This product is unbelievable. I am putting in my requisition to triple
my support staffing now so we can deal with the onslaught of people
using a product that provides less than desirable results 
rob
I plan to do something much simpler, and IMHO, much more appropriate.
Install procmail to filter these messages and file them for possible
future examination. Also reply with an auto-generated email that thanks
the person for sending the message and notes that due to the large number
of such machine generated email inquiries it is not possible for a human
being to reply to each one but they are being examined for possible
action.
And then, after looking through some of these, I will have a filter that
sorts them into two piles, /dev/null and another pile with messages which
appear to contain useful information.
In fact, if I can clearly identify messages that are meaningless using
procmail, I will even select separate autogenerated messages. For the ones
that go straight to /dev/null I will explain why the VitalSigns product is
generating flawed reports and I will point the person to a URL with
more information, hopefully info on how to configure VitalSigns to NOT
generate flawed reports.
So don't ask for more staff, just file the messages for now.
procmail is your friend.
Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049
http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
For those that don't recall the first introduction of traceroute to the
user community, we had the same sort of initial flood of "Gee, look at that
route!" but on the whole as I recall there was a lot of cruft cleaned up in
the first few months of general availability of traceroute. And, of course,
traceroute had it's problems interpreting feedback at first. But after the
initial poking around and gee-whiz, traceroute settled down to become a
very useful tool for users as well as net-ops.
--Kent
==>For those that don't recall the first introduction of traceroute to the
==>user community, we had the same sort of initial flood of "Gee, look at that
==>route!" but on the whole as I recall there was a lot of cruft cleaned up in
==>the first few months of general availability of traceroute. And, of course,
==>traceroute had it's problems interpreting feedback at first. But after the
==>initial poking around and gee-whiz, traceroute settled down to become a
==>very useful tool for users as well as net-ops.
However, when traceroute came out, I would venture to say that 90% of the
people using it actually understood what it was doing. They also had to
know who to mail.
The problem with this "nifty" new toy is that it enables any clueless
newbie to insert his favorite site from the TV ads, click the "check net
status" button, then complain, whine, and bitch to the webmaster at the
domain at the click of a button. The tool does it for them.
Big difference in knowledge base... my vote goes to procmail. =)
/cah
The problem with this "nifty" new toy is that it enables any clueless
newbie to insert his favorite site from the TV ads, click the "check net
status" button, then complain, whine, and bitch to the webmaster at the
domain at the click of a button. The tool does it for them.
This is true. I just took a look and it scares me. The user doesn't even
have to evaluate what they are seeing. If the program tells them there is
a problem, they are going to believe it without question. Commonly they
will hold to the belief that their software is infallible, regardless of
what the network engineer tells them. I've seen this before with other
kinds of diagnostic software, its like a case of user paranoia.
Big difference in knowledge base... my vote goes to procmail. =)
I'll second that! I can feel the tickets opening and the mailboxes
filling up, even now...