WE HAVE A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

 

The most frustrating thing as a user, is when you try to explain an issue and no one takes it seriously. I see this from the support side and many times that is precisely why I am called in.

At my last engagement there was a client constantly reporting that her VPN and reporting software would randomly disconnect. She was able to easily reproduce the issue to support staff.

This is where things go sideways. The support staff would go back to their computers, at their desk, on their network, test, see no issues and then close the ticket. Since this was affecting the client’s ability to get her job done in a timely manner she was getting increasingly frustrated.

I was onsite for another issue when I ran into her and she explained the scenario to me and wondered if I had any ideas. I asked what things support had tried and she said “They reimaged my pc and replaced my pc with no change”. Unfortunately this is fairly common approach. I spoke to my client contact and asked if they wanted me to take a peek at the issue. Sometimes a new pair of eyes helps. They agreed and went over to see her.

First thing that I noticed was that, other than the pc replacement, no one had come over in person to see the issue. In this case, the support team was literally one floor above her and feel it was necessary. Troubleshooting was done via remote desktop. I find it invaluable to sit beside the client when troubleshooting – when possible.

Long story short, I figured out in about 30 minutes that the VPN software needed to be upgraded and she was on a different VLAN than the support team and a misconfigured firewall rule was the issue.

I wanted to set the backdrop, for the main story that includes me.

I enabled “WiFi Calling” on my cell phone so that I can use my cell phone in areas that do not have a usable cell signal. This happens quite a bit to me since I work in remote areas and basements.

I enabled the feature and immediately noticed issues. Many times calls go directly to voicemail, or the call drops as soon as I pick up the phone. This happens about 50% of the time. The last time it happened, I was waiting for a call, so I successfully called my phone to make sure Wifi calling was working About 5 minutes later, the caller called and went straight to vmail. Arggg!!!!

I called my wireless provider to report the issue. I started with this “I am having issues with Wifi calling but my other 3rd party VOIP service works fine.” Then I explained a bit more detail as to the specific issue. I let the support person go through their support script and answered their questions. I added that I’ve tested Wifi calling on many Wifi networks with the same issue. At one point they asked me to do a speedtest and were impressed that my cell phone was able to get over 300 Mbps up and down.

I had the support person call me a few times and they noticed the following issues; call dropped after I picked up, went to vmail, they could hear me but I couldn’t hear them, poor audio quality about 50% of the time. Then I had them call my 3rd party voip line and it was perfect. Unfortunately I cant use the same software on their line. I even uninstalled the 3rd party voip client to ensure it wasn’t part of the problem.

The support person agreed that something wasn’t right and asked if I tried putting my phone back to factory settings and I told then I did that already. They told me they escalated the call and someone will be contacting me. I asked to put in the ticket that I would like a support person to call me back and they said “no problem”. I was actually impressed how patient and thorough the support person was.

The next day I received the following text; “Thanks for reporting a problem with your Rogers Wireless. We have been unable to identify an issue at this time. If you're still having an issue, please contact us and quote case number CXXXXXX.”

I called back again, went through the same testing, with the same result and they agreed that the ticket shouldn’t have been closed. They reopened the ticket and I asked that someone actually call me. The support person assured me that someone will call me to work through the issue.

That afternoon, I received the following text; “Thanks for reporting a problem with your Rogers Wireless. We have been unable to identify an issue at this time. If you're still having an issue, please contact us and quote case number CXXXXXX.”

Funny part of the story is when I asked both support people if they used their WiFi calling feature and they replied “no and they dont know anyone personally who does” but added that they don’t get support calls about it. I asked if its possible they don’t get calls because no one uses it.

So my only option is not to use my cellular company WiFi calling feature and use my 3rd party VOIP solution.

Moral of the story, “You should always follow through as much as possible with support calls”. Just because you can't reproduce it, doesnt mean its not a problem. Call the client, or go over, when possible you will probably find something wrong and the client will be impressed with the effort.

This kind experience puts the entire support team in a bad light which is difficult to come back from”. I know that from my experience I’ve told a few friends not to bother with this carrier’s VOIP solution and use another one.

I've had many of my clients tell me that really appreciate it when I follow-up or that I wont let up until the problem is resolved.

Automating Microsoft's FTP

 Automating any process has a ton of benefits. For example I can schedule a script or have someone run it, guaranteeing that the same command are executed every time.

In some cases, I can’t install my favorite ftp client on a Microsoft host, so leveraging the default ftp client is my only option.

In this video I show you how to automate the Microsoft ftp client.

Entangled (by Paul W. Smith)

 

If you’re a Network Data Professional and you walk into the server room to find this, you know it will not be a good day. It’s as though the word “entangle” (verb – “to twist together or entwine into a confusing mass”) was coined just for this. Another word commonly used for this situation cannot be printed here (hint: rhymes with bluster-duck). There are all sorts of entanglements in our lives, and very few of them are good.

Psychologists talk about entanglement in the context of relationships, highlighting it as a wellness threat that needs to be treated. Entanglement often masquerades as a healthy connection, but it is far from it. Human entanglements exhibit communications breakdowns, a prevailing sense of unsafety, frequent conflict and power struggles. Relationships feature good communication along with predominantly positive rather than negative feelings. The similarities to networks are hard to miss.

Physicists are also entwined with entanglement. Keep in mind that this is the same group that routinely works with charm, strangeness and flavor, which should tell you something about how they name things. For these folks, entanglement is just, to quote Albert Einstein, “spooky action at a distance.” Like anything that involves quantum physics, a little explanation is in order.

Most of us are firmly grounded in the real world – time passes, gravity tugs on things and stuff stays the same unless something comes along to change it. In the small scale of the quantum world however, weirdness reigns. Particles are always particles, unless they are a wave, and sometimes they can be in two different conditions at the same time. Only a physicist could read that last sentence and see nothing peculiar with it.

At the heart of entanglement - be it networks, relationships, or physics - is connection. Networks must connect properly to function and relationships without connection are meaningless.

Physicists at the University of Glasgow have recently captured the first photo documenting their version of entanglement, and it is predictably strange. The Glasgow picture proves that once entangled, particles can be moved far away from each other, and changing one will still change the other entangled twin. Albert Einstein felt this was proof that there were gaping holes in quantum mechanical theory.

The weirdness factor hasn’t deterred scientists from thinking about applications for their version of entanglement. Ideas like teleportation have been floated, because once you’re operating in the realm of the weird, you might as well go all in. A slightly more practical possibility that is getting some journal ink is data transmission. The idea of connection without connection has a lot going for it.

On the one hand, NASA’s exploration of Mars, which is around 150 million miles away, has always dealt with connection challenges. It’s a bit like having to call your ISP and being put on hold every time you want to use the Internet – signals sent to Mars have a one-way wait time of 13-minutes. Scientists estimate that entanglement could reduce that to less than a millisecond.

Closer to home, the prospect of instant worldwide communication with infinitely scalable Internet bandwidth is even more appealing and quite realistic – scientists have already achieved a 10-foot range with a 100% success rate. The data apparently doesn’t actually travel through physical media, and therefore the chances of something messing up the transmission are non-existent.

Professor Ronald Hanson at the Delft University of Technology is preparing a trial for a distance of 0.8 mi, which will certainly add credibility to the idea. As if revolutionizing communications wasn’t incentive enough, there is the added plus of being able to prove Albert Einstein wrong, something that every physicist dreams of. Einstein himself once modestly told one of his collaborators, ““You don’t need to be so careful … there are incorrect papers under my name too.” Regardless of the motive, communication without physical connection may someday be real.

Just imagine entering a future server room and finding no cables at all – a whole new kind of entanglement. Spooky indeed.

Author Profile - Paul W. Smith - leader, educator, technologist, writer - has a lifelong interest in the countless ways that technology changes the course of our journey through life. In addition to being a regular contributor to NetworkDataPedia, he maintains the website Technology for the Journey and occasionally writes for Blogcritics. Paul has over 40

years of experience in research and advanced development for companies ranging from small startups to industry leaders. His other passion is teaching - he is a former Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Paul holds a doctorate in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology, as well as Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.