@outagesio_support Thanks, I'll tread lightly and give it a go. Will post how I get on.

AF

@jjuly

Hi,
Yes, you definitely have some problems both with the provider and beyond. As you said, beyond are informational but it doesn't mean they cannot be used.

I also notice that most of the problems are when you might be using the service especially if you work from home. Most are around the 10am to 3 pm and the next high is around 8pm

If you have not been able to get them to fix the problems, that's one thing but if they have admitted they know and cannot fix it, that's another. Let's assume they aren't fixing the problems and you've reported it multiple times. I'll also make the assumption that they aren't taking your facts/findings seriously.

In this sort of case, you should try to find one, two, more, neighbors that would be willing to install agents too. You can make the case that if you can show the proof you need, everyone will end up with better services.

Some providers count on the fact that most people will simply suck it up and go away. They aren't going to make costly repairs unless there is something affecting their bottom line.

However, if you can get others to join you, you can then show your correlated proof on their social pages. It's easy to dismiss one person but it's a whole lot harder when many people are complaining.

If they remove your posts, you could always talk to the city, find someone to listen to you, show them what you have and see if someone higher up will help make a case for you.

If most of the problems are with the providers upstream, you could try to reach them on social media as well.

And of course, we'll be happy to help decipher the data to help you.

In this day and age, as everything we do is being moved onto the Internet, there are no excuses for ongoing unreliable services.

Hi,

Can you try again please. There seemed to have been an issue with the sign up pages. You should be able to complete the sign up now.

Thank you!

Hi,

Other than pings and information about the agent communicating, nothing will show up until there are actual events.

Can you share the agent ID and I'll take a look to make sure everything looks ok.

Thanks again for your assistance. I tried a bunch of different combinations and I finally got it to work. It turns out my OCP profile had a missing last name. After I filled it in I passed the Let Us Know page and can now see the agent page. On the Update Account page, the last name field wasn't marked as required so I left it blank before, and I think that was causing the looping to occur.

Yes, most consumers just take it on the chin, it's less frustrating than fighting for what is right or what you are owed.

Yep, that was the agent in question, and it seems to be working now. Thank you for your help.

Hi,

Perhaps it was yourself that asked about this via email and you were given the price of $40.00 which was a mistake.

Asking the right person gave a price of $15.00 to the Phillipines.

We don't have pricing for some countries because the shipping costs are sometimes too high and most people aren't interested.

If you would like to order, please reply to the person that sent you that email and I'm sure they will work with you.

Thank you for using OutagesIO.

Hi,

I asked the developers about tihs and the problem is the help/information doesn't show that the scan only runs from port 1 to 1024.

We tested allowing a much larger range of ports and the problem was that when there are a large number of scans and ports, they take much too long to run. Also, most standard ports are under 1024.

I have created a new issue to not only add this mention but also to see if there is anything else we might be able to to in order to raise that port limit.

NOTICE: I think a moderator accidentally edited your last comment instead of replying. To fix this, I am copying their reply into this new comment.

It's good to hear that things have improved some. One issue we see regularly is that providers will make repairs, everything seems to work nicely for a while then slowly degrades again. This seems to be a common thread.

However, I'm now 5 days in and have started to get Outage speed tests showing (Black bars on the graph) yet there is no outage

shown on the outages graph or the "why my internet was down" list in light view.

Can anyone tell me why this might be?

This is a bug in the speed testing algorithm. There is a condition where the agent thinks there is a problem such as latency or a slow down which triggers these speed tests. The black bar is only supposed to show up after an outage.

The idea behind running the speed test after an outage is that over time, it might show a trend. It's not all that useful since speeds are constantly changing and typically, right after an outage, speeds are way back up at least for a while.

The reports are all about trends, it's what you see over longer periods of time but when you don't see an outage yet see the black bars, that's a bug we've been trying to iron out.

Got an email with this subject.

Agent number is not shown in my agents – I believe it refers to a software agent that I removed a long time ago.

But not sure how to tell. Says it will be removed in 30 days.

Yes, it would mean there is an old report being removed. I'll mention this to development because as you mention, you had deleted the agent, therefore, should not have received a notice about it. The notice is for those who have not deleted and may want to re-install it.

Hardware agent has been installed and working except it didn't report an outage that we had (about 20 minutes) a few days ago

There are many conditions which can cause loss of Internet access which aren't actually IP outages.

Meaning, not all loss of Internet access are TCP/IP AKA routing based problems but other things.

OutagesIO is built to mainly monitor IP outages with your provider but often, it's what you don't see that tells the story.

If you don't see IP based outages (logged outages in your reports) but you do experience loss of Internet access or obviously low speeds, the first step is to check everything in your own location to make sure nothing is failing such as a cable, dust in Ethernet connectors, the most basic things.

What OutagesIO cannot monitor are signal levels with cable and wireless providers/devices for example but when we're seeing loss of Internet access without outages, that's what is telling us that there are other problems to dig into or ask the provider about.

One great method to use is to find some neighbors that might use the service too. This way, you can compare and correlate your reported loss of Internet access and other findings so that even mystery problems become more obvious.

That said, we are working on another report that will show specifically non outage (IP) based loss of Internet access to help in exactly these situations.

The dev fixed the agent showing extended, but the reports are still not accessible.

I was speaking with the dev a few minutes ago, he logged in using your account and could access all of the historical reports.

Someone is reaching out to you now to see if they can help you personally as this seems to be escalating which is of no value to anyone.

Uninstalling/re-installing will not lose the data has it would already be sent to your reports. The only time you can lose data is if there is an outage in progress and you restart the agent or re-install it, then it will lose that current report.

I am now also having Agent Disconnected issues for no apparent reason. I reinstalled it once and it started working for a few hours,

now it is down again and if I restart or reinstall I lose data. That is not a good start, to having just upgrade my service level.

We have no issues finding out what the problem is, resolving it then restarting your extended from that point.

Might be better if an innocuous statement that things aren't off to a good start is ignored and the issues addressed, instead of a

defensive post that ignores the reported problem and tries to dress down the user!

Nothing was meant that way. Your mention of not getting off to a good start implies that upgrading to a paid level suddenly broke everything for you yet we see a large amount of collected data from before you upgraded. When someone complains about the service, we take it very seriously.

In this case, up until you purchased an extended upgrade for your reports, the agent collected a lof of data clearly showing that your connection is experiencing ongoing problems. Give us an opportunity to help you and please consider that text is never the same as face to face.

As I said, someone has reached out to you. Please consider working with that person so that you and we can resolve what ever is going on.

Thank you.

No problem. It's all fixed now as you said.

I've created an issue for the devs to look into next week.

Thanks for letting us know and for using OutagesIO.

I'm sure I don't have to mention it but it might help someone else that finds this post.

If/when there seems to be something happening with the Internet, please make sure the agent continues to run non stop.

A lot of people see the agent inactive or disaconnected in their dashboard and restart the agent which causes it to lose any actual outage data it might have been tracking.

The agent will always track outages but sometimes it takes some human intervention to decypher the results later. For example, you might still have Internet access but the agent is unable to reach the OutagesIO network. Things of that nature become clearer as data builds up and you start seeing problem points etc.

We'll be happy to help out once you start seeing this kind of information coming in. Having a neightbor or two that are using the same provider monitoring also is an excellent way to confirm provider issues.

Hi,

I'm sorry about this but the new speed test is still in testing. We had started rolling it out but found some problems that we need to solve.

Ping us again about this in a month or so if you've not seen it rolled out or have found any answers.

Understood. No, this cannot be accomplished at this time.

Hi again,

Maybe I am not seeing it but did you share your agent ID?

Hi Dean,

Not sure if you know but we've added excel downloads in some of the historical sections for Extended reports.

You announced a few weeks ago that you were stopping logging beyond your provider outages. I’m still getting these.

Have you not done this yet or do I need to upgrade my agents first?

Hi, no we've not removed those yet. It seems some want to know about beyond problems even if it is only informational.

The notice was eventually taken down.

Many of the outages I am seeing by getting emails are not being logged in the dashboard. Is this because they are very

short duration? The ones that are logged are usually in Denver 10 hops away, which is not of any concern.

Do you mean specifically outages or Inactive and maybe Disconnected emails? The emails will specify if the event is only known as Inactive or Disconnected unless there is specifically an IP outage. If there is no IP outage, the emails won't mention outages.

You can control those emails from the Notifications menu if you don't want to know about Inactive.