On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 06:58:46AM -0600, A. Chase Turner wrote: > I am seeking a $100 turnkey micro hardware appliance to plug into a LAN > hub (behind a consumer-level cable modem) whose only purpose in life is > to send heartbeat (and simple quality of service metrics) to a > pre-configured central aggregation service on the WAN.
> Question to the list: do you know of an alternative hardware solution > under $100 that would suffice -- and be of such quality that an > incumbent internet service provider will not thumb their nose at me when > I call in to report remote users are down based upon the loss of > heartbeats from the remote users? Pretty much any programmable/flashable little device would be sufficient, I think. Besides WRTG wireless routers as mentioned elsewhere, the smallest device I've set up so far was one of those Seagate docking stations (I think it was a "FreeAgent"?) which I got for $25 new; flashing it to Linux was straightforward, albeit non-trivial. Other cheap devices that are potentially flashable abound (Raspberry Pi, anyone?), including possibly teensy terminal servers, IP phones, used eBay old smartphone with a cracked screen for $20, etc. The ability to run PoE might also be an attractive feature. > The call tree is working (somewhat) to improve accountability and > response by the cable service provider ... but it is a waste of their > time as there is no formal "record" of outage events to spur the > provider to provide refunds for unscheduled service outages. Thus, I > am seeking a turnkey quality of service micro appliance that automates > (and documents) service outage notifications .. so as to allow me > (living in a city and my being on a different internet service provider) > to take on the role of calling the rural cable service provider and > claim (with authority) that I know that 10 individuals systems (who have > the heartbeat appliance installed) are down and that the cable service > provider needs to fix the issue... In this scenario, it sounds like you're depending on end-to-end connectivity, so remember that loss of ping/heartbeat isn't a guarantee that the failure isn't due to something else, though... -- Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc. Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York
