🚀 go-pugleaf

"Brian" <bswindle@charter.net> wrote in message
news:3C72EA16.5FA77114@charter.net...
>    In those situations, the owner of the computer would be wise to install
> the card himself.  I think a lot of them would be the type of people who
> wouldn't want anybody from outside in their machine anyway.

Ah, but will the user *know*?  Let's make a couple of trivial examples:
A user has - without knowing it - an ASUS TUSL2/CUSL2 motherboard (a common
enough thing), and the free slot is Slot 1.  Will the tech be able to
identify this motherboard and NOT install the NIC in slot 1 without going
into the advanced settings of the BIOS to turn off slot 1 priority?  Else
he'll cause Big Problems for the user, who probably won't associate the
resulting graphics glitches and audio stutters with the NIC install.
Another user has an old scanner hooked up through an ISA card (common enough
too).  His shop installed the scanner for him a long time ago.  While the
machine works with ACPI IRQ assignments now, that will fail once another
card is added.  Will the tech be able to identify the IRQ conflicts, and
turn off ACPI and set the BIOS to either PnP or manual IRQ assignments if
that fails?
A third user has Nortel Extranet Access installed, which she uses for
periodical dial in to work using VPN.  This creates a virtual NIC, whose
settings Must Not Be Altered.  She also had a NIC in the machine a long time
ago, back when it was an office machine, and the settings for this will
conflict with the new NIC.  Will the cable guy uninstall all network devices
to solve the problem, or will he know enough to only remove the unused NIC
software and not touch the virtual one?

If the cable guy doesn't know about issues like this, he *is* going to screw
up.  And the customer might not even know that he did because the Cable
modem service may work.  Then the customer might blame the *other*
software/hardware that fails.

None of the above scenarios should be particularly rare - they're all part
of everyday setups.

>    There are always going to be exceptions; my point is that they
> aren't going to be an everyday issue.

So what's the acceptable failure rate?  How many customer machines can be
screwed up before it's unacceptable?  What's the price of all the
troubleshooting that goes on AFTER the cable guy has left?
I've had to fix two machines so far where the cable company (one was AT&T,
the other Cox) installed a NIC and configured the machine for the customer.
One lost his ability to dial-up to work, and the other got audio glitches
and stuttering frame rates.  I'm sure that the technicians in both cases
thought they installed everything sucessfully.
My rate for looking at a machine is $100/hr plus expenses.  And I'd prefer
to have *less* work like this.

> Our techs will call for assistance before
> they get ito a computer that looks like it may have a different setup
> procedure or is part of an existing network when they arrive.

"Looks like" isn't good enough here.  Unless you ARE either trained in or
have special knowledge about PC networking and configurations, chances are
good that you might not *see* that there's anything different.  And chances
are that even though the NIC works fine after this, other problems may
occur, caused by the customer's machine being raped by an unskilled
technician.

I say it's much preferable to have a cable guy do the cable, and a PC tech
do the PC's.  There's no shame in not knowing something.  The shame is in
not knowing something and STILL doing it.

> Servers are
> off limits and most of our business customers with servers have network
> support people they want working on their machines anyway; they usually
take
> care of the card installation since they know the existing network and how
> it is set up better than anybody. CBN connects most business customers
> through a router/firewall, preventing many issues with existing networks
and
> providing excellent security at the same time, while eliminating the
> necessity of the second ethernet card.

Must be very different from the residential service then, cause with
residential service, Cox doesn't allow for direct TCP/IP communication
between two customer machines even if they pay for an extra IP.  Using a
second NIC is the only way to be able to do this.  With @home, the customer
got fixed IPs in a situation like this, and could set up static routing
between the two (or three) local machines.  Even if using DHCP, they were
given different subnets so they at least could bounce packets off the router
(while slow, at least it worked).  With Cox, you lose all TCP/IP
communication between local machines unless you add a second NIC.
Emailed questions to tech support about this has gone unanswered.

Regards,
--
*Art