How long would you tolerate your business internet being down ?
 

Tomorrow will be 7 days, I feel like I am getting the run around from my provider.
Try to run a business in this world without it. I cant invoice, buy parts, message customers.
Worst part, is no pelican parts

10 seconds.

I have them go right to WiFi hotspot (work cell) if the main internet goes down.

It is comcast, isn't it. I feel your pain, phone out all day at office.

Ours too. After my office manager spent 90 minutes on hold we found out it's a nationwide outage. No incoming calls.

Sent from my Galaxy S9 using Tapatalk

And that's why if you have business class internet, there should be SLAs on how much it can be down before they have to start paying you (or at least stop charging you).

And, if you are absolutely relying on your Internet, it's good to have 2 sources, ie comcast and ATT or whatever.

But, if that cost is too high, and your Internet is mostly up enough to not justify the cost, then you're stuck when the occasional big issue hits. Yeah, some way to use a cell network short term, like a T-mobile hotspot device or whatever your carrier of choice is, turn it on for a month when your stuff is down for more than a day or two.

One day would be my pain threshold. Even that would be a fairly big inconvenience.

I hope you get it figured out, Fred!

I'd be raising hell. Get someone in the next building to call and ask about how long it would take to become a new customer - betcha it is quick :)

If 'net access was truly critical, I'd certainly have a plan B. If another small business is close enough, you could pair together and each subscribe to a different service. One gets knocked out, fire up some wireless and change some IP address info around. Or split costs and go co-op and get a real connection with a real SLA. Won't be cheap, but split between a few businesses it may not be bad for a "payments must process" connection. Route web browsing, etc. out a cheaper, faster connection.

Quick google shows a T1 being from 212 to 1200/mo - yes, they are only 1.5mb, but you can add in 23 phone lines with it as well. And it comes with the SLA. Might be worth looking into....

Internet is one thing, but voice? How many people needed 911 during this?

If Internet is critical to your business we always recommend another provider service, like cellular as a backup.

https://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-service-is-reportedly-down-across-the-united-states/

A relative just switched because Comcast started bumping up bills on a relatively new account.
Maybe they were trying to take advantage of the elderly.

If you search for "worst company award" year after year": https://consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/

I work for a large bank. I would not be surprised if our contracts were for better than 5 nines, or 5.26 minutes per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_calculation

^^^^ Corporate Intranets (with Internet access) is a different scenario than most are talkng about here. An hour is a freakin' eternity...

You guys are being jerked around....down for days?

I guess a better answer would be this: 3 days SLA. If I was a small business owner, I would tolerate a 3 day SLA to the business. AND I would ensure that my business was cloud based enough that where I'm connecting from is not relevant.

Move your stuff online. Do business from an ipad, get 4 square (or payment system of your choice). Yeah, it will be a process. There is a reason all these mobile food stands just have an ipad for a 'cash register'.

Maybe for the second coming I could tolerate an hour. But it is taking food out of your mouth.

wait until you have an issue with your credit card machine.....even worse service

I got through pretty quickly, 34 minutes

Found out using the online chat thing fairly quickly, though the guy on the other end was dumb as a sack of hammers.

I like the wifi hotspot thing for the computer. I don't think the VPN would like it when I tried to log on to my med records software.

We tried VOIP for a month or so.

Dropped it when, during a troubleshooting session (I was losing calls left and right) my tech guy says the service provider listened to a few of my prior phone calls and everything sounded great.

They did what?!

Yep.

Every business reliant on the internet should have a plan B. All you can eat wireless is usually your best bet. It will likely be slower than a land line, but at least your not completely down.

7 days is nuts. Only time ours has been down(more than a few hours) was the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and it actually came back before the power.

Is it the whole neighborhood or just you? Could it be your router or modem?

You better get a free month for this. Had you a credit card machine tied to the line you woud've been screwed. No way to get paid.

For business use, clarify if there's a SLA - Service Level Agreement- if they eff up, you get something for it.

Rjp

Are you sure it's the internet? We had a Windows update pushed through and it knocked out network connectivity on Windows 7 machines by deleting the network driver. Had to uninstall the update, and reinstall the driver. Phones worked, modem showed the right connection.

likey the 'guy' was software

I have no room for downtime, cant work w/o a connection

Some questions, first do you have a support PROFESSIONAL who can troubleshoot issues for you? Many small businesses use their friend or cousin or ???? and if a problem pops up then they have no idea how to find and fix things. I would suggest getting one or two laptops and connect them to smart phones that use a different service provider as a hot spot so your office can connect to them in an emergency. Before I retired we ran our office for 3 months that way as our soon to provider had to run wire to the building? There are several articles on line that will explain how to do this and you can access them with your phone. It might seem like a waste of $$$$ having a couple laptops and phones just sitting but it is better than what you have now!

Always a good idea.

Doesnt help right now but might be a good time to figure out a disaster recovery plan. Doesnt have to be complicated, just prioritize services/functionality critical to your business. Then figure out how to mitigate each potential failure. Might be as simple as lock keys in safe at night, backup the computer or tether laptop to mobile phone for internet access. Complicated process around some of this stuff but for most KISS works.

7 days fellows. Century link said it was an internal problem, that they have never seen before. They just came out , and finished me up back online !! . I spent countless hours on the phone with their tech people over the last week.
I now have about 35 invoices to catch up on .
I am definitely going to figure out a plan B for the next event . Basically paralyzed my shop for 7 days .
I was super hesitant to use internet based invoicing. It has worked really well for a long time, but this was exactly what I was worried about .

Mine too on the east coast:eek:

Yeah Comcast can be great and suck all at the same time.

Just learned that lesson the hard way.

Had a horrible lightning storm come through here. Knocked out power and internet.

Sent everyone home since it was 2PM and FP& L said no power until 7 PM at earliest.

Came in next morning to power and no internet. Seems my router took a hit right through the surge protector.

Thankfully I had a backup in a box on a shelf. Took me about an hour to get it fired up and comcast to activate it remotely.

Since then I have decided to get a cellular wifi hot spot to use in case this happens again, I lean heavy on the internet. If it goes down we are down.

When I lost power and internet last time, I packed up my server (I have my own cloud server) and took it home, so I could finish my work there. I had power and internet there, 2 miles away.

Solving problems "never seen before" eh? ...I was damn good at it....in a previous life :). Problems that the largest vendors had no clue about either....it's not easy....I know. That said, now YOU know....find a solution that "will" work when the shtf, and use it occasionally... knowing full well, that when the shtf for real, it might not :(. Stuff IS complex behind the scenes. BTW....the only cloud I'm a fan of is the one Mick sang about...

Retired...but "the song remains the same"....whether the largest corps in the US....or Fred's Garage....YMMV.

Best of luck guys....those at the mercy of their service providers ;)!

I might as well just go home.

Go ahead....take the rest of the day off!

Tell 'em KC said it was OK ;)

How long will it be before we're back up?

'Bout an hour....he said (not having a damn clue what the problem even was)....btdt :)

Thanks!!

Most IT guys either don't show up or tell you what you want to hear.

I love it when they say all fixed and try to run out the door. We don't need no stinking test. lol

I'm confused. If you have internet based invoicing, can't you just connect to the system from another computer?

That was what I was just thinking. Get all your software onto a nice laptop.

Internet down at office, head to Starbucks, you don't even have to buy anything they have free office space.

Yes, I can invoice from home, we have done what we can over the week, but a total pain in the arse.
Customer drops off in the am, I do the work, they want to pick up at 2:30, I can't just run home invoice , and come back .

I would have tethered a phone for just the minimum needed connectivity.
And then looked for a different provider.

I was ready to pull the trigger this morning on a different provider. 7 days was my threshold. If it happens again .....

We have fiber from one provider and the old copper T1 from a second provider and they don't use the same rout out of town. The firewall handles the fail-over automatically. If that fails we use cell based hot spots and if that fails we have electronic copies to get us through a few hours if we had to.

Back when dinosaurs roamed, and fiber was in it's early daze, I worked for a megabank...."on paper", we were good....dual fiber trunks, seperate carriers, planned outages on occasion, the whole nine yards...so we thought, and we were....until we weren't :(. Unbeknown to "us", somehow both fiber trunks had been routed through a common 6" culvert, even though we were assured differently. Enter a construction backhoe downtown.....fiber wasn't easy to repair in those daze either....fun times :)!