Re: Diagnosing VPN connectivity issues

Not that this really helps Frank but we try to eliminate fingers.

Try to sell the customer the connectivity between the sites.  YOU handle all 
of the connectivity and vpn issues.

Also, I've found that people just don't want to help us fix a problem.  They 
just want it all done for them.  We simply bill them for figuring out what 
it is if it's not a problem related to OUR network.
marlon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frank Bulk" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 10:29 AM
Subject: Diagnosing VPN connectivity issues


> We have several small enterprise customers who, on occasion, complain 
> about
> VPN tunnel stability issues to their remote branches.  After eliminating 
> the
> obvious physical plant issues (whether that be cable broadband, ADSL, 
> SHDSL,
> or fiber), we have them run PingPlotter in both directions.  While
> PingPlotter is better than nothing, I would say it helps identify the 
> issue
> only 10 to 20% of the time.  Not to speak of the time helping the customer
> properly interpret the PingPlotter results (they get caught up on ICMP
> packet loss at one hop that has no packet loss any further, and my 
> attempted
> explanations regarding control plane rate-limiting usually loses them and
> they point at the red lines).  And you know how it goes -- they point the
> finger at us, and we honestly want to help them, but if our L1, L2, and L3
> checks come up clean, what then?  I hate to point to fingers.  If I ask 
> for
> basic information such as VPN debug logs from their VPN gear the customers
> aren't able to help.  It's usually frustrating -- they want to the issue
> resolved, but often aren't willing to spend the time to work with us to
> identify the issue.
>
> What are others doing to help their customers with their VPN issues?
>
> Frank
>
> -- 
> Eat sushi frequently. - Avi
> [email protected] is the human contact address.
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-- 
Eat sushi frequently. - Avi
[email protected] is the human contact address.
[email protected] is the list posting address.
See below URL for subscribe/unsubscribe and list options:
http://inet-access.net/mailman/listinfo/list