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Sheep posted:"Oh you want $2000 to replace the D-Link consumer APs with two Merakis because the clients are furious that our wireless never works? Not in the budget, maybe next year! Ubiquiti Unifi... https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac/ The AC capable models are about $260 USD. Management software is free and does not require a subscription/support contract/yearly extortion fee. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows. For even cheaper, the 2.4Ghz only models (UniFi UAP) are only around $80USD each..
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Jun 22, 2015 14:07
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Zakutambah posted:After the teeth pulling exercise that was getting an order confirmed by Centurylink, I come in today to find 2 more order confirmations sitting in my inbox! All for slightly varying specs; and worryingly, one for a 12 month commitment when we're meant to be month-to-month. And after playing phone tag with them again, finding out all of them for different days. Three separate orders, for three separate lines, to be installed on three separate days next week. And the prices had all changed again. Anytime you have a interaction with a telecom company, always assume they hosed something up. During my 15 years in IT, I have yet for a single interaction with any telecom company to be 100%. I just do not believe that industry is capable of getting things right the first time around.
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Dec 7, 2015 18:02
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Thanatosian posted:...You can usually predict what, exactly, will get hosed up, and tell them three times to make absolutely sure that specific thing does not get hosed up. .... I don't even bother with that anymore, because it just gives them yet another avenue for loving things up. After I ordered UVerse service for a new branch, I called back to confirm because something didn't quite sit right with me after thinking about it for a minute. The agent confirmed the order was correct. A few hours later got another email confirming my second Uverse order  It took many hours to get that fixed.
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Dec 7, 2015 19:44
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Just a sampling of what I've ran into over the years. -Taking 4 months to turn on services to a building that already had the cable in place. (Comcast) -Creating multiple accounts for said location, still getting collection calls on that one... (Comcast) -7 month wait for a cable to be strung from the road to the building for installation of new services (Comcast) -Ordered 5 phone lines + DSL/static IP. They installed one phone line and dynamic DSL, sent bills for 2 separate accounts (AT&T) -Ordered business dry loop DSL circuit, informed them said location has a 50 pair line with interior demarc, so a tech needs to come out and tag the active pair. Receive residential self install DSL kit in the mail, tech never appears on scheduled date (Frontier) -Randomly disconnected dry loop DSL circuit one day because they "didn't think any customers where still on that circuit", took over a week to fix it. (Frontier) -Worthless tech support; call reporting severe slowness issues with DSL at multiple store locations; get told the problem was my computer (Frontier) -Phone lines + DSL randomly going in and out, tech dispatched multiple times and would never appear, would get phone call within hours that the problem was solved. Found out local tech was just marking the problem as resolved, without ever actually working on it. Took several days and working my way up the ladder to get that one resolved (Frontier) -Fiber going to new branch suddenly cut one day... Local fiber provider did not bury cable during installation, left it rolled up and laying in the ditch. 2 months later state road workers mowing the roadside went right over the coil of cable now buried in the tall grass. -Local DSL provider started switching businesses in town to VDSL. Required use of their modem that acted as a NAT router with DHCP enabled and a 192.168.1.x IP range, no bridge mode, and no customer access to the modem. You had a static IP, but it was terminated on the modem and therefore useless. Setting up port forwards to your own router, etc.. required contacting their technical support and waiting multiple days for them to do it. Being the only option in town, many businesses where understandably pissed. They saw no problem with this policy, that is until the local city council and county government got involved.
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Dec 7, 2015 20:50
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Sheep posted:Telco: "Good news, your building is already lit up so fiber installation is a breeze!" Comcast did exactly this to us... The building did not have an existing cable, however the line already ran down the road in front of the building and was on the correct side. After we signed the contract, they suddenly said it would take much longer to get it installed. No reason was given, they grumbled something about permits possibly being an issue, but where not sure why. Exactly what permit they would need to string a line from a pole already on our property to the building only 400ft away I have no idea... Nearly 7 months of back and forth, multiple voicemails, calls not being returned, broken promises, etc.. A contractor showed up one day and finally installed the line. It took less than an hour. No one was actually able to tell us what took so long.
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Dec 7, 2015 22:03
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McDeth posted:You don't live in Fresno by any chance, do you? Because this is exactly what happened to one of our tenants, lol. And I mean that literally... Nah, Indiana.... Every single Comcast install we have had has been a nightmare... 1. 4 month wait to turn on an already existing line, no explanations given for the delay 2. 7 month wait to string a line 400ft, again no explanations for the delay. 3. And on the final one they wanted to trench right across the only entrance to our property refusing to do a air drop, which could be easily done. And would only do it during business hours. During the 2 month wait for them to tell us this, a new fiber provider had started wiring businesses in town. We canceled Comcast and went with them instead. Within 5 days of signing the contract this new ISP had brought the fiber line 2 blocks down the street, did a air drop to our building and had it up and running. They where more expensive than Comcast, but at that point we didn't care. Verizon's 1Mb DSL just wasn't cutting it anymore. P.S. gently caress Comcast.
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Dec 7, 2015 23:30
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I am partial to Vivotek IP cameras. They provide a excellent piece of free Windows only DVR software called ST7501 (http://www.vivotek.com/st7501/) that is designed specifically for their cameras. Allows recording and live playback of up to 32 cameras on a single server. A cheap license key option allows for up 64 cameras and also the addition of any "ONVIF" compatible camera from any manufacturer. We have about 160 of various Vivotek models in service across our few branch locations.
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Dec 10, 2015 14:32
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pixaal posted:... Sonicwall problems.... Is it possible to disable the various systems one at a time and figure out which one is causing the issue? Check the CPU usage.. if the CPU usage is near maxed all the time, you WILL have issues. My first thought would be wireless... Sonciwall's wireless has always been pretty awful in general. I have a huge fleet of Sonicwall devices and never have any issues with them. I utilize Gateway/Cloud AV, content filter, firewall, etc... but I don't use the wireless. stevewm fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 17:33
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Super Slash posted:.......... Depending on how your staff use Office, it can work. Installs via a MSI so it can be deployed easily, and supports changing all settings via GPO. You can get the ADMX template here: (https://github.com/somedowntime/libreofficegrouppolicy) We have 107 installs of LibreOffice. Standard setup is to deploy it with PDQDeploy. A GPO sets it to save in the MS Office XML formats by default. The majority of our document sharing is internal, but for the few that do go outside, compatibility hasn't been an issue.
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May 5, 2016 13:39
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devmd01 posted:Oh god, openoffice. A job-2, we ripped out Office from all of the store computers and replaced it with openoffice, since nobody used outlook. The amount of install xml fuckery I had to do to set office xml formats as default in the package was ugly. Yeah, that was always fun... We switched to LibreOffice soon after the fork, as it was clear they where progressing much faster. LibreOffice now fully supports changing all settings via GPO. I don't think that has been rolled into OpenOffice yet.
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May 6, 2016 15:15
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+1 on Mailchimp.. We use it for a slightly bigger list of 9,000. Importing a list and sending out email blasts is easy with it, even a a non-technical person should be able to do it once everything is setup. We also send all of our automated emails from our POS/ERP system through their bulk sending backend called Mandrill. Just remember though, Mailchimp now requires all accounts to have SPF and DKIM setup properly for whatever sending domain(s) you want to use through the service. I would imagine most other such services have followed suit by now. So you'll need DNS access to get the records setup.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:09
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I feel like I am the only person to have not jumped on the VoIP bandwagon... Most of our branch locations and corp office still have plain old analog phone systems (Avaya Partner). Even our new branches ended up with a IP Office 500 in "Basic/Partner" mode and digital phones, not IP. And all use POTS lines. They all just work. No problems with audio, or delay, never have to be rebooted, and require minimum configuration. With the way we use phones, I've just not seen any benefits to going VoIP.
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May 22, 2017 15:25
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CloFan posted:I mean, seriously. How is this still a thing and apparently not a priority? It boggles the mind I see this mentioned a lot for GSuite.. What problems exactly do people have with this part of GSuite?
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Nov 8, 2017 15:28
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CloFan posted:There's not a share contact button. To share a contact, you have to take a screen shot or manually copy and paste. It's dumb as hell Oh.. I guess that is a function we have never really needed. Not that my users would use it anyways if it was there.
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Nov 8, 2017 15:40
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We are in the process of acquiring 2 existing store locations. I got to take my first physical look at their equipment. There isn't a single computer less than 7 years old at either locations. And I think some of the laptops are even older. Bonus: They have some Windows XP machines. Each location has exactly one ancient HP branded 802.11b only access point, using WEP. And 10/100 HP switches. There is no domain. There are some thin clients connecting to a 2003 R2 server. Some of the employees browse the internet on them... using Internet Explorer. Basically it's all getting trashed and replaced. Also at this point I am questioning if I can call us a "small shop" anymore. Though I may still qualify given that I am the entirety of the IT "department".
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May 18, 2018 21:32
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Thanks Ants posted:This is definitely one of those times I'd be tempted to look at deploying Chrome with Citrix or those little PCoIP boxes that are just dumb clients for Amazon WorkSpaces. They are all 12 year old Wyse terminals. Everything is being trashed and replaced with our standard desktops. They have way too many terminals anyways. Most sit unused and thus won't be replaced at all.
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May 19, 2018 01:53
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thebigcow posted:Avoid Sage. Thirding this.
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May 30, 2018 15:01
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Bob Morales posted:Let's talk internet access at a small business with remote offices. We have several branch locations like this.. Branch locations have no local servers.. Not even DHCP is handled locally. We use Windows DHCP, and its done by some servers running in our main office and one satellite location. The firewall at each branch location relays DHCP requests back to the main office to be fulfilled. All branch office clients are given our 2 internal DNS servers as their only DNS. If the internet is down, sure nothing works. But all of our apps absolutely rely on a connection back to the main office... So if the internet is down, it doesn't really matter that things work locally, as no work is getting done anyways with our line of business apps down. To that end, every branch office has 2 WAN connections. Whatever ISP is available locally as the primary, and a CradlePoint on Verizon 4G for backup. The local firewall handles auto switching between them as necessary.
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Aug 23, 2018 13:50
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Thanks Ants posted:Curious as to why DHCP isn't done locally. Do you really need client devices written into the DNS zone for remote sites? Yes... we use DNS for everything. Being a complete Windows shop, it's just easier to have Windows DHCP register the devices into Windows DNS. And we prefer to not have servers at remote branches. Thus DHCP is relayed to our main office to fulfill the request. Our LoB software has to be able to directly access resources at remote sites (mainly printers), and it does so by DNS name, not IP. We also do a lot of remote support internally using VNC, which uses DNS names to connect to client machines. Aside from a handful of core servers, nothing has a static IP address, and nothing is referenced by IP, only DNS names. Any client device on the network is registered with a good unique name that generally consists of the branch number, and the location inside the branch. i.e. The front desk printer at branch 5 would be p5frontdesk. The computer at that location would be c5frontdesk. Guest devices on the guest network obviously are not, those are actually handled by DHCP running on the local branch firewall and get handed an external DNS server. Edit: I guess I should add we don't have multiple zones. All sites are on a single forest... No child domains. Our DNS zone has 380 names registered. Over 150 of them are printers of various types. stevewm fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Aug 23, 2018 |
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Aug 23, 2018 14:41
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Yeah, Sonicwalls with series 6 firmware have a settings page specifically for all things VoIP, and it is all disabled by default.
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Mar 27, 2019 19:22
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Thanks Ants posted:They’re still bad it’s just for other reasons I've never really had any issues with them to be honest. I have a small "fleet" of 14x TZ400 for branch locations and 2x TZ500 in HA config. In all the years we have used them, I have contacted support exactly once. And they actually solved my problem on the first reply.  Even doing some slightly more complicated stuff like multiple VLANs, OSPF routing over multiple VPN tunnels, etc...
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Mar 27, 2019 20:41
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Thanks Ants posted:Oh I realised my biggest issue with Sonicwalls is that the config is some arcane binary format so there can be stuff that the firewall is running, or some old crusty settings left over from before a firmware upgrade that are now hidden, and you have no way to see what's going on or to fix it. It's good! I actually did run into that before... so yeah that is a pain in the rear end. Granted I was attempting to pull in the configuration from a Sonicwall running a ~6 year old firmware version. I was surprised it even let me try.
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Mar 28, 2019 13:47
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wolrah posted:I completely agree about the admin tools, but it amazes me to see so many people in this thread speaking of Outlook as if it's a good thing instead of a fragile, overgrown pile of poo poo. I cried tears of joy the day we left local mail clients behind. We had 2 new employees that came from a large corporate environment. One of them almost had a panic attack when they didn't see Outlook on their desktop. I literally had to calm her down and explain that yes, you can get emails via routes other than Outlook. She had a hard time grasping it. When 100% of the company is using Gmail, we are not going to satisfy one snowflake's request. Most of our former Outlook lovers (who are also prolific email hoarders) preferred Gmail once they saw they could hoard all they want without crashing it. Of course we never had Exchange; we went straight from ISP provided POP3 email to Gsuite with our own domain. (or Gmail for Work as it was then called)
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Mar 28, 2019 22:02
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I am so glad our SIP trunks are over a completely dedicated line on a private network. (our SIP trunk provider is also our local Fiber ISP). Our PBX is plugged directly into a port on the Fiber ONT. No router involved or indeed needed.
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Aug 1, 2019 15:17
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Internet Explorer posted:I love shared mailboxes. They can be made for modular things and it keeps a history on things. I always register products and services to an administrator@ mailbox so if/when I leave, the next person doesn't have to change a bunch of contact info on things they may or may not know about. And it's a lot harder to sell ticketing to non-technical folks than it is to set them up with a shared mailbox. Plus, you slap a "done" folder in a shared mailbox and people can drag stuff there. If it's a DL, a copy goes to everyone and everyone has to reply or somehow track who is handling. Gsuite kinda has this now.. Via groups. You can setup a group and configure it as a "Collaborative Inbox". This turns on some extra stuff; topics can be assigned to group members, topics can be marked as completed, etc... It works kinda like a ticket system basically. Never used it, but its there.
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Sep 5, 2019 15:59
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pixaal posted:VNC will let you verify UAC prompts and everything. Hell you can pull up the login screen and login if no one is at the computer. It's as good as sitting in from that that machine. This is why we use VNC internally (with encryption and certificate based auth features that ultravnc has)
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Oct 29, 2019 11:17
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Thanks Ants posted:I don't envy anybody who has to support the combination of the Outlook client with Gmail. Thankfully we only have 2.. The CEO and the CFO. Everyone else uses Gmail. The CFO is starting to hate Outlook more and more so I suspect she will be the next to finally abandon it. The CEO is not likely to anytime soon. He doesn't like change. And speaking of polished turds.. The CEO recently had me upgrade him to Outlook 2019. Its.... even more terrible..
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Jul 17, 2020 14:55
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Thanks Ants posted:Outlook is an Exchange client, you won't convince me otherwise. Agreed. But I also much prefer the Gmail interface. I am a bit biased though. We have been using Gsuite since it was invite only and called "Gmail for Work".
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Jul 17, 2020 16:15
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BonoMan posted:My company is still on the legacy "50 free users account" for Gmail for Work You poor soul. We dealt with this for years. We were early enough to that program we had 100 users free. We outgrew that a couple years ago though. You gain a lot more flexibility moving to a paid account, particularly the administrative backend. I think some of the newer features also haven't been rolled out to legacy free accounts either.
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Jul 17, 2020 21:15
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Bob Morales posted:You guys want some deals on refurbished PC's? Retail store IT here.. This is exactly what we do. No point in buying brand new machines just to run Chrome, RemoteApp and a bit of LibreOffice. We will buy brand new for a new location if we get them cheap enough, but otherwise is refurbs with SSDs. For our workloads, a 6 year old PC with a SSD performs identically to a brand new machine with SSD. Floor machines are generally replaced when they start having problems, not on any particular cycle.
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Mar 4, 2021 15:38
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