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verix
join:2004-12-30
Oakland, CA

1 edit

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verix to rblizz

Member

to rblizz

Re: CC Disaster

said by rblizz:

Which, of course, is beside the point. CallCentric is the company being attacked for not having something it never claimed to have.

No, it is very much the point. You two are claiming that just because geo redundancy was not advertised on the CC site, then it becomes the customer's fault. This ignores how most, if not all, voip customers expect providers to have such redundancies. Heck, one of the main banners on the CC site is a picture of the globe. Now people know the truth.

I'm not bashing CC. But throwing out falsities as refutation is wrong.
PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

said by verix:

This ignores how most, if not all, voip customers expect providers to have such redundancies.

I never did.

I've used Voipo, Vitelity, FlowRoute, CallWithUs, and Localphone, without wondering for a second about that.

My guess is that most of [those] providers don't have it.

No one ever discussed it much until Voip.MS, and my impression is that they set their system up that way out of a deliberate strategy of differentiation....which was very effective for their growth.

Anveo came along after that, and they almost [had] to go with multipops (in their case 3).
said by verix:

Heck, one of the main banners on the CC site is a picture of the globe.

The "globe" shows the continental US and Canada, and promotes their North America 500 calling plan.

Seems logical enough, and does not have any broader implication.
verix
join:2004-12-30
Oakland, CA

verix

Member

said by PX Eliezer704:

The "globe" shows the continental US and Canada, and promotes their North America 500 calling plan.

Seems logical enough, and does not have any broader implication.

Right, but you understand what I mean, no? With this "globalized" world we live in and the Internet routing around problems, people expect things to work as long as they have network access. Voip providers are nowhere near the size of Yahoo. But if Yahoo were to have such problems that prevented loading of the main site, you'd at least expect them to throw up a parking page.
A_VoIPer7
join:2009-11-04

A_VoIPer7 to PX Eliezer704

Member

to PX Eliezer704
said by PX Eliezer704:

No one ever discussed it much until Voip.MS, and my impression is that they set their system up that way out of a deliberate strategy of differentiation....which was very effective for their growth.

I was doing a search for previous discussions about how multiple accounts are handled with E911 implementations and I came across this thread. It actually is more interesting to read with this thread's context in mind rather than the E911 threads.

I'm glad CC is back up and I hope no other provider has to go through what they have in the last month.
nitzan
Premium Member
join:2008-02-27

1 recommendation

nitzan to PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

to PX Eliezer704
said by PX Eliezer704:

I've used Voipo, Vitelity, FlowRoute, CallWithUs, and Localphone, without wondering for a second about that.

My guess is that most of [those] providers don't have it.

Actually most of these providers do have multiple geo locations.

FlowRoute has servers in Las Vegas and Phoenix.
CallWithUs has servers in California and Michigan.
Vitelity has servers in Dallas and Boston.

Other providers with multiple geo locations: Anveo, Voip.MS, Future Nine
PX Eliezer704
Premium Member
join:2008-08-09
Hutt River

PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

I don't know if CallWithUs still does, but perhaps Sohapkin can tell us that.

So does Voipo? PhonePower?

I honestly don't know (nor particularly care either way)....

----------------------------

It is interesting that you are using the term "server" and "geo location" interchangably.

That's what this whole debate is about, really. They are not the same, in my view.

Anyone can have a remote server looked after by someone else.

*

Which approach makes for a more stable life?

The sailor who has casual girlfriends in Newark, Norfolk, Miami, and Los Angeles....

....or the older guy who has a faithful wife in Boston, and that's it.

It can be argued both ways.

Yes, I am sure that CC will do something to get some out-of-town girlfriends.

The damn irony is, if not for this one particular unusual storm, this whole issue would probably never have come up for the rest of my life. I don't know about yours....

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

4 edits

Davesnothere to verix

Premium Member

to verix
said by verix:

said by rblizz:

Which, of course, is beside the point. CallCentric is the company being attacked for not having something it never claimed to have.

No, it is very much the point.

You two are claiming that just because geo redundancy was not advertised on the CC site, then it becomes the customer's fault.

This ignores how most, if not all, voip customers expect providers to have such redundancies....

 
Agreed.

CallCentric could have been more clear [on their website] about not having this, just as the other providers in many cases have been passing up an opportunity to advertise such in the event that they DO have 'it'.

This all seems too political, and personally, I'm about SICK of 'caveat emptor'.

Doctor PX, can you help me with THAT ?

There, I just stuck out my tongue and said "AAAAARGHHH" for you.
Iscream
Premium Member
join:2009-02-17
New York, NY

2 recommendations

Iscream

Premium Member

Callcentric was absolutely clear about "it".

I personally, on _this_ very site, clearly and loudly, multiple times WROTE that Callcentric has ONLY ONE site and that it doesn't have geo-redundancy.

And that it (Callcentric) is against the CHEAP and GIMMICKY ways of doing it. That Callcentric values at first a service quality (with everything attributing to it) and at second - it most counts _economics_ of a business (because it does business at its own cost as opposed to "other people's money"). That "economics" was at that time AGAINST having 2nd site because either budget was insufficient or the quality would SUFFER.

And I can repeat the same AGAIN. Aloud. So most of you [experts] CANNOT say it again that Callcentric wasn't clear about it.

But YOU - YOU WILL DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN - because your memory is short, because the only voice you want to hear - is your own voice leading the masses toward your "geo-redundant" idea (it resembles something 100 years old World International" idea spelled by communists). Idea which is NOT _sound_ economically. Which is DESTRUCTIVE for a small business like ours. But you WANT us to play by your rules because then either we'll be dead or everybody will get an average "gray" service with multiple "value", 2nd value, "premium" and other shitty choices - but all will be "equal".

You know, as one classic novelist wrote (Bulgakov, "Devil in Moscow") - "the Sturgeon cannot be of 2nd sort - the Sturgeon can only be the 1st sort". Callcentric DOES provide the 1st sort service, with the best voice quality, best reliability, easiest setup and best in industry [invented by ourselves and copied by many] trouble-ticketing system.

Just a few articles above were 2 posts referring at my previous explanations of how the network works, latencies and other things. Among those explanations were very clear DECLARATIONS about the fact that Callcentric had ONLY one site, but that site being made bullet-proof in Tier-1 data-center of its own in the telecom building. Did anyone of "experts" who publicly expressed their "opinions" - remembered about that? (thanks a lot to A_Voiper and Hardly, from my heart!).

But Callcentric cannot at this time (although it was already much closer to that just 6 weeks ago - we have developed and planned on opening a manned, fully equipped site in Canada because Canada is strategically very important for our CLEC operations as well as it would allow us to provide, to some extent, geographically distributed services) build and maintain a REAL second/redundant location - because Callcentric cannot do it BAD - that would impact the whole independent VoIP industry.

Unfortunately, the hit on our budget was HUGE - so much HUGE that I believe many smaller SIP providers have not spent that much all together, during last few years.

More details to follow - only because this thread is watched by very many people whom I consider as real experts and who do really want to know how it was and what to expect from Callcentric.

Oh b/w - that thread of yours »Where are the SERVERS ? - Summary - unfortunately is complete and not relevant BS; it's not worth time spent on reading. It's a place where people who don't have real information about the subject - have posted details bearing NO technical meaning nor weight, but having strictly cheap marketing intentions.

Well, at the end what matters - it's the voice quality at first. The rest is least important. Sure, after people try those "geo-redundant" providers - they're most welcome to Callcentric (or come back - for those who were angry or frustrated and were lured by those ground-less speculations to other providers).

Yes, I'm SICK of posts like the one I'm replying to, but have to use and participate in it.
adatech
join:2010-04-23

1 edit

3 recommendations

adatech

Member

I've lurked for a long time in the various CC threads (concerning both the DDoS and the hurricane). I've seen a lot of accusations about anonymous attacks, underhanded business practices, etc.

What I can say is this. I've been a CallCentric customer for a couple years. And I've recently submitted a request to port my DID to Voip.ms.

My reasons are as follows. I will note that, as an overarching point, the tone of IScream's posts has not exactly played well in my mind. In the cold light of posts on a forum, without the subtle nuances of speech, his posts come across as presumptive, arrogant, and dismissive to what I see, as a consumer, as being very very legitimate concerns. But it also was not ultimately a factor I considered in switching. This is more just a global comment that companies should be aware of the representatives they send out to forums, and the tone of the posts that 'official' representatives provide.

1. Georedundancy: I don't really care if I can select multiple servers, or if that is transparent to me, or what not. What I do care about is a provider having in place systems so that there is no single point of physical failure -- or providing substantial mitigation if there is a single point (see below). From everything I've read, CC really did put all its eggs in one basket, without even a cold backup location that could be spun up. Will there be another hurricane of this size to hit NYC? Probably not anytime soon. But could there be a steampipe explosion, an inadvertent sprinkler activation, etc.? Assuredly. It seems like many other providers talked about in these forums do have some sort of redundancy (I've seen Voip.ms, Future9, and others discussed -- a non-exhaustive list for sure).

2. Mitigation of failures: IScream talks about CallCentric being in a "bullet-proof . . . Tier-1 data-center of its own in the telecom building". But as we found out, this "bullet-proof" location did not have diesel generators and relied only on short-term UPS backup. Similarly situated providers and other data centers were able to switch to diesel and continue running despite the loss of mains power. Yes, I've seen the posts about how NYC bans tenants from installing generators, and only allows landlords to do so. But that doesn't seem like it's an excuse, that to me is a sign of additional failure to mitigate -- CC chose to situate itself in a building without industry-standard power protection equipment (aka diesel).

3. Uptime matters: I disagree with IScream, "voice quality" is not the number one concern. Uptime is. Or, if you want to put it another way, there is no voice quality without a powered server.

Ultimately I chose to switch to Voip.ms because they had a few features I found attractive, and their distributed server system makes more sense to me in a period of time when natural disasters (at least appear) to be getting more severe. Living in California, I'm all too aware of the dangers mother nature poses (Earthquake Country!). NYC is subject to hurricanes and terrorists, the midwest to tornados and floods, the west coast to earthquakes and wildfires. But the odds of multiple disasters hitting multiple regions simultaneously seems low.

I sympathize with the employees of CC who have had a rough month, but other providers trucked through. A company's disaster recovery, data backup, etc. plans are only as good as the first time they are tested. CC's failed, other's did not. I hope it's a learning experience for CC, as I think this marketplace could use as many vibrant competitors as possible.
nitzan
Premium Member
join:2008-02-27

1 recommendation

nitzan to Iscream

Premium Member

to Iscream
Just to make sure I got this right: in essence CallCentric has no intention of providing its customers with a disaster recovery site at this point in time?

VexorgTR
join:2012-08-27
Sheffield Lake, OH

VexorgTR

Member

said by nitzan:

Just to make sure I got this right: in essence CallCentric has no intention of providing its customers with a disaster recovery site at this point in time?

Good grief dude...... now you're just being a jerk.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

4 edits

1 recommendation

Davesnothere to Iscream

Premium Member

to Iscream
said by Iscream:

Callcentric was absolutely clear about "it"....

....Yes, I'm SICK of posts like the one I'm replying to, but have to use and participate in it.

 
I realize that much of your latest post is directed at me (THIS time), though I'm not the only one raising the very same points on different hours or days here - I'm just freshest in your mind - and I accept that.

And I have also tried to be objective and sympathetic to what yourself and the other hard-working individuals have been and still are enduring in doing your respective jobs at CallCentric, and if you have read everything I have posted in this forum, then you have read those particular posts as well. - I absolutely am not insensitive to that side of things, and I cannot praise everyone enough for making the best of each situation as it has befallen you all.

It does not change however, the way that I and certain other posters feel about priorities, and to some degree, I reckon that you and I may have to agree to disagree on some of that.

As for past posting in this busy forum about what technical attributes which CC does or does not have, no matter how clear that you may well have been, posts and threads get unfortunately buried quickly, and besides, this site is not representative of the mainstream general public, most of whom have no idea that it exists.

MY references were instead to what info is on the CallCentric website, and while I understand that it is by nature counterproductive to advertise exactly which products/services/features that a company does NOT offer, surely there must be an alternate choice of words which would still state it more clearly than before, yet without self-denigration (I hope).

And since the bulk of CallCentric's customer base knows of THAT site, that is why I concentrated on what I had or had not read (or interpreted) there.

None of this would have mattered without the Sandystorm bringing it to a head, but going forward is [to me] what this discussion is now about, and my views are more moderate than those of many of the others (including some anons), who often post and run, and leave the rest of us to respond when sometimes we should have left it alone.

BTW, I learned an awful lot from what people posted in that thread of mine - the one for which you do not see a purpose - a lot which I did not know before - and I trust that some other folks did too.

I wish yourself and the company well, and am still a customer, albeit a vocal and opinionated one.

Cheers !
Iscream
Premium Member
join:2009-02-17
New York, NY

Iscream to nitzan

Premium Member

to nitzan
Nitzan - you do realize that you could have asked "this" question by communicating with Callcentric's support, don't you?

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

Davesnothere to nitzan

Premium Member

to nitzan
said by nitzan:

Just to make sure I got this right: in essence CallCentric has no intention of providing its customers with a disaster recovery site at this point in time?

 
What I read from Iscream's last post was that the mitgation of the DDoS attacks sapped the company's budget, and is making it necessary for them to postpone whatever plans they already had in place for doing a proper job on those other things.

Iscream please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
nitzan
Premium Member
join:2008-02-27

nitzan

Premium Member

said by Davesnothere:

said by nitzan:

Just to make sure I got this right: in essence CallCentric has no intention of providing its customers with a disaster recovery site at this point in time?

What I read from Iscream's last post was that the mitgation of the DDoS attacks sapped the company's budget, and is making it necessary for them to postpone whatever plans they already had in place for doing a proper job on those other things.

Ahh, that's understandable. Nobody should expect them to come up with a disaster recovery facility overnight.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

2 edits

Davesnothere to PX Eliezer704

Premium Member

to PX Eliezer704
said by PX Eliezer704:

I don't know if CallWithUs still does, but perhaps Sohapkin can tell us that.

So does Voipo? PhonePower? ....

The CallWithUs server info is in a direct link inside of the direct-linked post.
»Re: Where are the SERVERS ? - Summary
said by PX Eliezer704:

said by verix:

This ignores how most, if not all, voip customers expect providers to have such redundancies.

I never did.

I've used Voipo, Vitelity, FlowRoute, CallWithUs, and Localphone, without wondering for a second about that.

My guess is that most of [those] providers don't have it.

No one ever discussed it much until Voip.MS, and my impression is that they set their system up that way out of a deliberate strategy of differentiation....which was very effective for their growth....

So then here is the link to the complete thread again, covering many providers and where their servers are :
»SERVER & GENERATOR LOCATIONS
said by PX Eliezer704:

....The damn irony is, if not for this one particular unusual storm, this whole issue would probably never have come up for the rest of my life. I don't know about yours....

Might be true. - I posted a similar comment in my last reply to Iscream. - BTW, I am 58.
Iscream
Premium Member
join:2009-02-17
New York, NY

Iscream to Davesnothere

Premium Member

to Davesnothere
Dave - it was NOT directed at you personally. It's just happened that you've been a device (speaker) which aloud was saying the things that I was and am against personally and as an employee of service provider being "dissected" for no reason by multiple, simultaneous and having no technical grounds threads.

And the only reason of all those threads was and is - to cause to Callcentric a maximal damage in any possible ways. This is why posters here looked at an unusual number of anonymous posters not relevant to thread's subject - neither now nor during the 4 week long thread literally destroying (of heavily attempting to) our operations by suggesting different (idiotic) solutions and/or demanding things not bearing economical reasons.

And yes, if anybody like Nitzan may ask it again - Callcentric, at this time, doesn't have plans to build something which was referred to by your thread as "geographical redundancy". Callcentric may, at some time in future, open an another division in different geographical location. But the primary reason for that would different from those ones spelled in your thread.

Again - because I do understand how networks are built and what actual redundancy means (and what is "fake" or saying it differently - suppressing symptoms of problem in an attempt to convince others that problem's gone).

Callcentric is NOT attempting, never tried, to say that it's geographically redundant. What Callcentric attempted and still does best - it's providing quality and dependable service.

And if for somebody or some business it's not acceptable - then this is their decision and they may try to find out something that may work for them. But without groundless and purely marketing declarations.

And, if somebody is interested, Callcentric provided 100% uptime during the period of October 2009 till October 2012 (as well as the same was true prior Oct. 2009). I'll leave it upon a reader to decide what the 2 day outage, during 3 year period, might be in mathematical equation, but I'm sure - many companies discussed on those boards have had more down-time during the same period than Callcentric while providing incomparably worse service and voice quality.

Again - Callcentric is a local, national, small business located in one single, but bullet-proof point of presence. Considering the hurricane Sandy - point of failure. Considering hurricane Irene which covered exact the same trajectory - still most reliable point of presence (because many well known carriers and operators went down). Considering the current economics - neither feasible nor possible to build a remote POP according to our service quality standards. Considering a theory of probability - doesn't make any financial sense at all.

If this "geo-" point is so important to somebody - I'd suggest to check first many other parameters of a prospect operator they may choose for their needs.

I still owe a detailed report, as I promised earlier, to honorable citizens of those forums.

Now - Nitzan, I wish you a good luck with your business!
Iscream

1 recommendation

Iscream to adatech

Premium Member

to adatech
Thanks for expressing your views. I can "hear" them from your point of view. But my point of view - shows that you're missing important pieces of information therefore your point of view is not correct from engineering prospective. And this is not something that we may agree to disagree - this is my engineering experience.

Good luck and welcome back anytime you may understand you're missing something important.

mark3680
@uwa.edu.au

mark3680 to Iscream

Anon

to Iscream
Iscream, you are doing a good job communicating with customers. Please, convince your superiors or whatever is needed to allow you to write in an official blog linked to from the website. I'm not sure if they think it turns off future customers hearing about an outage before they sign up, or if there just isn't time at the moment (which I understand, I'm not saying do it straight away).
But how I see it, your customers that don't care too much about technical details or if you have disaster recovery and just prices, will not even read it. And the customers that do, will read it and most probably understand your reasoning and plans, if they don't, you probably don't want to deal with them. The ones that do, will be drawn to the openness of your company.

FWIW, I live in Australia (use callcentric for most international calls and some DIDs, should also say I didn't even notice the DDoS, maybe pbxes sorted out the SRV stuff for me), and I'm not fussed that I was affected, hell, even my home internet's international routing got messed up.
Certainly not trying to cause you damage, but to help you understand that in this day transparency and trusting your customers to understand what you explain will make them trust you more, and bring you more customers.
TBH, Iscream, you are the main reason I am still using CallCentric, all of the official means of communication about the outage were, in my opinion, severely lacking. I would trust YOU to say, again let's use the scenario that there is a fire, what this means to customers realistically and honestly.
I wouldn't trust CallCentric's people who run the Twitter and would be responsible for emailing people, to tell me. I didn't notice any issues during the DDoS so am unaware of how that was handled though, except that I never got an email.

Communication is the issue I have, nothing else.
madjeff
join:2005-04-30
united state

3 recommendations

madjeff to Iscream

Member

to Iscream
Forgive me, as I don't normal live on these forums. Yes, I've lurked since about 2000 and finally signed up around 2005 if I remember right, but I don't spend my days here usually. I come here when I'm seeing voip issues with different providers or need questions answered.

So forgive the question, but I just want to be absolutely clear moving forward. Iscream, are you the official voice and representative of Callcentric on these forums, or just an employee that donates his/her time to help out as needed? Are you actually representing the views and opinions of Callcentric? Please don't take this as a personal attack as it is not meant to be, but it helps me to understand that relationship in the frame of this discussion.
said by Iscream:

Callcentric was absolutely clear about "it".

I personally, on _this_ very site, clearly and loudly, multiple times WROTE that Callcentric has ONLY ONE site and that it doesn't have geo-redundancy.

And that it (Callcentric) is against the CHEAP and GIMMICKY ways of doing it. That Callcentric values at first a service quality (with everything attributing to it) and at second - it most counts _economics_ of a business (because it does business at its own cost as opposed to "other people's money"). That "economics" was at that time AGAINST having 2nd site because either budget was insufficient or the quality would SUFFER.

I'll be the first to stand up and say it was my fault for not verifying if Callcentric was actually redundant, I take full responsibility for that. I remember a few years ago reading somewhere where Callcentric boasted about it's redundancy (although I cannot for the life of me now find where I read it, so maybe my age is starting to catch up with me... ), and I made the assumption that redundancy meant the same to most IT professionals. I should know better, and take full responsibility for that. Like I said, this event has reaffirmed my belief in verifying, not assuming.

So what I get from the above statement is that there was no budget for a DR site in a different geographic location. As for the "cheap and gimmicky" statement, I've never heard of a seperate hot/cold DR site to be cheap and gimmicky in enterprise IT circles, but I guess we'll agree to disagree there.
said by Iscream:

And I can repeat the same AGAIN. Aloud. So most of you [experts] CANNOT say it again that Callcentric wasn't clear about it.

But YOU - YOU WILL DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN - because your memory is short, because the only voice you want to hear - is your own voice leading the masses toward your "geo-redundant" idea (it resembles something 100 years old World International" idea spelled by communists). Idea which is NOT _sound_ economically. Which is DESTRUCTIVE for a small business like ours. But you WANT us to play by your rules because then either we'll be dead or everybody will get an average "gray" service with multiple "value", 2nd value, "premium" and other shitty choices - but all will be "equal".

I'm not sure, but did you just call me communist for wanting you to have a DR site? That's gotta be a first for me...
said by Iscream:

Just a few articles above were 2 posts referring at my previous explanations of how the network works, latencies and other things. Among those explanations were very clear DECLARATIONS about the fact that Callcentric had ONLY one site, but that site being made bullet-proof in Tier-1 data-center of its own in the telecom building. Did anyone of "experts" who publicly expressed their "opinions" - remembered about that? (thanks a lot to A_Voiper and Hardly, from my heart!).

I don't think you can use the term "bullet-proof" anymore, or it doesn't mean what you think it means. Having all this awesome infrastructure in one location but relying on battery backups to power you through an outage long-term is like having a nuclear sub with a screen door. In security terms, you are only as strong as your weakest link. And this was a huge weak link.
said by Iscream:

But Callcentric cannot at this time (although it was already much closer to that just 6 weeks ago - we have developed and planned on opening a manned, fully equipped site in Canada because Canada is strategically very important for our CLEC operations as well as it would allow us to provide, to some extent, geographically distributed services) build and maintain a REAL second/redundant location - because Callcentric cannot do it BAD - that would impact the whole independent VoIP industry.

So this (if it's the official word from CC) was what I've been waiting to hear. At least this tells me you guys know enough to understand you need some redundancy in a separate geographic location, and there are some plans in place to make it happen at some point in time. I'm disappointed to hear that it's probably way down the road at this point, but at least I now know and can make informed business decisions based on this knowledge.
said by Iscream:

Well, at the end what matters - it's the voice quality at first. The rest is least important. Sure, after people try those "geo-redundant" providers - they're most welcome to Callcentric (or come back - for those who were angry or frustrated and were lured by those ground-less speculations to other providers).

Well, I would argue that availability would be the most important, followed by quality, but again others may disagree. I don't think my clients would be in that group, but I digress.
said by Iscream:

Yes, I'm SICK of posts like the one I'm replying to, but have to use and participate in it.

Which brings me to my last point. If you are the official voice of Callcentric on this matter, then I would just comment that your tone and manner towards those of us who do care about Callcentric but want to make sure this type of thing is mitigated in the future is extremely disappointing. Are there detractors here, yes. I can understand your frustration of the past month. But you cannot treat your customers like we are idiots. I feel like a lot of your derision has been directed at me for bringing up what I feel are valid questions. But I feel it doesn't reflect well on what has otherwise been a very good company to work with.

As for me, I'm done beating this dead horse. My questions have been answered, and I can now make an informed decision moving forward. I do hope Callcentric pulls through what can only be called one craptastic month and becomes stronger from the process.
ConstantineM
join:2011-09-02
San Jose, CA

ConstantineM to nitzan

Member

to nitzan

CallWithUs: west, east, uk

said by nitzan:

said by PX Eliezer704:

I've used Voipo, Vitelity, FlowRoute, CallWithUs, and Localphone, without wondering for a second about that.

My guess is that most of [those] providers don't have it.

Actually most of these providers do have multiple geo locations.

FlowRoute has servers in Las Vegas and Phoenix.
CallWithUs has servers in California and Michigan.
Vitelity has servers in Dallas and Boston.

Other providers with multiple geo locations: Anveo, Voip.MS, Future Nine

CallWithUs actually has 3 locations: west, east and uk.

»Re: WHO is UP-DOWN during Sandy
said by sokhapkin:

Callwithus servers are located in California, Michigan and London, UK.

rblizz
join:2001-12-16
North Richland Hills, TX

rblizz

Member

said by ConstantineM:

CallWithUs actually has 3 locations: west, east and uk.

That's wonderful ... and ... ?
Iscream
Premium Member
join:2009-02-17
New York, NY

2 recommendations

Iscream to madjeff

Premium Member

to madjeff

Re: CC Disaster

Dear "madjeff" (Jeff?) - my reply wasn't even remotely targeted at you. How could I, even indirectly, hint you that I was replying to you?

To you, as well as to all other participants, who expressed valid critiques and asked absolutely valid and relevant questions I promised to come up with full report and asked for some more time to compile and polish my notes. This [promise] was repeated again just a few posts up (or perhaps - previous page).

My reply was targeted against people who, without knowing any details, just by imagining some pictures, often led by trolls or anonymous posters whose only intention was (during last month) to cause Callcentric maximum harm, all those who jumped to conclusions while considering themselves as experts in topics being discussed. I never negated (nor agreed with) any critiques - just asked to wait a little bit while I prepare the report.

B/w - I do feel that extracting a quote out of context while changing the idea which was expressed there - it's called "trolling" in my books (re: "I'm not sure, but did you just call me communist for wanting you to have a DR site? That's gotta be a first for me...") - even if it's followed by the "smile" sign.

Thank you.
rblizz
join:2001-12-16
North Richland Hills, TX

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said by madjeff:

So this (if it's the official word from CC) was what I've been waiting to hear. At least this tells me you guys know enough to understand you need some redundancy in a separate geographic location, and there are some plans in place to make it happen at some point in time. I'm disappointed to hear that it's probably way down the road at this point, but at least I now know and can make informed business decisions based on this knowledge.

A couple points. I'm a CallCentric home user, not a business or re-seller. How is it that I knew -- almost immediately -- that CallCentric had one server farm and not several? In the conversations about the advantages and disadvantages of one location vs. many (in several threads here on DSLR), no one attacked CallCentric for its choice. It's only in hindsight that it has become an issue. And, as I mentioned before, while blissfully using CallCentric's high quality VoIP service without a hitch, I noted on several occasions that the main "multi-site" vendor had outages in various cities. Usually the question that came up was "Which server do you suggest I register with?" Sorry, but just because you can re-register to a different server when the one you're using goes out, doesn't mean you have a high quality experience. It's still an outage.

As for CallCentric's choice -- again, I rely on results, not theory. CallCentric's single site strategy has worked well, with the exception an unprecedented DDoS attack (which they overcame) and an unprecedented "storm of the century." And in a little over two days, my CallCentric phone service was up and solid, with high quality voice -- despite the fact that lower Manhattan was (and probably still is) a major disaster area.

The problem everyone is yammering about has already been solved. What makes you think that the high quality service CallCentric provides (and has provided for seven years) will suddenly vanish because they don't use "geo-redundancy" which they never used before?

ploogman
@verizon.net

ploogman

Anon

1. i have multiple lines, nowhere near NY, that are STILL not working with CC and I do not know why, tech support has been silent from them

the DDOS debacle was not just a few minutes or hours, but days and twice

no blame to CC for the storm of course

2. nobody from CC should be posting here as themselves - that is not official contact - they should be professional and use their website, etc.

3. nobody from VOIP.MS should be posting here as themselves either - they should be professional and use their website, yeah, the one with the (c)2010 at the bottom

4. iscream and martin should not be posting here and getting into back and forths with people - if they really work for CC and VOIP.MS or own those businesses, it is pretty unprofessional for them to posting here on dslreports.com as themselves and it makes me feel like both companies are not just small, because small is Ok, but not professional - all their time posting here? don't they have more important things to do?

sick of it all

Old Sailor
@fastwebserver.de

Old Sailor

Anon

said by ploogman :

sick of it all

It is entertaining if you do not depend too much on CC. I have a few Euros in it and use it as a backup. Happily I have not needed it and by the time I do they will probably be back on track.
borntochill
join:2003-02-09
united state

1 recommendation

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said by madjeff:

Forgive me, as I don't normal live on these forums. Yes, I've lurked since about 2000 and finally signed up around 2005 if I remember right, but I don't spend my days here usually. I come here when I'm seeing voip issues with different providers or need questions answered.

So forgive the question, but I just want to be absolutely clear moving forward. Iscream, are you the official voice and representative of Callcentric on these forums, or just an employee that donates his/her time to help out as needed? Are you actually representing the views and opinions of Callcentric? Please don't take this as a personal attack as it is not meant to be, but it helps me to understand that relationship in the frame of this discussion.

said by Iscream:

Callcentric was absolutely clear about "it".

I personally, on _this_ very site, clearly and loudly, multiple times WROTE that Callcentric has ONLY ONE site and that it doesn't have geo-redundancy.

And that it (Callcentric) is against the CHEAP and GIMMICKY ways of doing it. That Callcentric values at first a service quality (with everything attributing to it) and at second - it most counts _economics_ of a business (because it does business at its own cost as opposed to "other people's money"). That "economics" was at that time AGAINST having 2nd site because either budget was insufficient or the quality would SUFFER.

I'll be the first to stand up and say it was my fault for not verifying if Callcentric was actually redundant, I take full responsibility for that. I remember a few years ago reading somewhere where Callcentric boasted about it's redundancy (although I cannot for the life of me now find where I read it, so maybe my age is starting to catch up with me... ), and I made the assumption that redundancy meant the same to most IT professionals. I should know better, and take full responsibility for that. Like I said, this event has reaffirmed my belief in verifying, not assuming.

So what I get from the above statement is that there was no budget for a DR site in a different geographic location. As for the "cheap and gimmicky" statement, I've never heard of a seperate hot/cold DR site to be cheap and gimmicky in enterprise IT circles, but I guess we'll agree to disagree there.
said by Iscream:

And I can repeat the same AGAIN. Aloud. So most of you [experts] CANNOT say it again that Callcentric wasn't clear about it.

But YOU - YOU WILL DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN - because your memory is short, because the only voice you want to hear - is your own voice leading the masses toward your "geo-redundant" idea (it resembles something 100 years old World International" idea spelled by communists). Idea which is NOT _sound_ economically. Which is DESTRUCTIVE for a small business like ours. But you WANT us to play by your rules because then either we'll be dead or everybody will get an average "gray" service with multiple "value", 2nd value, "premium" and other shitty choices - but all will be "equal".

I'm not sure, but did you just call me communist for wanting you to have a DR site? That's gotta be a first for me...
said by Iscream:

Just a few articles above were 2 posts referring at my previous explanations of how the network works, latencies and other things. Among those explanations were very clear DECLARATIONS about the fact that Callcentric had ONLY one site, but that site being made bullet-proof in Tier-1 data-center of its own in the telecom building. Did anyone of "experts" who publicly expressed their "opinions" - remembered about that? (thanks a lot to A_Voiper and Hardly, from my heart!).

I don't think you can use the term "bullet-proof" anymore, or it doesn't mean what you think it means. Having all this awesome infrastructure in one location but relying on battery backups to power you through an outage long-term is like having a nuclear sub with a screen door. In security terms, you are only as strong as your weakest link. And this was a huge weak link.
said by Iscream:

But Callcentric cannot at this time (although it was already much closer to that just 6 weeks ago - we have developed and planned on opening a manned, fully equipped site in Canada because Canada is strategically very important for our CLEC operations as well as it would allow us to provide, to some extent, geographically distributed services) build and maintain a REAL second/redundant location - because Callcentric cannot do it BAD - that would impact the whole independent VoIP industry.

So this (if it's the official word from CC) was what I've been waiting to hear. At least this tells me you guys know enough to understand you need some redundancy in a separate geographic location, and there are some plans in place to make it happen at some point in time. I'm disappointed to hear that it's probably way down the road at this point, but at least I now know and can make informed business decisions based on this knowledge.
said by Iscream:

Well, at the end what matters - it's the voice quality at first. The rest is least important. Sure, after people try those "geo-redundant" providers - they're most welcome to Callcentric (or come back - for those who were angry or frustrated and were lured by those ground-less speculations to other providers).

Well, I would argue that availability would be the most important, followed by quality, but again others may disagree. I don't think my clients would be in that group, but I digress.
said by Iscream:

Yes, I'm SICK of posts like the one I'm replying to, but have to use and participate in it.

Which brings me to my last point. If you are the official voice of Callcentric on this matter, then I would just comment that your tone and manner towards those of us who do care about Callcentric but want to make sure this type of thing is mitigated in the future is extremely disappointing. Are there detractors here, yes. I can understand your frustration of the past month. But you cannot treat your customers like we are idiots. I feel like a lot of your derision has been directed at me for bringing up what I feel are valid questions. But I feel it doesn't reflect well on what has otherwise been a very good company to work with.

As for me, I'm done beating this dead horse. My questions have been answered, and I can now make an informed decision moving forward. I do hope Callcentric pulls through what can only be called one craptastic month and becomes stronger from the process.

Hear, hear!

I took a break from this discussion because it had devolved to name calling, personal attacks, trolling, and other unpleasantness very uncharacteristic for this forum. There's already enough of that on the Internet.

madjeff's post perfectly expressed my own sentiments.

Iscream, please understand that although I do not see eye-to-eye with you about georedundancy, I nevertheless am rooting for CallCentric's success, and for yours personally too.

All technical issues aside, I hope CallCentric reviews its strategy for communicating with customers and the public. It's something I think about a lot about in my own work and I'm always striving to do better.
borntochill

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said by Iscream:

Dear "madjeff" (Jeff?) - my reply wasn't even remotely targeted at you. How could I, even indirectly, hint you that I was replying to you?

B/w - I do feel that extracting a quote out of context while changing the idea which was expressed there - it's called "trolling" in my books (re: "I'm not sure, but did you just call me communist for wanting you to have a DR site? That's gotta be a first for me...") - even if it's followed by the "smile" sign.

Thank you.

Georedundancy = Communism!

Expressing an Opinion Different than Yours = Abusing Free Speech!

Pussy Riot = Hooliganism!

Iscream, Jeff and I are both teasing you and we mean no harm. Honest. I'm not sure where you hail from but your references possibly suggest Russia or somewhere in the former Soviet Republic. If so, I'm sure it was no picnic living under a neo-Stalinist regime, to say the least.

Richie12
join:1999-08-26
Tinley Park, IL

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said by Iscream:

That Callcentric values at first a service quality (with everything attributing to it) and at second - it most counts _economics_ of a business (because it does business at its own cost as opposed to "other people's money"). That "economics" was at that time AGAINST having 2nd site because either budget was insufficient or the quality would SUFFER.

I do have to agree with Iscream in terms of quality, because before porting my main number over to Callcentric a couple of years ago, I had tried Axvoice, Voicepulse, LES.NET and VOIP.MS for DIDs each for a couple of months to a year, and Callcentric was the only one of those three provides that my wife rated as equal in quality to a POTS line. I also used tried even more providers for outbound and Callcentric that met the wife acceptance factor.

For me, the outage from Sandy just came at a bad time as one of the kids had gotten hurt at school(not serious, but school is required to call when the treatment is given.) They called home phone which was down, they call both mine and wife's cell numbers, but we give out our Google Voice numbers and those were also down because of Sandy. Finally they called my mom on a POTS line who was able to get a hold of me at work, so at least our backup plan did work.

Since the Sandy incident, I've been considering what my options are for reliability in terms of my main incoming DID and come to the conclusion that the only thing better than CC would be to go back to POTS and forward it to a CC number. Although, I haven't gotten a straight answer from AT&T on what happens when forwarding a second, third, etc call when the first call is still being forwarded. One rep said up to 99 simultaneous when forwarding intra-office call and only one when forwarding inter-office. The rep couldn't tell me if a CC would count as inter-office or intra-office.

I've always maintained a POTS line just for the E911 ability and VOIP backup. I have the least expensive AT&T POTS setup and it costs ~15 a month. Adding forwarding and caller id back to POTS line would bring the bill to ~ $27 a month.

For now my primary DID is going to stay with Callcentric because as IScream has pointed out up until this October, their reliability and voice quality has be impeccable, and I have confidence that they will only continue to improve from their experiences over the past month.
MartinM
VoIP.ms
Premium Member
join:2008-07-21

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said by Iscream:

Callcentric was absolutely clear about "it".

And that it (Callcentric) is against the CHEAP and GIMMICKY ways of doing it. That Callcentric values at first a service quality (with everything attributing to it) and at second - it most counts _economics_ of a business (because it does business at its own cost as opposed to "other people's money"). That "economics" was at that time AGAINST having 2nd site because either budget was insufficient or the quality would SUFFER.

Calm down buddy, there's nothing CHEAP and GIMMICKY about VoIP.ms setup. And don't try to say you were not targetting this comment at us.

I'm ready to bet an arm that our setup is more expensive monthly. An arm and a leg actually.

Also, our setup is nothing gimmicky. it served us well during the storm and the multiple DDoS attacks we've had in the past, in isolating the customer base to 10% maximum being affected at a time. (Yes, we had at least a good 20 or 30 DDoS attacks in the last 3 years, now I'm bringing this up because you went the easy way in attacking us instead of pointing out your strong points.

You really have to stop trying to put us down if you want to defend an argument, weak minded people put down others in order to make them look better.

Also, there's no need to call your customers "idiots".

No hard feelings,

peace and good luck with the crisis.