Customer: Your service is broken!
Me: Why do you think that?
Customer: because all the connections to it is down
Me: I will double check because all indications are it’s all fully working. Can you check your end please?
Customer: What information do you need?
Me: I don’t need information, I need you to check the configuration on your end please
Customer: It’s not our end, it’s yours!
Me: Let me check, but I would appreciate it if you could double check your end
A short time later…
Me: I can’t find any problems. I notice you’ve not been connected for over 2 weeks now
Customer: That’s because it’s been broken that long
Me: I see, so why didn’t you report it before?
Customer: We weren’t using it before, we need to now. How long before it’s fixed?
Me: As I said, I can’t see any problems our end, and other customers are connecting fine. What IP address are you connecting from?
Customer: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Me: I will put a network trace on that IP, please bear with me…
Ten minutes later…
Me: I see no traffic from that IP
Customer: You must be blocking it
Me: I’m tracing on our Internet gateways. If I was blocking it I would see the packets being blocked. I see nothing.
Customer: So… when is it likely to be fixed?
Me: Please can you check the configuration on your end
Customer:I will ask our technicians for information. What do you need?
Me: I need them to check they have the correct IP addresses and port numbers for the service
Customer: Our end is configured correctly.
Customer: It’s definitely your end!
Thinks for a few minutes…
Me: Can you get your technicians to do a packet capture and send it to me please?
Customer: I will ask…
30 minutes later…
Me: I now see IP traffic from you.
Me: I now see you have successfully connected to the service.
Customer: yes, it’s working now. We found a mis-configuration our end…
SMH!
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