Im not losing sleep over it, but I am about to lose customers. :) The trust from some is already gone.
100% agree. This is a business, and we have competition. More every day. Motorola has touted Canopy as the best wireless solution out there, and in many ways I agree-- but if I am pressured daily from my customers to provide them with a reliable internet solution for which I am charging them a lot of money (Canopy ain't cheap!!), I expect the same sense of urgency from my product provider.
If Canopy were a free service (or nearly free service), you wouldn't hear a peep out of me. But we have a LOT of money tied up in this system, and my customers demand results, so I demand results. This is not personal, it's business. When you are getting heat from competition like licensend wireless 700Mhz spectrum providers (Vyyo, et al), you tend to get a bit antsy.
Motorola has said over and over that if you are having HW rereg problems, go back to SW scheduling until the HW scheduling is fixed. If you’re loosing clients because you can’t run HW scheduling, then you have a customer expectation problem. Which puts you in the exact same situation as motorola.
Motorola isn’t going to release code until they feel it’s ready, and I woudn’t see it any other way. How would you feel if you got code that caused you to do a truck roll to every SM to recover from a bug which they didn’t fix because the code was being rushed out the door? How about code which made the Rereg problem worse? How about code which was a few weeks late and works? I’ll definately choose the working code. After all, isn’t broken code what started this entire thread?
It wouldn’t shock me if for the next release, instead of Motorola giving you a possible release date, they are going to just say something like “the issue will be fixed in the next release, and the release will be made when it’s ready and we won’t give you any idea when that is.”. Motorola was nice enough to tell us that their target date was the end of June. It doesn’t surprise me at all that this date slipped to what is now looking more and more like the end of July or later (since it is now the 18th). My rule of thumb is to double (or triple) the period stated. Since the guess of the end of June was done around the first of June, my guess was more like the end of July (or August).
So, my recommendation is to go back to the last release that actually worked for you. CNUT makes this relatively painless. I realize that SW mode can be slower, and has higher latency, but if it’s between slower and reliable, most people would prefer reliable. If you are depending on the lower latency and higher speed to make or break your business, you need to re-think your strategy, since as your system grows, your per-customer speed will likey end up right back where it is now - and the few ms of latency isn’t all that critical when added to the internet as a whole.
I will say that Canopy is heads and shoulders above anything else that I’ve tried out there. Even with the re-reg problem, it’s much more reliable than other systems I’ve worked on over the past 8 years as a WISP - and I’ve tried a lot of systems. I only wish I would have jumped on the Canopy bandwagon a couple of years ago.
I agree with much of what you said. BUT… this isn’t about Motorola being “nice” or “not nice.” We operate a business, and in business there is competition. We have a LOT of competition here for an increasingly diminishing dollar. Motorola knows this, and that is why they offered HW scheduling to begin with (and with all due respect to how many other systems you have tried, Canopy DOES have some very good competing systems out there).
If there is a promise of a patch available for a problem, and date is offered for that patch, then it is my expectation is that patch will be available in a reasonable amount of time. I am unaware of this “rule of thumb” you mention for code being “double or triple” the time promised. In my business, if I promise something, I deliver. If I don’t, I’m out of business. This is pretty black and white.
I do agree with you that I don’t want busted code. Furthermore, I agree that in future, a specific date should probably not be given. But I refuse to keep my customers in the dark about possibly making their wireless service better. This is becoming an increasingly cutthroat business (anyone remember cell phone services before Verizon and Nextel??), and we need every advantage available in order to compete. I trust Motorola and will continue to trust them, that’s why when they tell me something, I believe them.
I’ve written code for a living. Tell the programmers that one customer is out here saying, "I remeber slipping dates to deliver quality product. I never enjoyed it because management was whacking my arse to get me to speed up, but I still delivered functional, reliable code. I told management there were two ways they could have it. I could give them working code or I could give them righteously pissed off customers, which did they want it? They always waited for the good code. DO THE SAME, please."
I just want my stuff to stay up after the upgrade and work correctly.
I dont care if they are not going to meet the deadline they told us initially, but they should at least tell us they will not meet that deadline and what their next projected deadline is. Simple courtesy of keeping us informed with a quick post would make me happy.
It may or may not be safe to assume that there are few software developers/programmers who are members of this forum. Reading this particular thread brings be back to CIS385 - Senior Seminar in Computer Science. The purpose of the class was to tie together everything that students have learned in the ciriculum in 4 years, hitting key topics in software development, current issues, from-scrath computing, etc. The first half the of semester was based on two books, one of which I thought I would never apply anything that I had read to real-life situations. After reading this thread, I stand corrected.
The name of the book is “The Mythical Man Month” by a gentleman with the last name of Brooks. The book is about the man’s experiences in the software industry, focusing on the vast majority of large software projects that exceed their due dates, and more importantly, why they do so.
My professor keeps almost all the material used throughout the semester on his website, including quizes and tests. One particular quiz which mentions a lot of what you guys have been talking about pertaining to the 7.2 release is available here.
Some of you may not be at all interested, but I think you should take a look and realize how much it relates to the current issues with the 7.2 release.
We have been having some issues with VOIP services. The high priority traffic has been assigned 10% of bandwidth, but 7.07 seems to have some problems prioritising this traffic. A Canopy tech has advised us that this issue will be fixed in 7.2 But unfortunately our customers are still unhappily waiting for this fix to fix their problems. Hurry, hurry to 7.2!!
Im doing our first de-install today. I dont think it has anything to do with the changes of switching to Software Sched. But I do have customers who want a partial refund since they are not getting their 1-1.5 meg speeds. We kinda set expectations too high by telling them the kind of speeds they “should” (and normally would) see. Now since we had to rate limit everyone, they are wondering what happened.
What speeds do you tell your customers they are expecting to get?
What speeds do you tell your customers they are expecting to get?
Z
With SWS on my 900MHz network, we have our throughput set at 50% up, 50% down. We are telling customers to not exprect any more then 700kbps up and down untill the fix.
Even with Bellsouth DSL or Comcast cable internet, they tell you that they offer speeds UP TO 1.5 or 3mbit. If you read their agreement/contract it specifically says those speeds are NOT guarunteed and are subject to change anytime without warning.
We’ve put similar lines in our agreements with our customers. Although we don’t have a large customer base yet, we haven’t had complaints, even from those customers that I’m still running Hardware Sch. on.
Unforchunately, there are some customers out there that can’t and won’t be pleased, no matter what you do or don’t do.
I heard that one of our customers made a lady at our call center cry today!!! :o The problem ended up being his internal network also. We were polite though.
When was the last time a software product was delivered on time.
I would much rather have it work properly than meet a date which was self imposed anyway.
Bet this is the last time the Canopy Team will give us a date, I cannot blame them if they totaly ignore us.
I find this forum contains much usefull information, lets not poison it by insulting the same people we want help from.
When it's done it's done. This stuff (Canopy) does things that 5 years ago where not possable at any cost.
To the Canopy Team, Thanks for all the good info you have provided and I hope you continue to do the same.
nice one. we better wait and get the best quality software and worth the wait. 2 weeks late or 1month late is not too long when we can have the best performance upgrade anyway. *wink*
Even with Bellsouth DSL or Comcast cable internet, they tell you that they offer speeds UP TO 1.5 or 3mbit. If you read their agreement/contract it specifically says those speeds are NOT guarunteed and are subject to change anytime without warning.
We've put similar lines in our agreements with our customers. Although we don't have a large customer base yet, we haven't had complaints, even from those customers that I'm still running Hardware Sch. on.
Unforchunately, there are some customers out there that can't and won't be pleased, no matter what you do or don't do.
In my experience, customers tend to not read contracts very closely. I know what ours says: UP TO 1.5Mb. But lately, I've been telling customers they should be actually seeing "around" 1Mb, just to cover my butt. Yeah, many are getting more than that, but I'd rather err on the side of good than bad...
Nearing the end of July here and no response on how the update is going. Im sure the canopy software programmers are working late shifts and lots of overtime trying to get this out to us which makes me feel better. :oops:
On another note, were you seeing the high re-reg counts on all freq’s? Or just 900?
I dont think it has anything to do with the changes of switching to Software Sched. But I do have customers who want a partial refund since they are not getting their 1-1.5 meg speeds. We kinda set expectations too high by telling them the kind of speeds they “should” (and normally would) see. Now since we had to rate limit everyone, they are wondering what happened.