[134156] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Cheap home CPE troubles
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Mon Dec 27 14:58:29 2010
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <4D18AC57.50505@tiedyenetworks.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:53:29 -0800
To: Mike <mike-nanog@tiedyenetworks.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Dec 27, 2010, at 7:10 AM, Mike wrote:
> Hi,
>=20
> 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.
>=20
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.
>=20
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.
>=20
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
