-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Mcadams [mailto:jeffm@iglou.com] Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 10:08 AM To: usr-tc@lists.xmission.com Subject: (usr-tc) TC user's conference? Thus spake Scott Trautman
I concur on the training; I know in our area there are plans to have a session in the near future. Even those that think they "know it all", will learn some new tricks. I've been fortunate to get to know George Ebert at 3Com, and he's been a fantastic resource for those types of things. It'll be nice, though, to retain more than say 30% from those valuable informal sessions; as well as send a couple of our Admins to the training.
Indeed...those informal training sessions are good...and they're a good way for 3Com folks to get feedback from customers (there were about 8 of us at the one in Louisville...there was some good give and take there). I just wish they could get 3Com folks to come that aren't in the sales side of things...while the sales folks are good (Tom Goodman and George Ebert are indeed wonderful resources), it seems that, within 3Com, feedback doesn't really seem to be taken seriously from the sales folks. :/ Unfortunately, this seems to be the case in many companies...not just 3Com. Yep, similiar experiences. Unfortunate. Understand that they can't be all things to all people, but seems like there'd be a few strategic things they could do without a whole huge effort. Also understood is the things you'd like to see maybe only a handful think is as important. My thing (currently) is I'd like to see the ptrace style output. Then I go look at my Cisco routers, they have even less than that where it's even more important. Shrug.
I had suggested perhaps a TC users conference would be cool; something like an ISPCON but specifically for TC units. 1-2 days with conferences on many of the subjects we talk about here. There's a lot more "under the hood" than many of us ever get to, and I know we could, if we knew about them, use a lot more features than we currently do.
Neat idea...I'd certainly go for it (if I could get my company to pay for the travel ;)
A few examples....I'm sure y'all can think of many more.....
- T1 provisioning/trouble resolution (line, trunk, PRI, signal/noise ratio's, etc.)
Good...unfortunately, there's not much in the way of tools in the TC's to do trouble resolution on these things. More control over the CSU/DSU's would be *very* useful here. Well, useful to the extent that problems they're seeing <through> the TC equipment is really telco issues, and being able to better tell the difference would be really helpful.
- Getting more mileage out of TCM
Hrmm...unfortunately, I've pretty much given up on TCM...you can only get so much mileage out of a VW bug. :/ I'm beginning to write some Perl5 (with SNMP module) scripts to interact with the TC's... I'm not quite to the point of putting TCM type functionality together...I'm starting with scripts to fulfull specific functions...I may, eventually, get to that point. George helped me along off of the same thought. I get quite a bit of use from TCM, and it beats the snot out of any other dialup control interface I've seen. Cisco, for example, I'm not sure they have ANY such graphical interface.
- Advanced SNMP
Isn't that a contradiction in terms? ;) Well, no, kind of like TCM, I think one could do a lot more if one understood better "how it all fits together". Some of recent trails on SNMP manipulation that I've not delved into could be quite useful. For example, have a feeling I could probably find my "no answer" modems via SNMP a lot easier than any sort of RADIUS accounting grooming or the usual expect-like scripting. I just don't know how at this point. Session on, say, okay, (and we use this tool...great) RRD for modems in use monitoring, but other types of trap monitoring perhaps.
- Dialup user issues (monitoring, filtering, setup, etc.) - Getting to the bottom of modem compatibility issues
I see these two kinda being two different sides of the same coin...most specifically, I would benefit from a seriously in depth seminar about modem technology...unfortunately, I'm not sure how generally useful this would be as I'm thinking about actually getting down into the encoding of the data into the analog waveform and stuff. :) Sure. I'm personally not all that interested in the encoding level of things, but would be in understanding more fully WHY Rockwell chipset modems are such a problem. (I mean other than "they suck")
- HiperARC setup - TC "future" - VoIP, ?
Indeed...this would be nice...especially to give feedback to 3Com through it. Where do you/I/we want this platform to go? I sent a nice long letter to the list the other day and got very little feedback...one person agreeing with me (in private, asked for his message not to be publically posted), and one person sort of disagreeing with me in public. :)
I'd pay $1-2k for such a day-2day conference.....Just thoughts....
Unfortunately, that'd probably be out of our price range...but I would be interested in such a conference in idea at least. :) Shrug. SMT -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.