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Wexford

LAN, WAN, Remote Access, CCTV, Who is left holding the baby?

 Broadband, Business Network, Communications, Computers, Networks, Uncategorized  2 Responses »
May 262011
 

Several times over the last few months we have been called in to businesses that were having major performance and communications issues.

  • The Accounts/ERP Systems people were saying it was a Network Problem.
  • The LAN/WAN people were saying it was a Citrix/Remote Access problem.
  • The Citrix/Remote Access people said it was a Broadband/Bandwidth problem.
  • The Broadband people said it was a CCTV Remote Viewing issue.

I could go on, but the net result was the customer was left “Holding the Baby” and the problem was dragging on for weeks, causing huge disruption and making the IT Systems unusable for a large proportion of the working day.

Because the company had no In-House IT resource or an Independent IT Professional who had no vested interest to call upon, the individual suppliers were able to quote technical terms at the customer and blame everyone else.

After looking at the problem and talking to all the suppliers we were able to establish that the problem was caused by a number of issues;

  • The Security company was inadvertently streaming CCTV from the customer site 24 Hours a day using large amounts of bandwidth. We were able to get them to only stream video based on event triggering.
  • The LAN/WAN people had added an extra broadband connection to the VPN and the routing of traffic over the networks had not been adjusted to take advantage of the new connection.
  • The Citrix and Broadband suppliers had not co-ordinated and optimised their parameters to make sure they were working to maximise the speed of the connection.
  • There had been an upgrade to the ERP System that installed a module which was not required, but was using large amounts of the server processing power.

We were able to increase the overall performance of the systems by 80% in a few days and by 100% within a couple of weeks.

Because of our depth of experience, gathered over twenty five years in various industries and business sectors, we were able to get to the root cause of the issues and allow the company to concentrate on their core business and stop wasting time arguing with the various IT Suppliers.

If you find yourself in this type of situation, don’t wast time fighting with IT Suppliers. Talk to an Independent IT Professional who will ultimately save you a lot of time and money. Better still develop an ongoing relationship with a professional who knows your system and can make sure any changes don’t have a knock on affect on  your existing systems.

 Posted by admin at 14:20  Tagged with: , , ,

Vodafone Ireland DO NOT provide a Business Class DSL (Fixed Line) Broadband Service.

 Broadband, Uncategorized, Vodafone Ireland  No Responses »
Jul 152010
 

For those of you unfortunate enough to have been migrated from BT Ireland to Vodafone Ireland’s Fixed Line broadband you already know how bad the service is. For those of you considering moving to Vodafone here are some things you should consider.

  • During the three years I was with BT Ireland I only had one major problem and that turned out to be an eircom problem when they were upgrading the fibre link to my local exchange.
  • When I was first moved to Vodafone, I could not log on to their network. It took several phone calls and several days to fully resolve.
  • I have a range of Fixed IP Addresses and when they were first migrated there were major problems accessing Irish sites like Revenue Online, AIB Banking Online, AER Lingus, etc. It took about fifteen phone calls and over a week to resolve the issue.
  • On one occasion they de-allocated my Fixed IP Addresses and my servers were no longer accessible from the Internet.
  • On numerous occasions the connection has gone down for several hours without explanation and because they have denied there was a problem, I have had to spend hours double checking my configurations only to discover that it was a Vodafone problem after all.
  • Since moving to Vodafone my Upload and Download Speeds have been reduced by approx 30%.
  • The Vodafone connection cannot sustain a Skype call even during the morning when there is no congestion on the network.

Now before anybody comes back to me and says it might be my phone line, let me point out the following;

  • This all worked fine when I was with BT.
  • I am approx 100m from the exchange (Attenuation Down 13db, Attenuation Up 7db)
  • For legacy reasons I have another DSL connection with another provider to the same exchange, which works fine and has done during all these Vodafone problems.

I do have to say that throughout these problems I have found the Vodafone Staff to be very helpful, but having nice people working for you does not make up for a network that is simply not up to the job.

 Posted by admin at 22:09  Tagged with: ,

Can your Business Survive Without the Internet?

 Broadband, Internet, Uncategorized  No Responses »
May 052010
 

I know, ALL businesses need the Internet, but it was really brought home to me in the last two days just how reliant we are on the Internet when two of my customers got caught up in the BT toVodafone migration and lost connectivity to most major Irish business sites. (I’ll talk about Vodafones Fixed Line Broadband in another post).

The first business is a Car Dealer and when their Internet connection was down they could not;

  • Register new cars through Revenue Online
  • Use Banking Online
  • Order spare parts
  • Download Car Diagnostic Software
  • Register Used Cars with Carzone.ie

These were just the issues that were pointed out to me. I’m sure they access otuer systems on the Internet.

The second business markets, maintains, rents and handles bookings in the Holiday and Leisure sector. When their Internet connection was down, they could not;

  • Use Baking Online
  • Manage Bookings via Online Booking System
  • Upload/Register/Manage Property listings
  • Manage their website via their content management system

In the case of both busiesses they were unable to operate without their Internet connections and in both cases they did not have a backup Internet connection.

If your business relies on the Internet to function, then you should have an alternative means of connecting to the Internet. Due to the nature of our business we have three seperate Internet connections;

  • Fixed Line (ADSL) Broadband
  • Fixed Wireless
  • Mobile Broadband (Pay as you go broadband)

We can also access the Internet on our Android mobile phones.

So if you want to make sure that your business can continue to function, then contact your local Computer Services Provider for a simple, cost effective solution.

 Posted by admin at 22:40  Tagged with: ,

Simple Explanation of Types of Broadband

 Broadband  No Responses »
Apr 132010
 

Interesting post giving an overview of the Different Types of Broadband Available.

 Posted by admin at 08:18  Tagged with:

E-Commerce as a percentage of total turnover accounts for 26pc of Turnover of Irish firms

 Broadband, Business Advice, Computers, Internet  No Responses »
Mar 042010
 

Came across this article at DIGITAL21, Irish businesses need to realise the digital economy is the ‘real’ economy.

It’s time for businesses to get technological

It’s time for businesses to get technological

 Posted by admin at 11:32  Tagged with: , ,

Internet Traffic, The Recent Cold Spell and School Children

 Bad Weather, Broadband, Children, Internet  No Responses »
Jan 122010
 

In 1982 for the last “Big Snow” everybody, particularly school children spent most of their time outside enjoying the fantastic snowy conditions that are so rare Ireland. Mind you, at that time there were no XBox’s, PS3′s, WII’s or for that matter the Internet.

Today things are very different. While walking the dog twice a day over this last cold spell, I very rarely saw children playing in the snow. It was only when I was talking to a collegue in Alpha Broadband (a fixed wireless broadband provider in North Wexford), that I realised what they were all up to.

He proceded to show me the traffic graphs and the traffic rose by over 60% for the period of the cold snap. There was also a corresponding drop in traffic today when the kids went back to school.  He did also note that based on his graphs most school children don’t get up until at least 12:00.

 Posted by admin at 20:25  Tagged with: , ,

Lost Revenue/Business due to Snow/Ice and Remote Working for Small Business

 Bad Weather, Broadband, Business Advice, Computers, Internet, Online Software, Remote Working, Security, Software as a Service, Uncategorized  1 Response »
Jan 072010
 

With the snow and ice causing havoc all over the country, the conditions are putting pressure on businesses that are already hard pressed during the current recession. People cannot get to work and are sitting at home doing nothing. Somebody said that there was no point in trying to get in to work as none of the customers or businesses they deal with would be in either.  But there are always many admin and management tasks to do, that you don’t normally have time for, If you could get to the office or If you could get access to your computer systems.

Well you can very easily get remote access to your computer systems and indeed communicate with your work colleagues.

The only thing you require is a Broadband Internet Connection. To access your computer systems you can either;

  • Access your existing computer systems using a secure remote connection such as GoToMyPC. This is a hosted implementation of Citrix, which is a well established system used by many larger businesses to access their systems remotely and can cost as little as €12 per month.
  • The second option is to consider using Software As A Service (SAAS)  for your main systems. SAAS means that your Integrated Accounts System / CRM systems are not installed on a computer in your office but are installed on a secure server in a Data Centre, which you access remotely using a secure connection. Examples in Ireland are Mamut and Eircom SAAS.

To keep in contact with your work colleagues all you require is Skype and you can talk, and if you have a webcam, have video calls for free.

So if you want to make sure that the next period of  bad weather doesn’t bring you business to a halt why not contact me in Glasgorman Computer Services HERE.

P.S. There is also a very strong argument that a small business can dramatically reduce it’s recurring infrastructure costs, regardless of weather etc. , by using technology to implement Remote Working for employees.

 Posted by admin at 12:01  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,
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