hell.
They have 84 concurrent call paths they are paying for. 84. There are only ~28 phones in the entire building, including 3 fax lines. Every person in the building could be talking to one person and have two more on hold and they would still have room to spare.
Back to ATT. Today I hammered out a deal with them for 50/50 dedicated internet with 23 concurrent call paths for $845/month and the contract is being sent over for review.
For $100/month more they are getting a SLA with a 99.9% guarantee, and I get to put all these shenanigans behind me. I hope.
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@polygeekery said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
I get to put all these shenanigans behind me. I hope
Eagerly awaiting the next installment to see how this fucks up
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@jaloopa said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
@polygeekery said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
I get to put all these shenanigans behind me. I hope
Eagerly awaiting the next installment to see how this fucks up
Indeed. I mean, when you have both Comcast and the Death Star involved, shit ain't gonna go smoothly. And, well, if you're wanting to port phone numbers between the two... back up the
!
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@lolwhat said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
@jaloopa said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
@polygeekery said in Connection Pro? More like Connection No.:
I get to put all these shenanigans behind me. I hope
Eagerly awaiting the next installment to see how this fucks up
Indeed. I mean, when you have both Comcast and the Death Star involved, shit ain't gonna go smoothly. And, well, if you're wanting to port phone numbers between the two... back up the
!Thankfully I will get to hand that part of it off to a phone contractor. I am not touching the VoIP PBX. The only thing we will do to those is update employee names and such. The rest of it is JFM to me.
