[VoiceOps] Explaining router/NAT problems to customers

[Ujjval Karihaloo]

I recommend enabling Voip ALG on junipers, given u r on a pretty  
recent os load.

Ujjval Karihaloo

On Jan 28, 2010, at 6:49 PM, "Carlos Alvarez" <carlos at televolve.com>  
wrote:

> On 1/28/10 12:56 PM, Alex Balashov wrote:
>> What I've seen good salespeople / account reps do, when met
>> noncomprehension of such issues: suggest that the customer bought
>> "cheap" and "consumer-grade" routers that do not support "premium"
>> "voice-grade" services and that they should upgrade to something more
>> "industrial-strength."  If the service provider in question happened
>> to resell hardware, it was usually a good upsell opportunity.
>
> Yeah, I guess that's a typical sales person way.  However it's
> unfortunately not true; we see great results with a WRT54G and the  
> most
> problems are with "enterprise" routers that have SIP-specific junk or
> hyper-aggressive security that closes ports quickly.  We do tell  
> people
> to turn off the ALG but at some point we run out of potential fixes.
> Today's fun included explaining why two routers (double NAT) is a Bad
> Idea, and recurring issues with a supposedly high-end Juniper router.
>> I could never do that because I'm not hardcore. It takes serious
>> gumption to turn an angry customer's conviction that your product is
>> inadequate and deflect it back toward them and convince them that it
>> is their purchasing decisions and ignorance that are, in fact, the
>> essence of what is inadequate here.
>
> I thoroughly enjoy doing that but only when I believe it to be true.
>
> We have wording in our contract about not being liable for their
> networking issues, but the non-tech users just don't get *what* the
> network is or even that we use it.  We have specifically avoided
> providing routers because we don't want to own the network and deal  
> with
> things like companies who want inbound NAT setups and things like  
> that.
> Maybe what I need is a separate document that customers have to sign
> off?  Dunno.
>
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