Tech Forum

Being the STS this past 18 months now I have come across several situations where I would receive a call from a Priesthood leader or clerk that their network is down on a Sunday morning. There has been times I would have to drive to a couple of buildings for the same problem on the same day. The outcome on some of these emergencies have been legitimate issues and most not. My stake is not a small nor a huge area but when traveling from one building to another building it can take up to 2 hours of drive time one way.
To help me to cut down on my drive time, my Stake President is now requiring the Bishops/Brach Presidents to have Unit Technology Specialist to support their unit and to be the initial troubleshooter of the “Meetinghouse Internet”…the UTS will not have access to the “Meetinghouse Internet” network equipment but they will be in the position to let me know if cause of the trouble is a operator error or it is a network issue.
I am sure that I am not the only STS that have come across some of the same issues that I have come across and that they also had to make the same decision to "drive or not to drive" to the church building(s).
One of the things I have noticed is that I always get these calls always comes on Sunday and not during the week. When I arrive on site and do some investigation, sometime I would discover that the network trouble started earilier in the week and that was caused by the ISP modem being down due to a storm or something else...or that the CISCO 881 is not working correctly or it has lost sync with the ISP modem.
Now the question is how to can I cut down the unnecessary drive time on Sunday...

Some facts I know;
·I know that I can ping a CISCO 881 remotely when I am behind the Church’s Firewall
·I know that I can ping the ISP Modem in front of the Church’s Firewall
·Which means that I need monitor both routers to know which one is down
·I know that there are software programs available to monitor the network and page you when it can no longer be pinged or it is bouncing.
I was wondering if anyone has looked into this option or not…and if so what are they doing?

The answer for this is pretty easy, but you will have to wait just a bit longer.

Its called Technology Manager it has been rolled out to beta sites. I am sure it will allow us to monitor the routers and make minor changes remotely.

rolandc wrote:The answer for this is pretty easy, but you will have to wait just a bit longer.
Its called Technology Manager it has been rolled out to beta sites. I am sure it will allow us to monitor the routers and make minor changes remotely.

Hmmm, sounds very interesting.

Aaron Z

rolandc wrote:The answer for this is pretty easy, but you will have to wait just a bit longer.

Its called Technology Manager it has been rolled out to beta sites. I am sure it will allow us to monitor the routers and make minor changes remotely.

Only works with sites that have the 881W Firewall, those of us still waiting and told that the slash in FMG budget will eliminate them being installed in 2013... what do we do, seriously we wait until 2014 for this benefit.....

This was officially announced December 7.

KeithWilson wrote:This was officially announced December 7.

You can view the broadcast here: http://broadcast.lds.org/ICS/techtalk/2012-12-07.html

At this point TM seems to give some information about the firewall setup and if CHQ sees it. Nothing changeable that I can see. But there are additional features in the works. Exactly what and when, we'll have to wait and see.