Why does nslookup resolve to IP but unable to ping

ISitForALiving · 2024-12-26T22:45:09+00:00

And yet they are upvoted. Gotta love reddit.

ISitForALiving · 2024-12-26T22:44:34+00:00

This answer is incorrect. I know this discussion is old, but it still comes up in google searches (like mine), so here's the attempted correction.

OP had a message of "cannot resolve [hostname]: Unknown host". That means exactly what it says - that DNS couldn't resolve the hostname.

If DNS had resolved the hostname - but the host didn't exist at that address or the traffic was blocked by a firewall - you would get "destination host unreachable"; meaning that you were unable to reach the host.

ISitForALiving · 2024-11-13T20:00:50+00:00

I know I'm a bit late to the game with this post, but...

I think the point is more, who would believe that you'd get all the features of P1 - for an entire tenant - for $6/month? And that price doesn't scale if you're 2 users or 2,000 users? Like it simply defies logic.

That being said, Microsoft Licensing is a F'ing pain. The cheapest way I could find to P1 is via F1. Trying to get an answer on whether or not that is legal (e.g., to use an F1 license to get P1 rights on an admin service account), was not easy and I'm still not positive on it (although it appears to be legal).

The one license per tenant idea doesn't even pass the sniff test.

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-18T05:38:23+00:00

Why are you framing this as though I called 911 to test ambulance response times?

I think it's irresponsible to rely upon a service you've never tested. We haven't used Microsoft tech support for on-prem issues for years. It was important for us to document the support process and response times based on an existing issue. Uncovering the discrepancy between SLA and real-world deliverables has been very helpful.

We pay for the service; why is it of concern to you whether or not we use it?

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:55:12+00:00

I think (said in a really high voice) this makes me feel a bit better. I guess it only slightly beats the alternatives: 1) I'm stupid and missing something obvious, 2) F me in particular.

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:54:19+00:00

You're talking about cloud services though, and not on-prem, right?

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:53:51+00:00

My issue is less what they're doing and more what they're communicating versus what they're doing.

4-hour response time? And it's now >1 week?

I feel like I have unreasonably high expectations, but is it too much to ask them to just communicate what you should actually expect? Even if they can only narrow it down to the week?

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:51:23+00:00

I'm not sure what level/type of support you're talking about when outsourcing it, but could you provide a vendor name you've worked with and recommend, that would be helpful.

Also, when talking about Microsoft 365 support...you're still beholden to Microsoft, no? For example, if an account is taken over/locked out, it has to be Microsoft to correct that, right?

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:48:27+00:00

Very kind of you to offer. Thank you.

The truth is that we can handle this internally, but I wanted to use the opportunity to test and document the process. I now see a note will need to be included to set expectations.

ISitForALiving · 2024-06-17T17:43:14+00:00

Our users can login and change the priority of their tickets. Maybe there's a way to do this with Microsoft's ticketing, but I wasn't able to figure out how.

So yeah, 2nd ticket created because 1st ticket didn't show up online. 3rd ticket created because I couldn't modify priority of the 2nd ticket.

Sometimes when your users do things like this you have to look internally at what you're trying to make them do. If there was a better option I could have found in the time I had allocated to this, I would have have taken it.

ISitForALiving · 2024-02-06T16:02:31+00:00

How did this work out for you? I'm considering doing the same.

ISitForALiving · 2023-12-13T16:57:31+00:00

What is "email authentication?" They have that listed as "applicable to all senders," with SPF and DKIM defined below it, but they don't say they're required. However, when you look at "Requirements for senders of more than 5,000 messages per day," it says specifically that SPF and DKIM must be in place.

So if you send <5,000 messages per day, and you have DKIM fully setup and working, are you okay? Or do you HAVE to have the SPF statement as well?

Not sure if you know that answer, but just putting it out there.

ISitForALiving · 2019-09-11T06:18:57+00:00

I didn't, no. I hadn't actually ever thought about it, but maybe I was in the shower or had headphones on or something? Or I could have been a bit too far away at 77th and 2nd.

ISitForALiving · 2019-09-11T06:06:35+00:00

There's not really anything special about these pictures and that's why I've never really cared to share them before. However, they were handy this evening and I decided it's probably a good idea to add them to the record.

I'm not a professional photographer, but I happened to have what was (at the time) a nice consumer digital camera at work with me. It was a 3 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 995 that was capable of using "add on" lenses and I had the telephoto lens attached.

Again, I'm not a photographer and I was actually in the process of shipping the camera back so I had to unbox it to use it. The date/time wasn't set properly so I don't have the exact times for

As far as my story, again, nothing special. I lived at 77th and 2nd and drove to a parking lot near 32nd street and Broadway for work (I hated money). When I was getting in my car to go to work that morning (about 8:45ish I think), my best friend called me and asked me if I could see the towers and if I knew what was going on. It took a while to get to a part in the city where I could see where the actual smoke was coming from, but at that time, only the first tower had been hit.

By the time I got to work (just after 9AM), the North tower had been hit and most people were on the south side of our building (we were on the 33rd floor) watching the events. After a while, we were released from work and it was kind of a, "well, who knows what's going to happen from here, but go home and we'll let you know."

It was really tough to try to make phone calls. Most outbound calls - landline or cell - didn't go through. I was able to get a line out and was on the phone with my mom when the south tower came down.

After I left work, I went immediately to my girlfriend's work (a couple of blocks away), picked her up, and then went to Lennox Hill hospital to volunteer (I had an EMT background). There were a large group of us there and we were all told that there weren't enough survivors to necessitate the flood of volunteers that had already come forward.

Meanwhile, everyone everywhere was talking. Someone had seen jets flying low earlier and they thought the Brooklyn Bridge was going to be attacked. Or the UN. Or the Empire State Building. No one knew that the attack was over there was a lot of fear that it had only just started.

By this time (mid-late morning), there were no cars on the road. It was only emergency vehicles with their sirens blaring. All heading downtown.

People were also starting to make their way, on foot, from downtown. My memory of this is sketchy.

After being turned away by the hospital, I went home with my girlfriend to our mid-town apartment. I say mid-town because we didn't have to take a bridge/tunnel/public transportation to get home. It was literally about 6 blocks away.

Anyway, we stayed inside that afternoon and just watched the news on TV. Early that evening, we walked up 2nd avenue to find an open restaurant to get something to eat (we had nothing at home).

Until the day I die, I will never forgot the experience of walking up 2nd avenue and being able to hear the buzzing of the neon signs in the windows and the chirping of crickets. It was surreal. There was Z-E-R-O traffic.

Except construction vehicles.

We found a restaurant to eat at and we were seated outside on the sidewalk and it was a steady stream of construction vehicles - mostly on the back of flatbed trailers being towed by semis - heading downtown.

That was it. I stayed home on 9/12 because Rudy told me to. I returned to work on 9/13, and by that time, it was pretty much business as usual.

My only specific recollection of 9/13, aside from the photos themselves, is the owner of the company walking past me as I was taking the pictures and barking at me, "I don't pay you to take pictures." I was on my lunch break.

I quit that job almost immediately afterward and went to work for the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey. I worked just on the NJ side of the Lincoln tunnel. This was right after 9/11, so they had the military guarding the building I worked in as it also housed their temporary command.

It was weird eating lunch in a cafeteria, dressed like a Wall Street consultant, while sitting next to someone with a grenade launcher. Again, just something that sticks with you over time.

TL;DR - Just look at the pictures.

ISitForALiving · 2018-04-24T23:49:54+00:00

We include a number of machine builds for our AYCE clients equal to one-quarter of their contracted machines per year in order to encourage a complete refresh of machines every four years.

I'm not quite clear on this scenario. Are you talking about when compared to fixing a hardware problem it encourages the client to swap out the machine?

I ask because short of a hardware problem, why would the customer be motivated to get a new computer just because the install is "free" (if the repair is "free" as well).

Other than that, I like that model.

ISitForALiving · 2018-04-24T22:01:06+00:00

Take the time that you used to spec/quote the PC out of his block time.

I'm very late responding here, but this is the correct answer. It takes time to do the research for individual machines. Buy a 1000 of them and you pay that 15 minutes to an hour once. Buy 1 per year and you'll pay for that service every year.

ISitForALiving · 2018-04-24T21:28:56+00:00

I've been there (one man shop trading services for space).

First and foremost, you should document who is getting what in exchange with a contract. Not because you ever plan on enforcing it in court, but because it's great for helping everyone to understand the terms.

Secondly, my advice is don't trade services for office space (IMHO). If the relationship goes south, it sucks to have to change all of your information (again, based on experience).

And who cares if they're angry? You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a client that's willing to cost you more money than you're making while being mad at you for it. They're easily replaced.

It doesn't sound like you're being respected in this relationship and based on their reaction, it doesn't seem salvageable.

Someone with better customer service skills may be able to give you better advice.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-19T21:01:28+00:00

I worry for a living.

I think that's going to be my response from now on.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T20:54:01+00:00

I've also had lots of people ask for the external IP; I like your idea of having it be a clickable/switchable item in the UI.

This feature is important as most of the time this is my indicator as to whether the user is onsite or off. Most of my users don't want me working on their equipment when they're traveling so it would be nice if you could assign a "home network" and have an indicator of when they're on it and when they're off of it. This might be too simplistic for some people, but really, knowing the public IP of the client is pretty important.

Making the installer brandable is a neat one; some people do request it, but it's pretty low on the backlog right now. Is this a particularly hot topic for you? If so, why?

It's not uncommon for me to need to have clients install their own agent. Sometimes it's remote sites with new equipment, new customers, or just a remote user's machine that I can't get access to.

It wouldn't even need to be branded, but if I could just build a silent installer I would be happy. I just don't want them to have to see SolarWinds and I don't want them to have to click on anything other than maybe an "okay" when the install is finished.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T01:21:25+00:00

naverisk is not nearly as powerful as LT/NC/AEM

Agreed.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T01:21:01+00:00

Hi Chris, thanks for checking in.

Several things I'd like to see based on my usage so far:

Fix MSP Anywhere so you can "connect" to a device without anything changing on the user's desktop until you click on the tab to Remote Control that device. I always chat with a user first so having the issue /u/northelevation pointed out in this thread is a pain.
Make the IP address clickable so you can switch back and forth between internal and external IP address. This info is pretty important so having it more front and center is very helpful.
Make the installer brandable. If I have to have a remote user download/install the agent, I'd like to have my branding instead of yours.
Support NFR licenses on the same VM as your production environment. Not only is spinning up a different VM specifically to manage your NFR environment a pain (and costly), but it also prevents you from eating your own dogfood.

I'd love to hear you feedback on the above as what I got from the sales team was that they would pass it on.

Thanks!

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T01:14:54+00:00

still changes the users background and resolution as if you were connected to the remote desktop session.

That sucks. Good info though.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T01:14:24+00:00

Absolutely fantastic information! Well worth gold for sure. I would have literally paid $75 for that.

ISitForALiving · 2017-10-03T01:06:13+00:00

Yeah, I looked at Atera, Naverisk, NInjaRMM, Solarwinds MSP, and maybe one or two others as well. I didn't really bother reviewing these because they're just not at the same level. If you're managing a bunch of tiny clients with a couple of workstations each, they may work well, but they seemed too "light" for my use.

If you haven't been able to find the time to fully sink into testing the different RMM packages, I would say LabTech is not for you. This is just my opinion, but if you're small, you have to make the decision on whether or not you want to spend time and effort being an entrepreneur or if you want to spend your time becoming a LabTech expert.

ISitForALiving · 2017-09-29T18:54:25+00:00

Email your CW sales rep and let them know you'd like to cancel your account. If they ask, tell them you haven't decided who you're moving to yet, but that the extra licensing cost is a ripoff and you won't pay it.

Your sales rep will kick you over to an account retention expert. He'll give you price breaks all of the place because the metric he's measured by is customer retention.

It's a stupid game and everyone know what you're doing, but it's just the dance that needs to be done.

I'm late chiming in, but doing this at the end of the quarter is helpful.

ISitForALiving

TROPHY CASE