Voxitas and the hardware VPN

At the beginning of December, a client of mine (Pacific Housing Advisors) moved their office a mere quarter-mile over in Kailua. This in and of itself is nothing earth-shattering, but did lead to a fiasco for Voxitas and what I'm sure was a waste of resources for my client.

The original office move was scheduled for November 1, 2009. Voxitas' part in this was to reconfigure a hardware VPN that that was deployed by Straitshot. Somehow the account ended up changing hands to the former. Anyhow, due to construction delays the move was not initiated until December 1, 2009. While I am no expert in IPsec, I believe that their level 3 device had to be reconfigured at the time of the move, so that it could be reconfigured by a Voxitas technician while they still had access, then the device would be ready for a physical move to the new site and bound IP provided by the ISP (SystemMetrics Corp). That was the idea, anyway.

December 8, 2009

I get a call from the client to head down to their office in Kailua and sort out the aftermath of the move, get them reconnected to the internet, etc. I un-box the preconfigured SADSL modems and PoE switch from SystemMetrics and set everything up. A technician from the ISP was due in the immediate future, but I was already there. Unfortunately, the wiring was done incorrectly by the electrician. Got everything up on a Wireless Access Point and software VPN's until the hardware could get sorted.

December 15, 2009

Took care of a few things for the client, then spent a bit nagging Voxitas to send me a new (configured) device. No commitment. Plenty of finger-pointing.

December 16, 21 and 22, 2009

More phone calls. E-mails that never get answered. One of their tier-1 techs begins to recognize me and point me in the right direction. Verdal Harvey, you are appreciated for being the person at your company to answer the phone. For not saying "I'm gonna have to get back to you on that". It made it quite a bit easier. Finally got assurances that a new device would be shipped out.

December 28, 2009

Christmas came and went. I got a present in the form of a Linksys RVS4000 from Voxitas. Plugged it in with a big smile on my face. Internet didn't immediately go down, so I took the generous liberty of assuming it was configured. Not in the slightest. Not even the appropriate DCHP block, it was stock. Jim LaPointe of Voxitas tells me that he can't get connected to the device due to peculiarities with the ISP [note: SystemMetrics is the most rock solid ISP that I've known of here in Hawaii, and mean that with glittering, tear-filled eyes]. I leave and Jim affirms that he'll get everything configured.

December 29, 2009

My client calls me at 0500 HST, of which I was in no condition to answer at the time. I return their call around 0900 to find out that they have no internet. Work stoppage. Given that the only thing that changed was Voxitas, I gave them a call. OMG! They can't ping their box! Nobody decides to tell me these things, they just kept quiet until I was calling them asking what happened to the router. A little troubleshooting later, the router is not doing anything strange to the network and general service is restored. Jim tells me he'll configure it again.

December 30, 2009

I'm losing my senses. When my client calls me again to tell me of work stoppage thanks to no internet, I giggle and say: "It's Voxitas. Be there in a bit." I'm fatigued and appropriately grumpy from all of these consecutive early-morning service calls. John Thompson of Voxitas was as far up the grapevine as I managed to get escalated, prior I'd heard the man's name but thought he was a figment of the imagination since he returned no calls or e-mails. He guaranteed me that it would be running, that he would take a personal interest in it.

Instead, the device crashes again before I've even gotten 5 miles away. Turns out the Linksys fried itself. The brand new Linksys RVS4000. I'm somewhat grateful for the short transit back. John Thompson digs up the credentials to log in to the older FortiGate FortiNet 50B that was previously working and reconfigure it. He logs in and fiddles with it while I figure out how to set the IP range that I want on the local network so that I can get back to work fixing non-Voxitas-related problems.

In conclusion, I feel this was horribly mismanaged. Higher ups at Voxitas allowed this ticket to stagnate and consequently one of their customers to sit and twiddle their thumbs without service and even at a couple junctures cutting the internet themselves.