The Problem

Last week we had a big issue on our hands. A lot of people trying out the Chronon Recording Server beta were reporting they were getting corrupt files when they would download a recording from the Recording Server UI. The issue was occurring at random. Sometimes the files would be corrupt and sometimes not. And try as we might we just weren't able to reproduce the issue on our end. We looked through our code and made a bit of change to what we thought could have been the issue and sent out the updated binaries, just hoping the issue was fixed.

But luck wasn't on our side, our blind, shot-in-the-dark fix did not work and we were getting overwhelmed with support requests of corrupt downloads. On our end we were trying everything possible, like introducing lag, reducing bandwidth, adding more machines,etc; but nothing was able to reproduce the issue on our end.

Solution

Then finally it struck me. We would use Chronon to debug Chronon!

I asked one of our customers to take the Chronon Recorder and use it to record the Chronon Recording Server. Thus the next time he ran into the corrupt download issue, he simply took the Chronon recording of the Chronon Server and sent it over to me. Once we had the Chronon recording it was only a matter of minutes till we drilled down to the root cause and solved the issue!

Conclusion

This was one of first times we ourselves experienced the power of having a tool like Chronon. Had it not been for the Chronon Recorder we would still be pulling our hair trying to reproduce the issue and then debug it. Our customers would have continued to grow unhappier with our product, our credibility would be on the decline and it would eventually affect our revenues. If you have had to support products out in the field, you know how it is when an unhappy customer calls you about an issue and you have to make him go through all these hoops to try to figure out the root cause, making him even more unhappy in the process, till he eventually just gives up your product altogether.

With Chronon, all this just vanishes! The customer in this case just sent us the recording and no other communication was needed. We have the bug fixed now and tests in place. If you are a company that prides itself on customer support or, like Chronon Systems, pretty much depends on it to drive sales and revenue, then with Chronon you have an invaluable tool that can literally change the public perception of your company. As far reaching as this may sound, we can stand behind this statement now since last week we got to experience this for ourselves.