I think I have seen @scottalanmiller mention on here that he uses rocket chat for customers and for support. I had some questions comparing it to slack...
1.) Is it FOSS, download and host yourself for free?
2.) Is installing/managing it easy and low maintenance?
3.) Can a single install host multiple tenants
4.) Going with their hosting, can a $50 instance host mulitple tenants?
5.) How does this compare to just the free version of slack?
@gjacobse said in Phones Available: Yealink Used/New and Some Cisco:
@bigbear said in Phones Available: Yealink Used/New and Some Cisco:
I'll likely be happy to take a T38G with power supply. Didn't know it,.. but I'm just south of you in Lexington!
We actually had an office on Harrodsburg at previous company, incidentally QX wifi internet started in a small room on our floor.
@irj said in New web site:
@bigbear said in New web site:
@john11smith said in New web site:
Hi, I have established a new company and about to start looking for customers. Here is my website: https://nioss.co.uk/. Would appreciate a little criticism.
Checkout sites.envato.com I think its $4/month now. Really simple, looks decent, responsive. I made one before when they were beta took about 10 minutes.
Will get you something nice until you can get someone to do a WP site for you like hostadillo...
Cool. I have never heard of that before, but I do love envato. I would guess that some of their themes are used on theses sites?
I tried it out in beta and a little since then. They include the themes that they made for the service.
It seems to be getting better every month, is definitely the easiest thing I have ever used for a simple site. I am usually a wordpress guy.
So, last night I had everything up in about 20 mins after starting from scratch. I also learned not to skim and respond from my mobile browser.
I am very interested in learning how to provision via https without the endpoint manager if you are willing to share your setup!
Thanks for your help...
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@emad-r said in I am going to start an ISP:
Best of luck, if you pull this off, you will be your own boss.
Thanks. My only concern is I will be trading a much shorter commute for more working hours. Will I even see my kids during the week besides when they are already in bed?
This should be a given with any startup in its initial years. My older 2 kids are getting to the age that I would be teaching them to mount and sync CPE's and properly seal outdoor grommets 
When the first storm comes through and knocks all your antennas off spectrum you will have help.
@jaredbusch said in For Sale: Yealink T58V with and Expander (Open Box):
@momurda said in For Sale: Yealink T58V with and Expander (Open Box):
That is one fancy lookin phone.
It is their video phone.
For anyone who cares the T58A and T58V are identical and the V ships with the $80 Yealink USB camera.
The T56A can't process or display video.
I have been keeping aside video cams from the 58V and planning to order 58A phones and to ship the camera my future customers who want to try video.
Just thought I would post some throwback pics of my first big IT position, Level 3 Network Admin at Mead Paper Company circa 2001
30,000 global computers accessing an in-house data center in downtown Dayton, OH. On the Omega Screen cycled the status of our entire network. On 9/11 we turn the whole screen to the new minutes before the second plane hit.
!
In the new yealink 48s, is the Opus codec the only difference between the new model and the 48g?
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@coliver said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
Some tips...
1.) Never even think about building a tower. Make a deal for a building top or get with American Tower (http://www.americantower.com) if you cant get high enough.
Tower building and maintenance is a whole other business, any tower would end up costing 3 times what you are talking about.
2.) You will register with IANA as an autonomous network and get your own IP address range assignment. Its illegal to resell internet from Spectrum, etc
3.) Plenty of Tier 1 internet to contract with to your main tower site. Start with 2 connections, they will be redundant as your ip range will be hooked to a BGP. Any teir 1 internet provider will gladly walk you through all this to get your business
4.) Make sure your first site is as HIGH as possible.
5.) If you are going to bootstrap it (which is what UBNT is all about) you really should be thinking about any capital investments out of the wireless equipment.
And I would add to this, almost certainly you can lease a space in a tall building and get roof access, sometimes just for trading internet access to the building manager if they have offices on premise. You can also sell internet down through said building, link backhaul to nearby buildings and do the same.
I was going to mention that. One of the WISPs does that around here they paid for the backbone into the building and the lease is "free" for them.
first WISP I started circa 2001 we used water towers in a rural area as a starting point. We got it free just because the whole area only had dial up and the city couldnt get Time Warner to bring cable internet int.
The second time we were on top of the tallest building in a 60 mile radius with out initial office lease. Small data center in the building.
American Tower has been crucial for residential expansions. We built a tower site on a government/school leased land and it was a nightmare.
So you've been around this block a time or two, huh?
Had given serious thought to a 3rd round trip but, as I predicted, Spectrum halves pricing and doubled speeds around the tri-state. I think the more rural you are the better your chances of success are.
Guess I will put a sale on this today. Free shipping. Trying to make one trip to UPS as everything left in garage is likely going to storage unit this weekend.
Buzz here (cant remember his actual name) had been on the tape team for some 35 years, since the days live data ran from actual tape.
He didnt trust anyone on the NOC, and this day I remember him asking me if I was a "corporate spy" because I was taking some snaps of the server rooms with my 1 mega pixel digital camera.
I usually write my own shopping carts and process monthly subscriptions via authorize.net. Lately I have been looking at stripe.com but also looking at subscription management packages.
On this current project we have a small startup team and my hands are already full with our backend automation and provisioning stack.
Does anybody have an experience or recommendations for a full package or a managed service that automates sign up and subscription management. I would then look for that service to have an API or post to trigger my provisioning and processioning systems.
Hope that makes sense. I can literally do this with paypal but I prefer the way stripe.com handles direct deposits in a more timely manner.
@storageninja said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
I would try to keep the business itself as paperless as possible, but would give the sub the option either way.
This one is simple. Charge $5 more a month for paper billing and outsource it to someone who does paper billing.
You should check out zoho invoicing, they offer paper service. There stuff has come a LONG way. I was recently looking at using stripe.com and zoho for payments.
@quixoticjeremy said in Sodium Helpdesk: An Attachment Has Been Added:
This has been resolved and now looks as it should:
I kind of miss the old way now where the attachment was a surprise. This way I could troll another person in the ticket system.
But I suppose practicality dictates the current way.
So is it an internal only ticket system or something the end customers log in to as well?
@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 - Skype For Business - Cloud PBX:
@mike-davis said in Office 365 - Skype For Business - Cloud PBX:
Can you do what you do for under $20 per phone? (or under $30 after taxes) Can you do that without a long term contract?
Those are trivial numbers to hit. Even on month to month.
Yeah to answer @Mike-Davis's question we don't usually do a contract unless new phones other hardware is included.
@stacksofplates said in The High Cost of On Premises Infrastructure:
@JaredBusch said in The High Cost of On Premises Infrastructure:
The two biggest arguments that always have to be addressed are
- speed of access to file shares
- access to the client/server LoB app used now.
You normally flippant answer of don't use them is not the acceptable answer to the business principles that make the decisions. Yes, times are changing and WAN speeds and new technologies are moving things, but these two points have to be properly addressed to make any kind of realistic move to colocation for the SMB space.
The last place I worked had a very small number of employees (~15) but the size of the files they dealt with made it impractical to move data off site. With an 18Mb connection, doing CAD work with files that are multiple hundreds of MB in size isn't feasable. They use DropBox for some things, but the large majority had to be hosted on site.
We have a huge number of CAD files and maps in house as well. Around 10TB and at any moment we may have to browse and find something.
Have looked at Panzura and Nasuni a few times but the cost of a storage gateway is still somewhat high.
@jaredbusch said in If you are about to buy Yealink Phones...:
Not looking to buy phone gear before the end of the year, but if I find someone that is I know where to send them.
Thanks, I think I may inventory some of this since no one seems to be ordering the T5 series yet. Really thought those would be the new top seller by now, at least the T56a. But the 48s does have more screen/button space.
@Dashrender yeah or like $55 with Cloud PBX + $20 device management. Trying to think of what else we can throw on the Microsoft stack.
When will a Linux desktop go mainstream? If I were an IT Manager or IT Service Company I would spend all my time making that conversion. There are enough web apps and we even used a cloud version of CAD we've been testing for Autodesk for yours.
Whats the hold up?
