* It's worth the modest investment to supply teleworkers with a company-provided SOHO router
As businesses of all sizes continue to encourage telecommuting for a range of reasons from cost-savings to green initiatives to corporate/public health, the odds are increasingly high that the telecommuter will be accessing the network via a SOHO consumer-grade router of some form. And while this is not an inherently bad idea, this router becomes a part of the greater corporate net. Surprisingly, this also can occasionally introduce some unexpected uncertainty.
In our last newsletter, we chronicled some of the issues that Steve encountered when changing service providers. As a part of this change, he also switched from an integrated router/modem to a separate router and modem. The router, which is about three years old, had been working fine for most services as a backup when traveling, for special testing, etc., for several years. And it appeared to be working great for “normal” applications (read e-mail and browsing). And then…
Flashback: Over the past few months, we have extolled the efficiency of using collaborative software, and we’ve pointed out that in some cases, the use of this software is even better than meeting in person for collaborative work on fine-tuning papers, presentations, surveys, and similar projects. And we’ve also reported on the relative efficiency of using cellular modems as a backup device.
With this as background, after a couple of days, Steve needed to run the collaborative software. (For the time being, we’ve settled on “GoToMeeting.” And he observed the following:
– On a computer running Vista and going through the router, he wasn’t able to connect.
– On the same computer, he was able to connect if using the cellular modem.
– He could connect via the router when using a computer running Windows XP.
Of course, the process wasn’t exactly that simple. This is written with 20/20 hindsight. And the final piece of troubleshooting was borrowing another router and discovering everything worked. So a $60 trip to the local office supply got us up and running.
At this point, the “whys” are of little interest. The good news is that the problem is solved, if not well-understood.
But there’s a lesson here for the corporate network. In particular, it’s probably worth the modest investment to supply teleworkers with a company-provided SOHO router that is known to work with appropriate corporate software. This will not only ensure that business-critical applications (like collaboration software) work seamlessly, but it will also be worth its weight in silicon in terms of streamlined troubleshooting.
