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"If we have to fly someone in from Mars to get the right person, so be it"
I'll message you off-list shortly.
-JThank you for your reply.
The substance of your message is "have we considered ....?". The generic answer to this is no, because no-one within our small team is familiar with the options or has sufficient technical competence to decide what is the best way forward. Going back to 2009 every single element of our current setup has been put in place by and on the advice of people who have, or who have persuaded us they have, appropriate expertise. That said, however, my post seeking help from MCG reflects the outcomes of a senior staff meeting yesterday within which we agreed to throw the issue open. Nothing is set in stone, anything and everything can be changed, but on our own we could not even begin to answer the sorts of questions you have asked. It's simple: one cannot competently decide between the options if one does not know what they are, let alone understanding the potential advantages and disadvantages of each of them.
We know we need a specialist who can come in, look at what we've got, test everything out, see for themselves and then make recoomendations. If we have to fly someone in from Mars to get the right person, so be it. The issue here is system design, on the basis that hardware installation isn't that difficult and once connectivity is established someone could indeed handle configuration work and problem-solving from anywhere within the galaxy!
In very simple terms, in 2009 we went with VoIP phones because we needed, and still need, phone on four different desks spread across two buildings which are part of the same system. In 2009 BT quoted us £25,000 to install what amounted to a local exchange, and would then have wanted four full line rentals. A smaller ISP offered us VoIP with four phones and internet to 6 or 7 computers, for less than £500 plus one line rental - we only went to two incoming lines and a smart router a year ago, as something we were advised should fix our problems.
Equally, in 2009 we chose local storage for files because we were advised that the bandwith/speeds available here would make any cloud-based system unworkably slow. If, however, a specialist came in, and concluded that 365 would function and would be workable in terms of how we operate, we would go fior it. Where we are now is the product of nine years of ad-hoc development from a starting point I believe to have been right at the time. Equally, if we were advised that with current technology we could break our dependency on fixed lines in ways that would work for us and which would not cost a fortune to run, we'd go with tha advice.
Our problem with all of the options you have kicked around is that we need an expert to identify the options and develop an optimum solution: we simply do not have enough knowledge to sort things out on our own.
Bob Clark
Director
The Auchindrain Trust
mailto:[log in to unmask]
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 1:16:00 AM, you wrote:
I cant help with local recommendations - Scotland is a long way away, but have you considered a change of approach?
For example, using unlimited data SIMs as backups?
Regarding the file server - what is the specific requirement for an on premises file server? Office365 & Sharepoint 365 as primary storage will both cache files offline for quick access and make them available online for global access, allow you to restrict usage, and so on. It will do all of this with no faff, no tech maintenance, and no teamviewer. Of course your specific requirements determine whether or not this is suitable but as this sounds like a light use environment I cant imagine that it would not be suitable. It is also very tolerant of connection failures.
Voip phones - what is the specific need for these? Can you get your voip incoming number ported to a cloud provider and then direct incoming calls from that provider to your mobiles? Will this work for you?
The point of the above is that if the hard lines arent reliable you can break your dependency on them. Everything can run in the cloud these days it just requires a paradigm shift. 3g coverage is a good backup, especially if you can engineer your system to be more fault tolerant and independent of the premises.
Best,
-J
On 28 Nov 2018, at 00:38, Bob Clark <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
A Museum with Telecoms Problems Hello all
We are looking for informal recommendations for individuals or companies who specialise in networks, broadband and general telecoms. After 7 years of almost problem-free service, since 2016 we have faced a debilitating sequence of line faults, intermittent service, and download/upload speeds that are dire. We engaged a realtively local firm to assist us and have dutifully paid the bills for what they have recommended, but almost a year later things are if anything worse rather than better and our confidence is exhausted. In this forum, I'm sure I don't have to explain that connectivity is vital: when we lose the internet, almost everything grinds to a halt. Please: there must be someone out there who really understands the technology, who we could bring in to review our current setup and help us put in place something that works.
The museum at Auchindrain is located in rural Scotland and in a very sparsely-populated area. The nearest IT network specialists of any sort are 70 miles away in Glasgow. Over two miles of old copper wires separate us from the local exchange, so although most of the area has superfast we cannot get it. We have two incoming lines which go into an expensive, smart, Draytek router. From the router, wifi covers the office building whilst a hardwired intranet connects up four VoIP phones and four or five computers that access the internet only for email and websearches - no-one regularly does large uploads or downloads. At least ten times a day, usually when one has reached the top of the queue or are half-way through authorising a bank transaction, the phones or the internet, or both, go yellow-light and stay off for between 20 seconds and a couple of hours. Checked through Speedtest, Ping is typically around 44ms, download around 12.20Mbps, and upload around 0.65Mbps.
Until a few months ago, we used an older PC as a fileserver, set to sync to the cloud through Dropbox Pro. Staff working off-site could access the Dropbox copy of files, and Dropbox would then sync changes and additions back to the fileserver. Dropbox-in-the-cloud was also our backup. The problem was that Dropbox was clunky to use in this way, whilst the initial upload of large files could literally take weeks to complete. We were advised to replace the fileserver with a NAS box, and were told that this could be set to back up to Dropbox or a cloud storage facility provided by the company we were working with. We were also told that the NAS box could be configured so that staff working offsite could connect into it. Four months later, the cloud backup has still not been created - we are backing up manually each week to a large RHD, whilst we are now being told that our broadband is so poor that remote access to the NAS box isn't technically feasible after all. For remote access, staff have to use Team Viewer to access an office desktop, through which they can access the NAS box to download and upload files as necessary, which is slow and tortuous.
Our ISP is supportive and sympathetic, and we understand that there is little that they can do other than to report faults to Openreach. The local Openreach engineers are almost on our payroll given the frequency of their visits, but have recently been saying that there are no faults on their side to cause the dropouts and super-slow speeds, and that thee problems must be caused by our equipment. Equally, the tech company we have been working with say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our system or hardware and that the problems are being caused by line faults or the exchange equipment.
We accept that our rural Scottish location and our dependence on copper cables to a distant exchange is going to limit the download and upload speeds we can get, at least until the Scottish Government cajoles, bullies or bribes a deeply-reluctant BT to run fibre optic everywhere. In the meantime, however (and it may be a very long meantime!), we don't actually want much. We want VoIP phones and internet that work all the time, and sufficient speed/bandwidth so that VoIP phones and Skype will work properly. We want a central file storage device like a NAS box that allows us to determine who can access which folders, which can be accessed from offsite and which will automatically back itself up to the cloud. And we want someone who can both set things up for us properly, and see through the fog of confusion from Openreach to determine conclusively whether or not our two landline/broadband services are working as they should.
Please can somebody guide us towards competent help?
Bob Clark
Director
The Auchindrain Trust
mailto:[log in to unmask]
07770 420999
01499 320272 (Direct Line)
01499 500235 (Reception)
www.auchindrain.org.uk
Urras Achadh an Droighinn/The Auchindrain Trust
Achadh an Droighinn/Auchindrain
Inbhir Aora/Inveraray
Earra Ghàidheal/Argyll
PA32 8WD
Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation Number SC015528
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