BT are a big company but...

This is by way of an open letter to BT (and most of the other ISPs who are no better).

This is not the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last!

One of our customers has just upgraded to BT Fibre. Now, the thing is, if you’re running a proper network, with servers, customised DHCP & DNS and all the other good stuff – you can’t just drop their poxy little hub into the network without breaking a whole load of complex stuff. Essentially the router will try to turn on a whole load of services that are being handled by the 'proper' server, and the resulting mess can be pretty ugly.

So, I went up at the beginning of the week to set up their new router. The router was there, but the BT installer guy wasn't. Not to be deterred I spent an hour setting up the router so that it was 100% ready to drop in, once the fibre was commissioned. I left, leaving the customer with strict instructions to tell the BT installer NOT to press the ‘factory reset’ button.

This morning I had a call from said customer. They’re a canny lot, and had forbidden the BT guy from plugging the new hub into their local network until they’d talked to me. I got them to do some quick tests, and it looked like the BT guy had pressed the reset button (despite swearing that blind that he didn't!).

Because I’m suspicious (and deeply mistrustful of BT) I had already prepared “plan b” involving a spare laptop & some cables. Putting it all together allowed me to gain remote access to the new hub. Sure enough, the access password was back to default, the wireless SSID & password were back to default, the custom DHCP settings were back to default & the custom port-maps were all gone.

Now in my mind, this proves beyond doubt that the ‘factory reset’ had been activated. The lying git. If our customer had allowed the b*stard to connect his heap of junk into their network we’d now be looking at a long list of server & remote access problems, which would take most of the rest of the day to fix.

For God’s sake BT – when you go into businesses, please respect the fact that they are likely to have a network orders of magnitude more complex that the average household. If you don’t understand the layout ASK SOMEONE WHO DOES.