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While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if

by tw04 7y ago

While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if you want proactive support. Claiming they need to dump the feature entirely is more than a bit overly dramatic. The option to disable it was absolutely the right move for them to make and it should’ve been there from the start. Everyone claiming they should not have any phone home at all hasn’t spent much time in the enterprise hardware world...

esotericn 7y ago
They need it to be opt-in, such that the hardware I have already bought does not begin sending data arbitrarily upon an update.
Silhouette 7y ago
While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if you want proactive support. No, they don't. We work with some clients who are in a very similar area, on the development side. Anyone who thought this was a good idea would get bounced out of the room so fast their feet wouldn't touch the floor until they were in the corridor. It is absolutely not the norm to upload data from within the customer's network without their knowledge or consent.
- syshum 7y ago
  >>It is absolutely not the norm to upload data Yea it really is, All the major Players in WiFi do it, most even need to talk to a licensing server at regular intervals (which include Telemetry data) and there is no Opt-Out (looking at you Meraki )
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    Citation very much needed. I do a lot of work in this part of the industry. If you want to even get into the conversation with some of the big financial services, healthcare providers and so on, you need to comply with their standard rules, which might have a checklist hundreds of points long, mostly non-negotiable. You're not going to get those deals with mandatory telemetry no matter who your boss plays golf with.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Read more carefully. Almost all of your enterprise vendors do this today. Some of them even give Sales Engineers real-time access to performance and utilization metrics. It’s a great way to get competitive intelligence about other companies.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    You misunderstand. My business develops software, including software that runs on networked devices, and we have never had a client ask for phoning home like that. In fact, it has often been a requirement that the device could operate with no Internet access at all, because a lot of security-conscious customers such as those in finance or healthcare have strict rules about this.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      I did. Mea culpa
    - tw04 7y ago
      Can you name one? IBM Cisco Dell/EMC HPe-Aruba Arista All phone home. Who is this magical enterprise company that has no phone-home? This farcical: claiming there are issues with healthcare and finance is complete rubbish. They aren't phoning home patient data, they're phoning home telemetry and health status of the hardware. I can tell you with 100% certainty that both segments have literally hundreds of thousands of hardware devices phoning home to their respective manufacturers without ANY issue.
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        There is nothing magical about it. If you were correct and no-one made enterprise networking gear without phone-homes, quite a few of our clients' customers wouldn't have a network, since they are strictly prohibited from buying any equipment that does. You seem to be extrapolating from limited experience, possibly of a few specific product ranges or licensing models, and assuming that the whole industry works the same way. It does not.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Since when does Uni-Fi have proactive support?
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  That's kind of the point, isn't it? If they get crash dumps they can fix bugs that aren't reported by the (likely very large) install base not savvy enough to realize that there's a bug they should be sending crash reports for. I have run into this at literally every job I've ever had. Make notes, gather evidence, and file bug reports is just a foreign concept to some people.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    One issue is that it's a lot of work that, in my experience, usually doesn't go anywhere. You found the problem and worked around it, gave their people what you had, but they keep asking you to try things and gather more data for 3 weeks while you're trying to get shit done.

by tw04 7y ago

esotericn 7y ago

They need it to be opt-in, such that the hardware I have already bought does not begin sending data arbitrarily upon an update.

Silhouette 7y ago

While I totally get wanting the option to opt-out of phone home, literally every enterprise hardware vendor has phone home and expects you to have it enabled if you want proactive support. No, they don't. We work with some clients who are in a very similar area, on the development side. Anyone who thought this was a good idea would get bounced out of the room so fast their feet wouldn't touch the floor until they were in the corridor. It is absolutely not the norm to upload data from within the customer's network without their knowledge or consent.

syshum 7y ago
>>It is absolutely not the norm to upload data Yea it really is, All the major Players in WiFi do it, most even need to talk to a licensing server at regular intervals (which include Telemetry data) and there is no Opt-Out (looking at you Meraki )
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Citation very much needed. I do a lot of work in this part of the industry. If you want to even get into the conversation with some of the big financial services, healthcare providers and so on, you need to comply with their standard rules, which might have a checklist hundreds of points long, mostly non-negotiable. You're not going to get those deals with mandatory telemetry no matter who your boss plays golf with.
Spooky23 7y ago
Read more carefully. Almost all of your enterprise vendors do this today. Some of them even give Sales Engineers real-time access to performance and utilization metrics. It’s a great way to get competitive intelligence about other companies.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  You misunderstand. My business develops software, including software that runs on networked devices, and we have never had a client ask for phoning home like that. In fact, it has often been a requirement that the device could operate with no Internet access at all, because a lot of security-conscious customers such as those in finance or healthcare have strict rules about this.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I did. Mea culpa
  - tw04 7y ago
    Can you name one? IBM Cisco Dell/EMC HPe-Aruba Arista All phone home. Who is this magical enterprise company that has no phone-home? This farcical: claiming there are issues with healthcare and finance is complete rubbish. They aren't phoning home patient data, they're phoning home telemetry and health status of the hardware. I can tell you with 100% certainty that both segments have literally hundreds of thousands of hardware devices phoning home to their respective manufacturers without ANY issue.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      There is nothing magical about it. If you were correct and no-one made enterprise networking gear without phone-homes, quite a few of our clients' customers wouldn't have a network, since they are strictly prohibited from buying any equipment that does. You seem to be extrapolating from limited experience, possibly of a few specific product ranges or licensing models, and assuming that the whole industry works the same way. It does not.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Since when does Uni-Fi have proactive support?

Godel_unicode 7y ago
That's kind of the point, isn't it? If they get crash dumps they can fix bugs that aren't reported by the (likely very large) install base not savvy enough to realize that there's a bug they should be sending crash reports for. I have run into this at literally every job I've ever had. Make notes, gather evidence, and file bug reports is just a foreign concept to some people.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  One issue is that it's a lot of work that, in my experience, usually doesn't go anywhere. You found the problem and worked around it, gave their people what you had, but they keep asking you to try things and gather more data for 3 weeks while you're trying to get shit done.