For this we used a VersaNet ISP accelerator. Doesn't have all the nifty
things the PM3 does, but it does almost 100% of what customers want. It's
a thousand dollars less than a PM3, but the price difference is not a
factor. A thousand dollars is the amount of money that 4 typical dialup
customers pay us in a year. I followed the instructions with the box,
added it to the /etc/raddb/clients, restarted radiusd, called up Joy at
Bell Atlantic to flip the switch on the PRIs, and things began working.
I would not dump my PM3s, as each RAS' have their cool unique features.
For instance, I will have to write a program similar to pmwho for seeing
who is using the box.
Looks like we'll be maintaining 2 hunt groups. The PM3s for one phone
number, and the Versanet for the other phone number. For customers with
modem problems which upgrading and commas don't fix, we'll have them dial
the versanet. No sense losing customers while modem vendors and RAS
vendors point fingers at each other, while the end result is improperly
educated customers pointing fingers at ISPs.
Having two RAS vendors AND two hunt groups might be considered a customer
service advantage and competitive advantage, even if its not an advantage
in terms of technical details or economies of scale.
We'll keep the customers, we'll keep them happy, and reduce tech support
costs.
As to my choices of RAS vendors.. Livingston is my first choice for their
excellent tech open-ness on the mailing lists and for free tech support
and their long history of sucessful portmasters. I once researched getting
an ascend a couple years ago, but their box at the time did not work with
the livingston radius unless the passwords are hardcoded into the users
file, which has never been an option for us. This may have changed, but I
haven't checked into it. Cisco.. I don't like the IOS interface, and I
feel like they charge too much for their routers, even if their access
servers are competitively priced. Their stock does well though. 3com:
Their couriers, 3c509's, and palm-pilots are their only good products
still for sale. I had some bad experiences getting support for ISDN modem
pool products which were having serious software malfuctions outside of
the 90 free support window, but still within the 5 year warannty. They've
made some recent changes regarding this I am told, but I'm still shying
from them for now.
-Jason
>
> Same thing here
> And were getting sick of hearing I can with this ISP with no problem
> give us a refund and we'll use them.
> So were demoing other NAS so far every one tried has better connect
> and disconnect rates.
> Unless Lucent gets off there ass with the modem code
> we'll not get any more PM3's
> We need modem code that works not fancy toy's that only a few use.
>
> Larry L.
> Universal Technology
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dave Cates <livingston@3lefties.com>
> To: <portmaster-users@livingston.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 2:15 PM
> Subject: (PM) modem code
>
>
> > Group,
> >
> > I'm not really trying to start trouble, but I think I'm gonna get left
> > behind on the ComOS bus. The modem code in 3.8.2 doesn't work for us,
> > DMS-100, CT1, ESF, b8zs. Customers that could connect at 50,666 go down
> to
> > ~38 and get disconnected all the time. The code in 3.8 works fine except
> > for the piece of S**T rockwell hcf modems. I don't know of any of the new
> > features in 3.9 that we really need, right now, but some modem code that
> > fixes both problems in 3.8 and 3.8.2 would be nice :). Anyone else in the
> > same boat as me?
> >
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with
> > 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message.
> > Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>
>
> -
> To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with
> 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message.
> Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>
>
-- /* Jason Philbrook | Midcoast Internet Solutions jp@midcoast.com | Internet Access, LAN, WAN, and Linux www.midcoast.com/jp/ | Service and Consulting for Midcoast Maine */- To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message. Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>