On 7/12/2010, at 10:36 AM, Nathan Ward wrote:

You should even be able to make such code do simple diagnosis of mail problems, etc. etc.

Responding to my own mail, do ISPs still do mail?

About "expiring" we are only ever showing the last 72 hours on that page. Which I think is a good window size. As for tests, I think we are not trying to create a sensor network, but crowdsource the information - this means what humans perceive as crappy services received, not what machines see as a fault... Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nz http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm -----Original Message----- From: Drew Broadley [mailto:drew(a)broadley.org.nz] Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 10:44 a.m. To: Nathan Ward Cc: Mauricio Freitas; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Crowdsourcing a network status page On 7/12/2010, at 10:36 AM, Nathan Ward wrote:

For things like speed issues and DNS problems, can you develop a java (?) app that can do some analysis and report that? Things like intl. speed vs. domestic speed at a certain time would be more useful than "1 international speed problem".

The hip cool kids do that stuff in flash now ;) It would be good to expire submissions after x amount of time, this way you can see any trending issues, and anything that stagnates wont smear the current status accuracy of the ISP. Cheers, Drew Broadley drew(a)broadley.org.nz

On 7 December 2010 10:47, Mauricio Freitas wrote:

What I mean really is that if there's a fault at 3:47am and no one is there to see it... Is there a fault? ;)

That depends - is there a scheduled maintenance window - if so then then the answer is no. IMHO this is going to be the single biggest problem with a site like this; finding out if an outage was scheduled work or not - most providers seldom make maintenance window information available outside their technical NOC groups. wrt Idea for implementation: keep away from anything flash.

Well, maintenance windows are not faults - but seeing operator almost never tell users when things will happen... TelstraClear sent out a notice about HFC network updates 8th/9th - and they changed it to 7th/8th because WoW update release on 9th. Goo move, notifying users, better even moving the dates. But I don't usually see messages from Telecom telling us when they are taking XT down to update firmware, or Vodafone telling us when they take down their cell sites to update... So it can be a maintenance, but the idea is to let users know that what they are experiencing is not unique - if others are seeing then there must be an explanation around. It's then easier for people to find this explanation. Remember this is for the benefit of glorious Internet people of New Zealand, not the operators necessarily. Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nz http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm -----Original Message----- From: aenertia(a)aenertia.net [mailto:aenertia(a)aenertia.net] On Behalf Of Joel Wiramu Pauling Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 10:59 a.m. To: Mauricio Freitas Cc: Drew Broadley; Nathan Ward; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Crowdsourcing a network status page On 7 December 2010 10:47, Mauricio Freitas wrote:

What I mean really is that if there's a fault at 3:47am and no one is there to see it... Is there a fault? ;)

That depends - is there a scheduled maintenance window - if so then then the answer is no. IMHO this is going to be the single biggest problem with a site like this; finding out if an outage was scheduled work or not - most providers seldom make maintenance window information available outside their technical NOC groups. wrt Idea for implementation: keep away from anything flash.

Hmmm. What about one large telco (blue team) taking five days to acknowledge a problem with their international links and cache farm? Or another large telco (red team) taking a few months to acknowledge radio problems? Their reason was "no one logged faults". Of course not - users called, CSRs asked to power cycle their fancy iPhones, it works after that - until it happens again a few hours later. Since it "worked" the CSRs didn't log faults. I think 72 hours is a good sided window... Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nz http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm -----Original Message----- From: Drew Broadley [mailto:drew(a)broadley.org.nz] Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 10:57 a.m. To: Mauricio Freitas Cc: Nathan Ward; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Crowdsourcing a network status page On 7/12/2010, at 10:46 AM, Mauricio Freitas wrote:

About "expiring" we are only ever showing the last 72 hours on that page. Which I think is a good window size.

As for tests, I think we are not trying to create a sensor network, but crowdsource the information - this means what humans perceive as crappy services received, not what machines see as a fault...

72 hours is a very long time for expiration. You would only want 3-4 hours (maybe less), as otherwise people might get the impression the issue hasn't been fixed. Allowing a short time frame lets you offer more realtime status reports, two days is in computer land is a lifetime as some outages may only be for 15 minutes. Cheers, Drew Broadley drew(a)broadley.org.nz

On 7 December 2010 10:36, Nathan Ward wrote:

[snip] Epitero gives much of this information to ISPs already, for what its worth.

Having spent a LOT of time poring over Epitiro results, and replicating the tests on our own platform, I'd suggest any ISP putting faith in the accuracy of the Epitiro results should perform their own tests to validate them. ie, don't trust Epitiro results, but similarly, don't trust me either. Cheers- N

Blair All good stuff... But we say there "only report a fault after you have completed basic troubleshooting or contacted your ISP". We also say "Reporting a fault on Geekzone serves only as a warning mechanism to other users, with no guarantees ISPs will use the reported data for fault investigation" Now, I understand some people "can't read English good" (Zoolander reference), but we can't babysit everyone. Since yesterday I've added a link to each ISP's own status page in our report page. Also added to our database the ability to load up current known issues/maintenance. Check the TelstraClear page for example: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/FaultByISP.asp?ISPId=19 As for a single page - that's how it was yesterday. We since changed it because it was an information overload. Consumers may have the need of smaller doses of information in some cases. As for operators providing network status so we could keep this on... I tried before. Contacted a few people around (Telecom, TelstraClear, Orcon, Vodafone). This would be great to reduce those "I can't get to YouTube today" discussions... But I never got past their first reply of "That's great, let's do it". So I took thinks to the users. Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nzhttp://www.geekzone.co.nz/ http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm From: jediblair(a)gmail.com [mailto:jediblair(a)gmail.com] On Behalf Of Blair Harrison Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 11:06 a.m. To: Mauricio Freitas Cc: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Crowdsourcing a network status page Hi Mauricio, Great idea for the map/page, but I have a few concerns. At present the way your site is worded, you're almost suggesting the information submitted on this form is going to be fed back to the ISP in question, when that's almost certainly not going to be the case. It is probably worthwhile including a list of ISP Helpdesk numbers on your submission page which users should be encouraged to call/email in the first instance. These are the only people who can help actually resolve faults. Encouraging users to not report their faults to the ISP is not helpful to anyone, especially not the users. You might also look to try and aggregate the fault status pages of various ISPs and network operators into a single page. Perhaps discussions could be had with the operators in question if they can provide their network status and planned outage events in RSS or similar form, which could be easily aggregated onto a single page. I think this would probably be far more useful than a few sporadic reports from people who "can't get to youtube today" :) Cheers, Blair On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Mauricio Freitas mailto:freitasm(a)geekzone.co.nz> wrote: Hello there Got a suggestion from a friend this weekend and put together a simple page where users can submit faults, and a status page report listing the last 72 hours: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/FaultByISP.asp We will be putting some styling on that page and a Google Map later today. The idea is to give users an idea if they are experiencing some unique fault, or is something spread. For operators it should work as an early warning sign - seeing many people don't even bother calling help desks anymore due to the long waiting times, or just post on forums instead (and why no one ever look at their wiring or DNS configuration before complaining?) Obviously ISPs could at some point (if this actually works) get more information from us, such as contact details to help determine faults, or. Anyway, suggestions and ideas welcome... Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nzhttp://www.geekzone.co.nz/ http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 13:18, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:

Mauricio, I don't understand how is this going to differ from people posting in forums? The issue with this "group think" approach is that customers decide they're all seeing a common problem, get angry at the ISP and don't work with the ISP to solve individual problems that "appear" to be the same.   eg. line faults.  At scale you will see a certain number of customers in an area (especially after bad weather) with line faults giving packet loss etc.  Every single one of those customers will say "nothing has changed at my end" and use this to "determine" a fault with a DSLAM etc.   This won't actually help the customers get things fixed.

I agree, without technical know-how beyond "It seems slow/broken" it's just going to make people think there's a problem when there isn't really.

Can't wait to see this applied to DNS resolvers -> same thing -> so much is because of b0rked DNS proxy/caches on ADSL CPE.  At scale you'll see people bleating about it and blaming the ISP. MMC

Maybe the ISPs could find non-crap CPE to sell? I always have my modem working as a media converter and a decent machine doing routing and magic... Just a thought. -- Phillip Hutchings http://www.sitharus.com/

On 07/12/2010, at 11:16 AM, Regan Murphy wrote: Can't wait to see this applied to DNS resolvers -> same thing -> so much is because of b0rked DNS proxy/caches on ADSL CPE. At scale you'll see people bleating about it and blaming the ISP. MMC Maybe the ISPs could find non-crap CPE to sell? I always have my modem working as a media converter and a decent machine doing routing and magic... Just a thought. Honestly, it's not worth us selling crap - doesn't mean some models don't turn out to be lemons in the longer terms but reality is the ongoing cost is so much higher it's just not worth it. In our market customers choose their own CPE - they can buy from us, they can bring their own. Some CPE is ancient and now doesn't cope with throughputs/TCP sessions customers want to do, but was fine at the time. We offer decent CPE and a range of them to suit various people, but that doesn't stop customers making a choice based on price not on what they need. For example we sell everything from a $99 simple job to a $399 device (coming in jan) which has bells and whistles like you wouldn't believe (http://www.internode.on.net/news/2010/11/206.php ). MMC

In this day and age? Mobile phones. There are lots of people who do. Also not all faults are "we are completely down, no internet here". Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nzhttp://www.geekzone.co.nz/ http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm From: Justin Cook [mailto:justin(a)skull.co.nz] Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 11:13 a.m. To: Blair Harrison Cc: Mauricio Freitas; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Crowdsourcing a network status page I still want to know how people without internet are going to log faults on the internet. On 7 December 2010 11:05, Blair Harrison mailto:nznog(a)jedi.school.nz> wrote: Hi Mauricio, Great idea for the map/page, but I have a few concerns. At present the way your site is worded, you're almost suggesting the information submitted on this form is going to be fed back to the ISP in question, when that's almost certainly not going to be the case. It is probably worthwhile including a list of ISP Helpdesk numbers on your submission page which users should be encouraged to call/email in the first instance. These are the only people who can help actually resolve faults. Encouraging users to not report their faults to the ISP is not helpful to anyone, especially not the users. You might also look to try and aggregate the fault status pages of various ISPs and network operators into a single page. Perhaps discussions could be had with the operators in question if they can provide their network status and planned outage events in RSS or similar form, which could be easily aggregated onto a single page. I think this would probably be far more useful than a few sporadic reports from people who "can't get to youtube today" :) Cheers, Blair On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Mauricio Freitas mailto:freitasm(a)geekzone.co.nz> wrote: Hello there Got a suggestion from a friend this weekend and put together a simple page where users can submit faults, and a status page report listing the last 72 hours: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/FaultByISP.asp We will be putting some styling on that page and a Google Map later today. The idea is to give users an idea if they are experiencing some unique fault, or is something spread. For operators it should work as an early warning sign - seeing many people don't even bother calling help desks anymore due to the long waiting times, or just post on forums instead (and why no one ever look at their wiring or DNS configuration before complaining?) Obviously ISPs could at some point (if this actually works) get more information from us, such as contact details to help determine faults, or. Anyway, suggestions and ideas welcome... Mauricio Freitas http://www.geekzone.co.nzhttp://www.geekzone.co.nz/ http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm http://www.twitter.com/freitasm _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nzmailto:NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Yeah, perhaps a better approach is being able to submit ping/traceroute/wget(or similar) output which is interpreted. Saves on making a client. On 7 December 2010 11:23, Juha Saarinen wrote:

Maybe people should be able to send SMS with reports as well?

(I know, won't work if the mobile network is down, but anyway...)

-- Juha Saarinen [image: Google Talk:] juhasaarinen(a)gmail.com [image: Skype:] juha_saarinen [image: MSN:] juha_saarinen(a)msn.com Linkedinhttp://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=12007442&trk=tab_pro Facebook http://www.facebook.com/juha.saarinenFlickrhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/bismillah/ Twitter http://twitter.com/juhasaarinen Juha's blog on Geekzone Nokia N8 too little, too latehttp://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7461 On 7/12/2010 11:14, Mauricio Freitas wrote:

In this day and age? Mobile phones. There are lots of people who do.

Also not all faults are “we are completely down, no internet here”.

Mauricio Freitas

http://www.geekzone.co.nz

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm

http://www.twitter.com/freitasm

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