How would you manage your customers?

Network Management
#1

To get things started, since we are deep in our PtMP development. I think it would be great time to get your input on how we should approach end customer monitoring via our upcoming Access Points.

  • What would you love to know about your customers that you currently have difficulty monitoring?
  • What is the favorite thing you current monitoring system lets you know about your current customers?
  • How do you provision new customers, how do you upgrade your existing customers?

Let us know your ideas, and we will see what we can do for you!

#2

My current management system lets me get historical graphs of all the same metrics I see on APs and PTP links. This lets me look at what might have been wrong when Joe’s Internet quit on him last night in the middle of a movie.
Something I would like to see is a metric allowing me to judge how much airtime is being consumed by each customer. This would allow me to figure out who’s connection is dragging the whole AP down during Prime Time and do something about it.
Currently I provision new customers on site during the install. Later I add them to the monitoring program. Your cloud’s ability to start monitoring immediately if the radio it properly programmed would eliminate a step for me. Unless there is a particular complication, upgrades are handled by the monitoring program on demand. I prefer to upgrade firmware one AP at a time over time so if something goes wrong with the new firmware, I’m less likely to be subjecting everyone to the problem, thus cutting down on the quantity of support calls.

1 Like
#3

Hi Scott,

How we manage customers is trick question :smile:

We use several programs to monitor the network, historical data is done by “the dude” since we have so many Mikrotiks on the network. We use Cacti to monitor and graph most equipment that has SNMP that works… Since we have about 700 Ubnt radios we use Aircontrol to monitor them. I do not want my blood pressure to go up and talk about Aircontrol or Aircontrol2 or Air CRM …

We have a “great” trouble ticket system that is about 20 years old called Keystone from a company called Stonekeep. Lots of historical data in there. Our billing system is Platypus.

So I wrote some program where techs enter customer name and it searches all the different databases and presents needed data on a web page.

If you are working on a unified management system, to keep my blood pressure under control, just make sure SNMP works and your management system actually supports all of your equipment.

Everything we have seen from Mimosa has been top notch, the radios, the support, the website, the tools, the people, did I mention the support?

Actually did I answer your question ?..

Tony

3 Likes
#4

Thanks for the feedback Tony!

Our goal is to fit in with your current method of network management, while at the same time augmenting your toolset with modern solutions that keep your end customers happy, and grow your business.

We will continue to support SNMP management in all our products, and we even maintain a great help page! http://backhaul.help.mimosa.co/snmp-mib-downloads

As of November 23rd you will have access to 6 months of historical spectrum data with Cloud+!

Cheers
Scott

#5

Hi everyone,

My post really just echoes Franks above. We need historical Airtime Capacity graphs in % coupled with CPE Airtime Use in %. Like Frank said, when client calls and says Netflix bombed between 9-10pm we can look and see what happened. We already have signal, noise and SNR historic information in the Mimosa cloud so mix that with historic airtime utilization for both ap and cpe in the PtMP enviroment and we should be able to consistently predict AP overload before it hits. Most other manufacturers don’t have enough info exposed in SNMP or force you to use an incomplete admin suite cough air control cough

Thanks
Pierre

1 Like
#6

I know the “Cloud” is the latest thing, but going down the road I really expect that the FCC will put on the same Customer data restrictions as all the other “Common Carriers” are required to support. This means “Certification” of protection of customer data! Using the “Cloud” to HOST your customer data, does NOT live up to that certification!

Now is the time to wean off of the “Cloud”, and allow us to use our own “In-house” servers to provide this service!

1 Like
#7

I have to concur with Wayne. Having Customer info in the cloud is a security risk, and could eventually be in contention with the law. It might be worth the risk if there is a significant gain. The kind of gain I speak of would be Mimosa’s cloud being able to coordinate frequencies across providers within a geographical region. Unless it’s something big like that, there should be a local hosting option. We really do need a very good reason for our customer’s data to be at your fingertips…