Conference netcad::hub_mgnt

3354.0. "quality vs. quantity" by BERFS4::NORD () Tue Mar 12 1996 02:16

	Good morning, good evening and all between,


	I've found out some problems at different customer sides and came to the
	conclusion to write some lines to this notes.

	Listening NPBU, NPBU-support, engineering and all of you, working and
	consulting with/ our Hub-based products:

		For my opinion, at the moment we deliver only quantity, not
		quality!

	Buggy software, buggy hardware, I've seen at lot of problems in the
	last time, but where to go, whom to tell?

	Ok, we're talking about clearVISN and VLAN, RMON and Distributed
	Routing, but our products are sometimes on hold for more than two
	month, 'cause we haven't done the basics:

	Do a "Dump error log" on a DECrepeater 90 FS, TS, 900 TP and FP, they
	crash, doing a reload and the one and onliest entry is: pcomerr.c or
	like that,

	having had some DENMAs, connected to DEChub 90, which are seeing de-
	vices in slots, where nothing is plugged in, real devices like DEC-
	server or DECrepeater or "Device unknown" (saw it with HUBwatch and
	where a little bit astonished, 'cause I've installed the devices!),

	have installed about 15 DMHUB-MA, 3 of them where "dead on arrivel",
	two of them have had defective agents (like the lines befor) and two
	with a defectiv "SECRETARIAT" (it's nice, like the PLAY OFFs in the
	NHL, 7 of 15 lost or 8 of 15 won),

	have written some problems to these note, but I was not always satis-
	fied with the answers, and the next entries are waiting to be inserted
	here.


	Is there someone out in the green, who is aware of these problems,
	'cause I've "to come under the eyes" of my customers.


	Have a nice working, greetings

	Wolfgang Nord
	MCS at Berlin at Germany

    I've found that when it seems like there are really TERRIBLE problems
    and the world is falling apart that:
    
     1.) The firmware revisions are not in synch - little things like
         firmware are CRITICAL in making all this happen and happen
         correctly.
         - has your customer subscribed to update/distribution services
           (note that we ARE STUPID and DO NOT TELL folks that they
            need this but they DO.....)
         - The new version of HUBWatch will frequently behave very
           strangely if you are NOT up to all the right revision levels
    
     2.) When posting problems, reporting the firmware and revision levels
         of it is VERY CRITICAL in determining issues.
    
    Yes, there are bugs, but most of them are nasty little things and not
    show-stopping ones.  And, in many cases, up to date firmware goes a
    LONG way to making lots of things work better.
    
    REgards,
    j
    

    FYI, Wolfgang is being contacted directly by the NPB support group. 
    
    md