company laptops and customer networks

[BillyCarpenter]

Not that would satisfy the the customer's IT person.

This IT stuff is a catch-22. Here you have an IT person that sounds like he limited your company's options and caused you to waste time and money.

[slimslob]

This IT stuff is a catch-22. Here you have an IT person that sounds like he limited your company's options and caused you to waste time and money.

Sound to you like someone we know of here on CTN?

[mojorolla]

Any IT person worth a shit would not allow outside devices to plug into their network; period. As suggested above I simply create an "ad hoc" network and connect directly to the machine. And no, you no longer need a crossover cable.....

[Arcadian]

I had a costomer once who printer/copier wounted come on no matter what, they locked the network option out so nobody could hook up a lan to it. i fought for a bit, then decided to cold hard reset the whole machine, losing any saved data in the address book if it had one or fax address book, told the end user, they were fine with it, after doing the reset the network started to work. this is after fighting for a bit i thought it was a bad port or burned out lan, but i changed it. so after the reset the unit started to work network wise, i spent 15 buck on a use network card, but oh well, sometime you have to do reset. luckily its was the issue the unit had, some disgruntle employee who knew the system, shut it down, and changed the password.

get those sometimes, bad employees.

[SalesServiceGuy]

Any IT person worth a shit would not allow outside devices to plug into their network; period. As suggested above I simply create an "ad hoc" network and connect directly to the machine. And no, you no longer need a crossover cable.....

It is very common for many SMB customers to have a 3rd party IT company do their work for them. This 3rd party sells either blocks of time or invoices by the hour. Almost all 3rd party IT companies will open a Support ticket before they will do any work. The support ticket creates billable labour.

It is not uncommon for these same SMB customers to try and get a copier tech to do whatever ever work you need to do without the assistance of a 3rd party IT company because they want to save the cost of those billable hours.

Some copier dealers define where free install ends and billable labour begins. Many copier dealers place no limits. Personally, I state in my quotes that all Professional Services are included for the first 90 days, thereafter billable at $95.00 per hour. I want to be generous but I want to create a limit for free support.

I believe that Xerox includes four hours of Pro Services to complete all install related tasks there after billable at $165.00 per hour or more.

Many customers and dealers still operates in a 1990's mindset where an all-inclusive cost per copy service support contract extends beyond toner, parts and break/fix labour.

[rthonpm]

I am hoping this will bring lots of comments and discussion, I am curious what others are doing. We got a directive from mgmt that under no circumstance we are to plug our work laptops into customer networks. Just this week I had to do so as customer said our copier would no longer connect to network and I proved to them that my laptop would not connect either into their network. Proved my point that copier was not at fault, no connect lights on laptop either. Very simple case only a minute to prove that their network port was dead.
...
Let the discussion begin.

There's one potential flaw with this: even some smaller companies are beginning to use network access control that only allows registered devices, either by some kind of agent or by MAC registration and approval from a console, to access their network. Anything else plugged in would just get blocked or put into some kind of quarantine.

Overall, I wouldn't plug my device into anyone else's network: I don't always know what the state of their network security is, and they don't know the state of my laptop either. It's easier to just get a network tester or some kind of continuity tool to check whether there's a signal to the wall jack than to risk plugging an unauthorised device into a customer's network. I had a tech do that on a network with Access Control on it, and it didn't take long for a member of the customer's IT to come looking to track down the device.

For some of my customers that offer me access to their internal wifi, I won't use it without connecting to our company VPN so that I'm not on their network.