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What Software Should ISPs Distribute and Support?
BroadbandBradley asks: "Many ISPs give their customers a software package to install with their service like a branded browser/email package. Some also include network diagnostics tools, even remote connection VNC packages for technical reps to do remote support. The ISP will then tell customer that they'll only get help if they're using that package. What features are good or bad, and what should or shouldn't be included on the client side? My question to Slashdot readers is, what software and services should ISPs distribute and support?"
the answer is "only products that you have researched and are familiar with". That means that the software is well documented and that you have links to known bugs & other issues. It helps if you have an inside person in that company too. Keep a knowledge base for your employees to eliminate redundant wild goose chases.
On a side note, you must be pretty brave to be starting a business in a saturated market during an economic downturn. Know something we don't? Most ISPs have already been absorbed by the national chains (AOL, Yahoo, etc...). Good luck.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Go ahead and mod me down for being a troll or offtopic, but take a look at the other posts here. They prove that the question was dumb to begin with.
To be more explicit, this question is unanswerable in its current form. More information is needed:
What user base are you going after? Linux users? Windows users? What OSes are you going to support? What does your technical support organization look like? Are you gunning for experienced surfers? Total newbies?
:Peter
I've gotten CDs from various ISPs over the years. The only one I've ever kept (or even used) was one that had every single RFC ever written burned onto it. Massively helpful, instructive, and educational from a historical standpoint.
ISPs should be providing infrastructure. Leave the software to the users. Save money on providing and supporting software and spend it on paying those support people enough to actually know what they are doing when customers call because something isn't working.
If you really need to distribute software, then share those if/else click through support files that the tech support people are [poorly] using. Of course, I may just be bitter having used AOL's and Comcast's "support" services.
*snerk*
Bwahhahahaha...
Oh, man, you are so deluded.
Do you know where the people who really, *really* know how to do tech support go to?
The answer is: Ding! Anywhere but tech support. Because tech support work blows, period. It's like working the fry line at McDonalds - once you've grown beyond the ability to do fries, you do whatever it takes to get out of having to do it. Like programming, sysadmin, or even nothing to do with computers at all.
In other words, the people who would make fantastic tech support people get away from tech support, because those very skills lend themselves to (one hopes) better employment, better pay, and less shackling to a phone line talking to dips who think they know more than you. What do you end up with after they all go away? The dregs. Hence, your problem.
Besides, the average geek should be able to track down whatever knowledge he needs without having to ask some anonymous person on the phone.
Most tech support people I know started out as curious geeks, and only became tech support because they found a job where they could get paid for their obscure knowledge. I was one of those guys, and I will never, never, never do tech support again. Ditto for the fry line.
GMFTatsujin
I just want my ISP to provide a (reliable, fast) connection to the internet. End of story.
Fortunately that's what my ISP provides. (Oh, yeah, they offer an email account, but I prefer to run my own domain.)
Any software or service an ISP offers beyond that is costing somebody money. Guess who.
-- Alastair
Do make very clear your e-mail storage quota, and establish a mechanism for notifying them when they approach that quota (probably just an email message). If possible, have two quotas, one that's an absolute limit and one they get a few days warning on.
Sorry, I know this isn't really a software issue, but it can be a major pain to try and swap important files like PDF documents with people and all of a sudden you are not receiving the messages and, in many cases, the ISP is not even bothering to bounce them back at the sender. It's one of those detail issues you never think of when you start using an ISP (unless you're grizzled) but ends up becoming very important.
You must mean like this one. Selected quotes:
I moved into a new apartment near the end of 2000. Broadband was not (affordably) available in my neighborhood, and so I opted for a dial-in through a company named MStar. Boy was that a mistake.
I was running Linux on my primary machine, but they sent me Windows-only sign-up software on a CD-ROM. So I fired up my old system from when I was a freshman, which still had Windows '95 on it, and signed up. Their software loaded onto my system, took the liberty of placing a custom "quick-launch" bar onto my desktop, and then proceeded to log me in and activate my account.
The browser on the quick-launch bar was IE, but I prefered Netscape. However, when I tried to launch Netscape, the window would blip open for a split second and then close. Confused, I closed the quick-launch program (which disconnected me from the network) and tried again; this time it worked. MStar's trojan sofware was literally blocking me from running Netscape.
Their software, which connecting, would ask for a username and password, which is just a front for a "real" username and password that were secretly passed to the server when initiating the PPP connection. I used some software to capture my real username and password, and then I set up a standard dial-up account. When I would try to access the net on my Linux box, the Windows box would be able to auto-dial the connection. That worked nicely for a while.
Until a month later when banner ads from MStar started appearing at the bottom of every page that I loaded. Their servers were modifying every web page that I retrieved by placing an image and a link to MStar-related sites! There was a "disable banner for 5 minutes" link in the banner, which simply called a Perl script with a parameter of 5.
Oh, and did I mention that MStar performs ISP-side web censorship? They blocked Adobe's web site once. I had to set up a proxy server on another network to get around that little issue.
With the help of a filtering proxy and a call to that script with a parameter of "9999999" in my browser's home page setting, I was finally able to get clean access to the net. A few months later, I moved and had broadband access. But I will never consider going with MStar again.
The next time I search for an ISP, I will only subscribe to a service that interferes the least with my connection to the Internet.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine