Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to common pre-sales questions are grouped together below by subject area
Further onboarding and post-sales support information is available on our blog and our customer support portal.
security
Security
How do we keep your end users and their data safe
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Pricing
How do the pricing models work
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Onboarding
How do you order and  get onboarded
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Alternatives
Information about the alternative solutions out there and how proxyNM differs
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Use Cases


Information about how proxyNM is being used in our target markets
help
Extra Features
More information about some of our extra-features that can be added after the initial onboarding completes
Security FAQs
Can the agent sniff traffic 
No, the agent cannot sniff traffic on the end user's computer or network. Tests synthesise traffic and transactions rather than looking at end user data. This is important to establish and maintain trust with the end users.
Can the agent see browsing history
No, the agent cannot look at browsing history. In fact the agent cannot look at any files on the end user's computer. This is important to establish and maintain trust with the end users.
Can the agent see if my staff are working
No, we don't look at what the end user is doing. We cannot see if they are using their computer, let alone what they are using for. This is important to establish and maintain end user trust.
Can the agent apply patches or change settings
No, the agent cannot change the end user's computer in any way. It cannot reconfigure settings, install software, open files, change files or apply patches or software upgrades. This is important to establish and maintain end user trust and also to ensure you are not 'blamed' for any changes in computer performance, stability or behaviour.
Can the agent reboot the user's computer
No, the agent has no control over the end user computer - not even to restart or reboot it. This is important to establish and maintain end user trust and also to ensure you are not 'blamed' for any strange behaviour of their computer.
Can the agent be hijacked from the internet
No, all communication from the server to the agent (and back) is signed and per the FAQ above, the agent is unable to sniff, snoop, control or reconfigure the end user computer so hijacking it would gain interlopers nothing meaningful. Communication is established from the agent to the servers and thus no 'holes' need be poked in firewalls towards the end user's envirnonment.
Where can I learn more about proxyNM and security
You may find some useful information in the 'Deciding to buy' category over on our supporting blog. You can also search for subjects like security over there.


Pricing FAQs
What are your pricing goals
We want people's tech-experiences to improve - to do that we all need to understand those tech-experiences better. Accordingly we want to remove price barriers from this kind of service offering so we want to offer massive scalability and low pricing to encourage wide deployment and thus a much wider understanding of tech-experiences.
What is included in each service offering
The best way to work this out is to take a look at the enterprise or service provider (or 'At Home') menu items on this website and then scroll down to the service option table. In there you will see the service options for your industry/application and a summary of inclusions. The optional extras are listed beneath that table. You can always contact us to discuss further. 
Why can't I buy optional extras in my initial order
Our experience is that huge value can be gained by deploying the basic service offerings first. Once these are understood and delivering value it is easier to understand which of the optional extras may be useful. Allowing orders of these optional extras up front often results  in unnecessary expenditure and in delaying the time to value from the basic service offerings while integration or customisation of the sometimes, more complex, optional extras takes place
Is there a free trial
There is effectively a free trial of the agent and report functionally by signing up for the free 24 hour snapshot. You can signup for that here. This will give you a feel for the basic home-based service offerings and the agent experience. There is a live demo of the UI based service offerings for qualified enterprise and service provider prospects. Please contact us for links to that demo. There is a 30 day money back guarantee on all enterprise and service provider service options.
Can you invoice us rather than us pay by credit card
Yes, but only for the larger value service options. After an initial credit card based order, we can renew to that card automatically or, for larger service options, you can renew with an invoice/payment cycle. Contact us to discuss your billing and invoicing needs further.
How are agents counted into and out of the purchased agent pool

Installing an agent decreases your available agent bundle count by one

You can increase your available agent bundle count manually by uninstalling and purging an agent in the UI

Agents bundle counts are automatically incremented when no results are seen for an agent for a month

Additional agent bundles can be purchased as your grow.

How do I cancel

Enterprise and service provider solution customers can cancel within 30 days of ordering and you will receive a full refund. To do this, just open a support ticket with the subject of 30 Day Cancellation and we will action it and confirm back with you. We will ask what made you cancel so we can be sure to address the issue for future customers but we will never say "no".  

Home Assessment services only last a short time so cancellation is usually not relevant. If you have an exception to this norm, please do contact us and we will work out how best to help. Our general approach is that if you have started getting reports with results then we are reluctant to entertain requests to cancel these home services. However if you have had issues getting to 'value' then we have no problem cancelling and making a refund.

All other service agreements are annual arrangements so you can cancel the next renewal at any time

Ordering and Onboarding FAQs
At Home: How do I order and get started
Select the appropriate service offering on the At Home page and click the Buy Now button. You will receive an email with links to your agent and when you install that agent you will start receiving your PDF reports. You will also get links to resources that will help you understand and act on the information and insights in your PDF reports.
Enterprise: How do I order and get started
Select the appropriate service offering on the Enterprise page and click the Buy Now button. You will then be taken through a very short series of forms that will capture the information we require to provision your service. Next you will receive an email with links to your agents and with details of your UI logins. You will also get links to getting started text and video resources.
Service Provider: How do I order and get started
Select the appropriate service offering on the Service Provider page and click the Buy Now button. You will then be taken through a very short series of forms that will capture the information we require to provision your service. Next you will receive an email with links to your agents and with details of your UI logins. You will also get links to getting started text and video resources.
How do I cancel

Enterprise and service provider solution customers can cancel within 30 days of ordering and you will receive a full refund. To do this, just open a support ticket with the subject of 30 Day Cancellation and we will action it and confirm back with you. We will ask what made you cancel so we can be sure to address the issue for future customers but we will never say "no".

Home Assessment services only last a short time so cancellation is usually not relevant. If you have an exception to this norm, please do contact us and we will work out how best to help. Our general approach is that if you have started getting reports with results then we are reluctant to entertain requests to cancel these home services. However if you have had issues getting to 'value' then we have no problem cancelling and making a refund.

All other service agreements are annual arrangements so you can cancel the next renewal at any time

Alternatives FAQs
What alternatives to proxyNM do I have

Like most technology companies we believe our solution is pretty unique however there are many ways to crack a nut so we discuss a few here in these FAQs.

Let's start by describing where our solution fits: We created proxyNM to help figure out what kind of digital experiences people were getting from the combination of their computer, local and wide area (ISP, VPN, private network etc) and applications. There are often many applications accessed in different ways. We don't assume we own the apps or the computer, we don't assume the person is our employee or our customer. We don't want to control or configure the computer. For security reasons we don't want to snoop, spy or sniff the customer's data.


Wire Data/DPI: Wire-data and deep packet inspection tools need to be installed in the network path and look at data whizzing by. They sniff that data and determine performance based on what they see. They can often determine network performance and to a lesser extent, application performance. Modern SSL/TSL will hide a lot of application performance details from these tools. No platform (computer) performance details are available and, of course, they need to be installed in the network path which can be difficult in terms of topology.


APM & Log data:  Owners of applications can instrument their application and capture application and systems logs to provide measures of application responsiveness. This approach can help the developers of applications and we would argue this is an entirely appropriate thing to do. They do not provide network and platform (computer) measures and are hard to share so they are usually only of use to the owner and developer of an application. SaaS and cloud based applications owned by others cannot be instrumented by end user companies so this approach is not relevant to many enterprise and service provider groups that might consider proxyNM


APM RUM: Some APM providers extend their measures to the browser using an application plugin/library called RUM (Real User Management) which can add some implied network measures to the mix - there is still a constraint that measures are only available for the instrumented applications but this is at least a technique that can offer some visibility into SaaS and cloud based applications


RMM:  Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools are focused more on the management of, and access to, remote computers. They tend to have very few synthetic capabilities and will normally just forward the basic operating system measures and event logs to a central location. There is very little network and application performance testing capability. What also comes with them is the ability to patch, reboot and remotely access these computers and, while that can be appealing, it may not be acceptable or desirable if you don't own the computer or employ the user. Even if you do, the security implications of this approach are troublesome. Often these RMM tools require a framework such as Java or .Net to be installed which is not an option in many use cases.

SpeedTest: SpeedTest by Ookla is a good example of a basic browser based network performance too. It will measure latency and upload/download throughput to a nearby test server. They do not measure platform performance or application performance and do not assess more detailed network performance measures. These tools will run when you tell them to run - they will not run on a schedule so performance over time is not visible. Results are available to end users but not to a central site. These are useful tools to see how the network delay and upload/download performance looks at this instant in time.


Use Case FAQs
What are the differences (in intent) between the Home, Enterprise and Service Provider solutions

Our three offerings aim to serve very different markets. Namely:

Home users - users that need help to improve their own (of their family's) digital experiences when working (or playing) from home. Frustration and an understanding of who can help improve matters is a big driver of their 'why'

Enterprises - business of different sizes that need to improve the digital-experiences their users experience - or endure! Productivity, staff retention and Covid19 are a big part of their 'why'!

Service-providers - telecoms or managed service providers that need a secure and unobtrusive way of seeing, managing and improving their part of the digital experiences they deliver to their customers. Demarcation and differentiation is a big driver of their 'why'.

Retail Use Case

A major retailer of mobile phone services with over 400 stores nationwide implemented our proxyNM Enterprise solution.

Each store had several Windows or macOS machines for use by staff when selling or signing up new customers.

Agents were deployed to over 3500 store based computers and testing of computer, local network, VPN,  internet access and application availability and performance was started.

Results were used by network and IT operations to know about store issues and to troubleshoot performance problems.

Interestingly result were also used by sales management when reviewing sales performance. The ranked-performance of digital-experience at each store allowed the quick identification, or dismissal, of poor sales performance due to store based technology challenges.

"We would have hit our store's sales numbers last month but the ordering system was running slow"  could now be addressed or disproved!

Small service-provider use case

Keen to differentiate their services, a service provider serving the SME market implemented our proxyNM Service-Provider solution so they could 'see' the performance their customers were experiencing

Customers were offered the option to install an agent on on or more of their office based computers at no extra charge. Our Beacon feature was used to ensure tests only ran while the agent was sure it was on the service-provider network thus eliminating irrelevant results from home, coffee shops or mobile services. 

Customers reporting issues are able to describe any issues to the service provider who can now quickly see and demarcate responsibility as well as compare performance over time and performance between computers to see if and when various performance measures had changed.

Remote worker use case

A major national law firm keen to allow, and support, their staff to work from home implemented our Enterprise proxyNM solution so they could better understand and support their largely non-techhie staff members while they were working remotely.

Staff installed agents on their laptops and tests were performed to show the performance of their computers, home networks, ISP network and key applications.

Results allowed three main benefits:

1. Proactive support from IT operations to staff members with chronic tech-performance issues at home

2. Better support and isolation of issues when staff members called for help with tech-issues at home

3. Comparisons of staff's home tech-environments to a) create a hit list or poor performers that needed help getting better home or ISP networks and b) create a simple 'minimum standards' criteria for staff that wish to work from home.

Staff liked the extra support but also felt safe in the knowledge that their employer could not 'spy' or 'snoop' on them through the proxyNM solution.

Franchise network use case

A national franchise network implemented our Enterprise proxyNM solution in support of their network of franchisees. 

All manner of IT issues were being presented to the franchisor support team by their franchisees and perception of the franchise IT systems were being damaged by incorrect franchisee diagnosis of issues.

The franchisor offered a single agent to each franchisee at not charge and used our solution to to quickly demarcate issues and prove that in most cases performance issues were down to the franchisee's computer, home network or ISP rather than due to the franchisor-provided systems. 

They were then able to help the franchisees by suggesting who may be at fault and thus who they could contact for support and could provide supporting evidence. The were also able to help the franchisees determine if the issues had been resolved and acceptable performance had been restored.

They have subsequently used our solution to  create a franchise standard for computer, home network, and ISP performance and also use our solution to benchmark new franchisees directly after recruitment/signup. Next they want to implement 'heads-up' notifications to franchises who's digital experiences are falling below the agreed minimum-standard so they can get to work restoring decent performance.

Extra Features FAQs
Extra Tests and Custom Tests

We offer a number of additional test types over and above the standard tests deployed in our service offerings. These tests are continually growing as we develop additional capabilities.

We can also develop custom tests.

A sample of some of these extra/custom tests include:

Time and Timezone accuracy test - built to ensure a cohort of users' computers are all running accurately sync'ed clocks and are configured in the correct timezones. This was initially developed for a customer who's desktop application took transaction timestamps from the local computer clock.

HTTP test - built to allow more sophisticated testing of applications including the login-transact-logout cycle. While we do not wish to become a APM or RUM solution (see alternatives FAQ on this page) there are some Enterprise needs to be able to do a little application transaction testing to gain insight into remote end-user experiences. 

Voice Scoring - built to allow the scoring of IP telephone voice quality for remote users. 

Email tests - built to test POP and SMTP based email delivery and performance. 

Web-Services tests - built to allow a component based testing approach to key web-services required by mobile apps or web applications.

Cloud Storage test - built to allow the performance and availability of cloud based storage services such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Apple iCloud, Google Drive and MS Azure/OneDrive.

Process Count Test - a test that counts the number of processes running on a remote computer. This was built for a retail customer running windows based POS systems and wanting to know if the very precise number of processes required for normal operation was actually running.

Process Presence Test - a test that checks process names against a list or pattern. This was built for a national transportation customer running computer based information terminals. This test allowed them to ensure key processes were running. 

File Checksum Test - this test checks the checksum of a list of files. Used to ensure that no local changes have been applied to application critical files. This was deployed by an enterprise customer needing to ensure that local copies of boilerplate legal documentation were intact.

Linux Agents

Our standard service offerings offer support for agents on Windows and MacOS operating systems.

Agents are also available on request for a number of Linux operating systems.

Agent on an appliance

We have the ability to deploy agents on a small appliance (a very small computer) about the size of a packet of cigarettes.

This agent appliance plug into power (it is USB powered) and into an ethernet port and self provisions.

We can then run any tests to/from the agent appliance.

It is useful in unmanned sites or sites where no computer is available for agent installs.

We have deployed these in support of Service Provider pre-qualification, chronic troubleshooting and in unmanned mining operations

Reference Agents

Reference agents can be deployed to act as a benchmark or comparison in GUI or PDF based reports. As well as defined thresholds, we can show the results from reference agents along side results from individual end-user agents.

At-Home/On-Net/On-VPN Beacons

Configurable beacons can help us control where and when tests are performed.

Telecoms Service providers can optionally use a beacon to automatically figure out if an end-user's agent is on their network - thus ensuring results are about the network for which we are responsible. 

Enterprises can optionally use a beacon to automatically figure out if an end-user's agent is communication on their corporate VPN - thus ensuring results are related to the corporate environment

Additional Agent Bundles

Additional agent bundles can be added to any of our service offerings. These can be bundles of tens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of agents. 

PDF Reporting

As well as a browser based UI, enterprise and service provider service offerings can be augmented with timed PDF reports. These can be used internally or can be scheduled to be sent to end users.

Thresholding and Alerts

Once deployed and understood, performance thresholds can be configured and alerts/reports can be configured to fire automatically on the breach of these thresholds. Alerts can be sent by a number of methods including SNMP, Email, WebHook, Slack and others.

Self Service Testing

On demand self service testing is a popular costs saving and differentiation approach for our service provider customers. Self service can be triggered through web applications, integrations with SaaS such as ServiceNow or JIRA and integration with smart devices like Alexa and Google Home/Nest

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