Re: Better at a Distance

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Cal Vanize <dont.even.spam.me@xxxxxxxxxx> hath wroth:

But these are "toys" don't necessarily provide reliable service (and my point in using the term "toy").

How reliable would you like it? For the average home user, rebooting
the wireless router every few weeks is no big deal. After some
initial problems, router stressing protocols, such as Bitorrent, work
quite well. Granted, I've seem some really bad junk being sold as
wireless consumer grade products, but presumably one does not buy from
the very bottom of the market.

For the average home user, its a pain in the ass to reboot it. And typically rebooting occurs more frequently with the age of the device



Just cheap mass-produced [insert derogatory term here] that is compromised to a price point. And the compromises are against reliability and stability. They might look pretty but don't seem to hold up.

Ummm... Considering the number of power failures and glitches we get
every winter, I don't think uptime is a major issue. If I applied
commercial ISP standards to the average home computer installation,
literally every component, from the power conditioning, to the
antennas, would fail to comply. That's why there's a difference
between consumer and commercial. I have no problem with using
commercial hardware for consumer applications. However, I doubt if
Joe Sixpack is willing to pay the price.


How do you spell UPS?

Joe sixpack doesn't stop to think that he pays [insert $$ amount here for broadband] and gets pissed off wen he has problems in teh middle of an eBay auction. If he were to spend another $2 per month for a connection that didn't fail, he might go for it. Take one year's worth of that extra $2 and spend it on a good router and he gets what he wants.

It the responsibility of support technicians to educate those they support to help them understand the investments they make in support hardware.

But OTOH, it may just impact their job security and billable hours.



Checking... well, my office WRT54G toy router, running DD-WRT v24, has
been up for 5 days (when I did the firmware upgrade). It's been
running for perhaps a year, with uptimes running around 4-5 weeks.
Downtime is usually inspired by me wanting to try some experiments
that require a power cycle. I think that's reliable enough.


5 days!!! WOW, that's really impressing for a Linksys!! I just looked to see that its only bee five weeks for the power cycle of our Cisco. That happened because we put it on a different UPS.




Agreed. Consumers trying to save a few bucks are vulnerable targets for this crap.

"Trying" is a bit of an understatement. Even Cisco bought a cheap
router company (Linksys) because they thought there was something good
about the product. The consumers are not only trying, they've
succeeded. There are plenty of user installed wireless systems that
work fine out of the box and do not require a CCNE to configure.

And work great for weeks, maybe even a few months. Even Cisco knows that Linksys is just consumer-grade crap that won't last.

And if you check, it doesn't take much to configure a Cisco router anymore. They have web-based tools that work just fine.


Cheap stuff outsells quality most of the time. Cisco routers and A/Ps don't have the problems of the cheap junk so I would expect very few questions.

No, they have other problems. Joe Sixpack can't program a VCR or DVR,
can't set his digital clock, can't put the batteries into a toy, and
probably can't configure a Cisco router. That's why the wireless
industry has invented SES, AOSS and other setup aids.
<http://www.buffalotech.com/technology/our-technology/aoss/>
When the cheap wireless router biz was configuring their routers with
built in web based interfaces, I was doing battle with Cisco 25xx
series routers in IOS from the command line. It may take a while for
Cisco to discover and adopt simplicity from the cheap junk.


Cisco 2500 series? Those are a little old, doncha think? Didn't they use those to stream live video of the sporting events at the Coliseum? The old one in Rome. You know "and the latest score is Lions 4, Christians nothing... And now back to the action!"

Modern Cisco routers have easier set-up. And even the 2500 series are workable. Plenty of set-up scripts laying around.



I'm sure there are a lot fewer Cisco appliances in use except in serious applications where reliability and stability are valued.

Sure. I have a few Cisco wireless access points and bridges in
service. They work great. However, in the presence of interference
and path impairment issues, they don't work any better than commodity
wireless devices. Cisco's main advantage is in the weird and
wonderful protocols that most home users don't need. To Cisco's
credit, I've had no equipment field failures, while the consumer grade
stuff has experienced all manner of disgusting failures.


The difference is that Cisco A/Ps don't need to be reset. As you note, they are robust and last. The investment in hardware alone pays for itself for the life of the unit (not even considering the $$ spent in set-up time charged by support staff). They just keep going unlike the vast majority of the toys.

The interference issues are typically not with the A/Ps, they are with the radios in the PCs trying to communicate with the A/Ps.



There weren't many of the Gateway 7001s sold so I wouldn't expect to see many, if any, questions at all. At about $400 per copy, they priced themselves out of the market trying to compete against Cisco (with the Cisco reputation).

Dell also tried that with network hardware, and gave up. I didn't
mind them giving up on a bad idea. What bugged me is that they left
their "loyal" customers hanging. Gateway did much of the same thing,
but I think Acer might pickup the support. Dunno.


The good news is that they don't require much support. Even the known bug in the Gateway A/P has an easy workaround.


I see all kinds of complaints about cheap networking appliances failing all the time. D-Link, Linksys, other cheap consumer crap sells good and then fails relatively quickly.

I don't. My guess is about less than 1% genuine hardware failure
rate. Most of these are due to power glitches, idiot errors, or
physical damage. My biggest headaches are the constant firmware
updates required to keep ahead of bugs and exploits, plus companies
that abandon their existing customers by NOT releasing firmware
updates for known bugs. However, I'm fairly careful to avoid vendors
and product that have these issues.

Its been my experience and the experience of those I know that very few cheap routers or access points last more than a few months. I've never had one last for more than 18 months without constant nursing. They're OK out of the box, but develop problems as internal components start to fail. Buggy software doesn't help.



In the meantime, users having problems don't understand that the quality of this crap is really negatively contributing to their limited service levels.

I think they're learning to tolerate it. Most consumer electronics is
essentially throw away. Cell phones have an 18 month average life
time. I suspect wireless routers run about 3 years before they are
replaced. DSL modems about 4 years. I don't even wanna touch the
lifetime of TV's and hi-fi. Not only does Joe Sixpack understand that
he's buying commodity junk hardware, he likes it because of the low
price.

I've successfully done cost of ownership comparisons that seemed to help users understand the long-term expense. Because there's an understanding and acceptance of the limited life of consumer grade electronics, the get the picture quickly. And a couple of them have taken pride in owning a Cisco router or access point. They want it in plain sight rather than tucked away out of sight.



Have you ever tried to sell Cisco hardware to a home user? I'm not
talking about buying used stuff off eBay. I mean new, out of the box,
with warranty, and possibly a service contract? I have and actually
succeeded, once. I wish I hadn't because I was expected to provide
what amounted to an SLA (service level agreement). The Cisco 826
DSL/router combo was fine, but the PBI/SBC/AT&T DSL service and phone
lines were awful and accounted for most of the service calls. I lost
money on this one.


Haven't tried to sell new Cisco gear. Can't justify the payback. But then I've never been burned by defectve used Cisco equipment. I use the same set-up script for routers (got it off the net and refined it) so I don't have much variability in the base configuration. The rest of the set-up is from the web-based set-up tool.

I will admit that setting up a Cisco router takes longer than some of the plug 'n play stuff, but that is typically done once and then tweaked shortly after installation. For A/Ps, I've always just used the web-based tools. They work great and are easy to use.

Sounds like you cut a bad deal for yourself. I've been close to doing one of those support arrangements myself so I understand the risks. Too bad you didn't write in a clause for billing (even at a low rate) if the problem was not in the equipment you were contracted to support.

You could have been suckered into that one with a Trendnet wireless router.

I'm also close to retirement (2 1/2 weeks) so I'm interested in deinstalling the phone. ;) Except for a few friends. Maybe I can support them by phone from the Cook Islands. :)

.

Relevant Pages

  • T1 Site-to-Site VPN
    ... Cisco 1841 ... crypto isakmp policy 1 ... set security-association level per-host ... Cisco Router and Security Device Manager is installed on this device. ...
    (comp.dcom.sys.cisco)
  • RE: Router with security features
    ... Subject: Router with security features ... Unlike other companies Cisco tells their customers about bugs and security ... Using this information you can proactively secure your network. ... turn on a router configure it and then never look at it again. ...
    (Security-Basics)
  • RE: [fw-wiz] Worms, Air Gaps and Responsibility
    ... but hundreds of thousands of Cisco routers allow connections from the ... It is not that Windows couldn't lower the ... As to the issue of the internal router interface being less than tight, ... I'm just saying that ubiquity doesn't equal targeting. ...
    (Firewall-Wizards)
  • Re: Cisco Workaround
    ... are not something you'd intentionally target at a router. ... understanding is with PIM support in the IOS and enabled, ... How exactly would Cisco "conveniently" find this flaw? ... it is apparently in every IOS since 1994? ...
    (Security-Basics)
  • Re: Connecting Cisco 831 Router behind the D-Link Router
    ... My home network uses D-Link Router providing 192.168.1.x addrress ... When I connect Cisco 831 Router so that I can be be ... At its most basic level, the dlink is a switch, and just had a dhcp ...
    (comp.dcom.sys.cisco)