Our internet provider manages our firewall. Why does every change take so long?

This is the most common complaint we hear from businesses whose network is managed by their internet provider, and it is worth understanding why it happens, because the reason tells you whether it will ever get better.

The delay is structural. A carrier supports an enormous number of customers with a process designed to be consistent across all of them. That means your request enters a queue, gets worked by whoever reaches it, and is handled by someone who has never seen your site, does not know what that application is, and has no way to judge whether the change you are asking for is sensible or alarming. They are not being obstructive. They are following a process that cannot afford to make exceptions, because at their scale exceptions are how outages happen.

A local provider is not better at firewalls because of some technical advantage. It is faster because the person who picks up already knows what is behind that rule, remembers installing it, and can make a judgment call without escalating.

What to ask them, and get it in writing. We are not going to tell you what your provider's turnaround is, because that is theirs to state and yours to hold them to. Ask these five, and ask for the answers in the contract rather than from a salesperson:

• What is the committed turnaround for a firewall rule change that is stopping people working? Not an average, a commitment, and what happens when it is missed.
• Who will I actually speak to, and will they have seen my network before?
• Can we make an emergency change ourselves at six in the evening? Which really means: do we have administrative access to our own equipment, or do we have to ask?
• What happens outside business hours and at the weekend?
• Is there anyone who will come to the building?

For comparison, ours. A firewall change that is blocking people from working is a critical issue here, which carries our one hour response commitment. Standard requests are four business hours and low priority is next business day. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM Eastern, and after hours coverage is written into the agreement for businesses that need it rather than left as an informal favor. You should hold us to those numbers exactly as hard as you hold anyone else to theirs.

If their answers come back strong, that is useful information and you should weigh it. Our experience is that the question is rarely asked before signing, and the answer is rarely what people assumed.