I’ve been a Bellsouth DSL subscriber for about 10 years now. It has at times been a tumultuous relationship. In the beginning I gamed quite a bit and there were issues, but after a year of complaining everything balanced out. It’s been great since then.
Over the years I’ve upgraded consistently to the highest package available. I currently subscribe to the DSL Xtreme 6.0 package. Aside from a brief outage here and there, it’s been a trouble free experience — until about three weeks ago.
I awoke one morning (OK, afternoon) and hoped online as I always do. Something was amiss. It took pages minutes to access. No problem, I thought. Reset networking equipment, but the issue was still apparent. As it happened, I was scheduled to fly out to L.A. later that day, so I forgot about it and took off.
Skip forward a week. I arrive home to experience the same problem. Flustered, I called Bellsouth AT&T and told them that something is wrong. “Nothing wrong on our end,” says the tech choad. I know there is nothing wrong on my end, but I acquiesce to allowing a line tech come to my place the following day.
The line tech arrives and he, of course, finds nothing wrong here. Nevertheless, he replaces some aging paired lines with Cat-5. Bandwidth shows a marginal improvement but the problem accessing websites still remains.
I call tech support back and tell them that the problem remains. They still insist it’s on my end. I jump through some hoops (more of that magic fix everything solution, the restart) and become increasingly belligerent. My suggestion that they check their DNS servers is dismissed as a preposterous hypothesis. Hoops continue and I become enraged.
While on hold, listening to the most unbearable Kenny G crap on loop for the 100th time, I remembered something I saw recently: OpenDNS.com. After some waiting, I managed to access the site. Switched to OpenDNS servers and, as if by magic, everything works perfectly again.
Meanwhile, the tech gimp continues to insist there is nothing wrong with AT&T DNS servers. So what the hell is going on here? To me it’s an exceedingly transparent issue. Switch the DNS, everything works, it must be DNS. Right? Am I wrong? Is there something that I’m not seeing here? A conspiracy perhaps?
I’m incredibly pissed off about this. After having Bellsouth for years I was a relatively happy customer. Yet, withing months of AT&T taking over, I experience something really unfortunate. It does not bode well.
I’m also incredibly pleased with OpenDNS. It’s a remarkable service, and one to which I owe much props. The feature set is excellent and the access rates are topnotch. I suggest you all check it out immediately.
And so, in closing, let me propose a challenge of sorts. Consider this post your impetus to rant and flame about ISP disasters. Post your stories in the comments section (and make sure a working email address is in your information section). We’ll select the best stories and vote on them. The winner will receive a Sansa Connect from SanDisk. Entries close on Friday.
Just about three years ago I had to get a DSL line installed in a new lab at my office. I spoke to several vendors over a number of weeks and finally decided on MCI WorldComm, originally UUNet. Having worked for UUNet several years before I was comfortable with the decision because some of the people I worked were still there. The install went off without a problem and we were up and running without issue. Then a couple of weeks in we noticed that we would lose connection from individual machines from time to time for no reason. So after a week of this I called tech support and explained the problem to them. They threw several engineers at this issue and were unable to resolve the issue. After two weeks of having accomplished little or no work and having multiple vendors waiting for access UUNet called with the reason why we having an issue. They have given away almost our entire IP space, 100+ addresses, to several customers with ISDN lines. So every time one of them fired up their connection we would go down, what surprise. After spending an hour on the phone explaining that we already had an IP infrastructure in place with several vendors and customers accessing us and that a change in addresses would cost of time and money. Well they refused to give us back the IPs, forced to make all the changes on our end, charged us for all the time they spent finding their mistake.
I don’t have a good ISP disaster story (beyond the usual), but as for your DNS. Use nslookup. “nslookup yoursitehere.com [dns server ip]” (works with linux and mac too). That way you can test resolution against multiple servers (and only resolution). That’s a pretty bulletproof way to test whether it’s DNS or something else.
Oh yeah and Bellsouth does have retards on their tech desk (though business/T1 support is generally excellent) and their DNS has always been faulty (just check DSLreports).
BellSouth is notorious for making customers jump through 3,234 hoops before they actually find the problem (which you already told them). I used to just call up and immediately demand a tech check the line. I have a feeling they are required to have you restart your modem. So if anyone from BellSouth is listening, We’re Not Noobs so don’t treat us like one if we know what we’re taking about. That starts with more knowledgeable help desk operators. Thanks!
By the way, ATTs dns seems to be back up and running well as of yesterday
I’m not certain this quite counts as a disaster but it wasn’t the most comfortable situation. I had a technician, Tony, from my ISP come out to check on some intermittent outages I was experiencing. While testing the line and running a powered splitter to the rest of my house we were shooting the breeze. I remarked on how the recent speed upgrades were great… when my service worked. Tony agreed… but then stopped: “Man, actually it hasn’t been so good for me.”, he said. I asked him why and he responded something like this: “Well, see, I started downloading a lot more porn lately… I mean like a *lot* of porn.” I think I stammered something like “uh, ok”. He went on: “Yeah, my girlfriend and I split up after she found all the stuff I downloaded. I should have known better. She was a really great girl.” He had this sad look on his face so I felt obligated to tell him that I felt sorry for him. What I wasn’t expecting was when he told me the following. “I knew I shouldn’t have downloaded that clown porn. I mean I know it’s sick stuff, but I had to see it you know? And then I started to really get into it you know? Have you ever seen any? It’s really freaky. Clowns. Who would have guessed? She left me because of that.” I uncomfortably responded that I hadn’t seen any and quickly came up with an excuse to leave him to his work. Later when he came to get my signature on the paperwork and let me know he was finished. Tony must have realized what he said. His eyes really didn’t leave his shoes due to embarrassment. I can’t say I blame him… and I still feel bad for the guy. I guess that should be a lesson for you all: don’t let your girlfriend find your clown porn.
Once upon a time, when dial up internet service was standard, I had decided to jump into the relatively new DSL service. I was extremely happy with the speeds that I was getting. My downloads took only a fifth of the time compared to the time it took when I had dial up. Not knowing how to check my DSL speed and happy my download speeds, I lived in this state of ignorance for nearly 8 months. After I found out how to check DSL speed, I was shocked into reality. I was only getting half the promised speed. I was infuriated that I was going to scream my lungs out at the customer service. Surprisingly when I called, they found the error and fixed it in a snap. I continued to live in happiness again, especially knowing that I was getting speeds what I was paying for. You would think this the end but unfortunately I was destined for a similar faith as Blake. About 4 months ago, my DSL speed again slowed down to half. Unlike last time I called, this time AT&T said that there was no problem at their end. As usual, I reset my router, modem and tried many things but to no avail. After making sure that everything at my place was working properly, I gave AT&T a second call. Something very unusual happened. After AT&T ran some test and found nothing wrong, my DSL speed again become half of already the slow speed. Having such consequences of calling AT&T I was frightened to call again. I was told by AT&T, if I wanted to fix the problem I would have to call a technician. There was a catch though. If the AT&T technician found a problem at my place then I would be charged $75. This sounded very absurd to me since I was already paying for the internet service and also especially since I had slower speeds than what I was paying for. The idea of calling a technician was even less appealing after my friend told me how he got into an argument with a technician. I tried searching around the website for a fix but could not find one. Luck was on my side though. After three months my family decided to move to another place. Right now, here at this new place, thank you god, I am getting the normal DSL speed. Ironically I was having some temporary last night with my internet. I just hope that my old DSL problems don’t return.
I was one of the first in my area to get DSL service. This was around 2000/2001. Of course the service was very expensive (around $150/month) but it was worth it. The ability for me to work much faster online saved me that amount many times over. As time went on DSL prices started to drop. I was busy and didn’t pay much attention to it all but eventually realized that I was paying WAY to much so I called Verizon to ask them to reduce my rate. A three month saga started. Verizon refused to lower my rate at first. I contacted day shifts and night shifts (maybe they would be nicer, I thought, as the wicked Verizon service department laughed hysterically in the background) and talked to managers to no avail. Finally I got into touch with someone who said they could help me. They said that they saw the current rate on my account but that the screen they were looking at would not allow them to adjust it. They had to put in a special, written request to lower my rate to the current market rate.
“No problem”, I said. “So I can expect this to take effect by tomorrow (did I hear laughing again?)?”
“Oh no, it is going to take three months to go into effect”, the helpful service person confided in a cheerful voice.
What! Three months??? Why? The service person responded that her screen would let her change the rate and that she would have to submit a form. This vicious cycle went on for about twenty minutes before I asked for a manager. Unfortunately, the manager informed me he could not help either and that I would just have to wait. What could I do? I waited and my rate finally went down to $50/month.
However, there was a happy ending. In those three months I was waiting cable came out with broadband service in my area and Vonage came to my attention (I was one of the first 10,000 customers so I hope they can get around their current troubles). The first month I received the lower rate I was able to call Verizon and cancel my Verizon DSL Internet service. Not only that, I able to cancel my phone service too. You should have heard how nervous and anxious they sounded when I did that. VoIP was just beginning to rear its head and Verizon was like a deer in headlights. I still remember the day I walked down into my basement and clipped those wires leading out to the Verizon network. I was joyous, I was free and I have been free ever since!
Of course now I am being tempted by FiOS to join the dark side again but I am resisting with all my strength because I still remember that three month form and all of the stress, aggravation and money it cost me.
A few years ago I lived in an apartment complex in south Denver, Colorado that had contracted an exclusive ISP agreement with a company doing business as American Communications. The internet services provided by American Communications (no valid websites) at this apartment complex had limited service offerings, poor service quality, frequent outages, failed to comply with internet standards, filtered all icmp’s breaking lots of things, and were backed by a ill-equipped customer service organization. I really liked the apartment complex, but we ended up moving because I could never work from home as bad as the ISP was.
They provided the residents of the complex with a limited offering of “somewhere between 200kb and 500kb download” with an unspecified upload speed. Their Customer Service was very careful to specify that no speed is guaranteed. Their single page printed marketing material claimed the service was a “always-on high speed cable modem service.” I like my bandwidth, but even the poor expectation of bandwidth between 200kb and 500kb had not ever been met. Using a variety of test methods the average download performance from my connection was approximately 92kb for download and 32kb upload. High speed circa 1995. Their service quality was not only plagued by limited bandwidth, the IP transit service they provided and its upstream providers is plagued by high levels of latency, significant amounts of packet loss (30% on average), and too much packet jitter to use any internet based consumer or entertainment service.
Outages were also quite frequent. During the 30 day period from March 19, 2004 through April 18, 2004 I tracked a total of 30 service outages ranging form a few minutes to 3 hours. In early April of that year they also began filtering all ICMP traffic. This meant that little things like ping’s and traceroute’s broke, but it also meant that important things like icmp’s for packet fragmentation would not work either. No VPN connectivity for most folks back to their offices.
Being good net citizens, they also NAT’ed everything. However they did not use standard 10.x or 192.168.x for their NAT space. They instead used a department of defense IP block which caused little hiccups here and there when trying to use some regular websites.
The only way to report issues was telephone based support which was limited only to trouble ticket tracking and did not offer any actual technical support or ability to dispatch for outages. I do have to admit that the customer support representatives did try to be of assistance but were limited by the resources they have been provided. I had also spoken to customer about the outages that have occurred during normal business hours which are identified by them as regular maintenance. That must be the smartest network engineer on the face of the earth that convinced his company that all maintanence should be done between 8AM and 5PM.
Trouble ticket issues that are opened were always taken care of by scheduling a technician to come onsite, even if I didn’t want one. These are scheduled anywhere from 2 to 4 days from the date a ticket is called in. They had facility access, and would feel free to let themselves in. More then once my wife came home to find one of these guys lurking through the house looking at our computers even though neither of us had let him in. That part was just creepy.
I even got so desperate that I tried to order a ISDN line that I could at least get a real 128kbit out of. Qwest came out and installed the ISDN, only to have the dmarc yanked by an American Telecasting technician claiming that they had an exclusive agreement with the complex for everything except POTS lines.
The worst part of all of this was that they charged $50/month for this service. What a waste of money.
That was my ISP nightmare. I was so happy when I could go back to off the shelf DSL or Cable Modem services from Qwest or Comcast. Those services aren’t ideal, but they at least work most of the time.
My company had recently moved to a larger office, and it was my responsibility to get the new internet connection up and running. They installed their cable modem, assured us that DHCP was turned off (so we could use our own router), and left.
A couple of weeks later, when we needed to do port forwarding, we discovered that they had not, in fact, disabled DHCP on their router. I called them up, they made a change, and I needed to reboot our router to put the change into effect. I cleared it with my co-workers, telling them it would only be down for a couple of minutes. It didn’t come back up. I spent an hour on the phone with Time Warner, thinking that I had configured everything properly on my end, while they assured me everything was fine on theirs. Before long, my co-workers had given up on getting any more work done for the day and were milling about chatting.
After more than an hour, I got a hold of my boss, who had set up the router in the last office. It turns out there’s a hidden setup utility in Smoothwall that you have to run when switching out of DHCP mode. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the web interface, which I had been desperately changing. I ran the utility (which, of course, fixed the problem), apologized to the tech support woman for keeping her on the line for an hour, and made sure to NEVER forget how to do that again.
I have had Comcast high speed internet for almost two years now and it works flawlessly until about a month ago. I got up one morning and get on the computer to check my email. I click on the Comcast logo and it starts to load but brings up a blank screen…no homepage..nothing. I close it down and try again. Nothing. I then go and trying getting on the internet with my PS3 and it will let me go to sites except for my comcast home page. I then go online with the Nintendo Wii and it will let me go to my homepage and check my email. I am thinking now I have to either be at work or use my wii to check my email. I go back to the computer and it will let me also go to other sites but not my homepage. I call customer support with Comcast, which I dread as in the past I had so many problems with their cable service that I had service technician come in at least once a month to fix my connect as local channel such as ABC come in grainy and ghosty, Which broadcasts from the Sear tower in downtown Chicago and I can go outside and see the building. Anyway I call Comcast and speak to a rep, who has remove my spyware software, Internet Explorer, and do a few tweaks on the system and I still cannot get to my homepage. She says see if you go to Google and within 2 seconds I am there and the tech seems rather impressed by my speed. After over an hour, she comes to the conclusion that problem is on my end and then says that she is not sure what is wrong as well as being uncertain with the instructions she has been giving me for the past hour. At this point, she gives the toll free number for Sony (I have a VAIO computer) and for Microsoft, as my system is running Windows XP. First, I call Sony and follow the voice prompts until it asks whether or not my computer is over a year old. I press the key for yes and am told that there is nothing they can do since my computer is out of warranty and suggests that I cal Microsoft. So, I call Microsoft and after a few minutes of following key pressing prompts, I am told there is nothing that they can do and I should call my computer manufacturer (SONY). At this point, I realize I have no one to call as I have exhausted my resources and after 4 more hours on my own, using resources from the computer, I am able to restore the software the Comcast rep told me to uninstall and finally get my internet connection back up and running.
I have been having problems with Comcast lately. For the last 2 months, I have been getting intermittent disconnections. This can range anywhere between 1 and 6 times an hour. I’ve had 27 techs out to my house, 3 maintenance guys, and 4 supervisors. The last batch of techs that came out to my house yesterday, did a 15 minute ping test, told me it looked like it was working and left, told me to call Comcast if I have anymore problems (this is after they did nothing) Right before they left, the internet disconnected. I was only running messenger at that moment, and they saw it go offline, then come back. The lead tech tried to tell me that instant messengers logged out after inactivity. Riiiiighhhtttttttt.
I’m still ongoing with my struggle. 8 weeks now of problems that never end.
When the company I work for started rolling out DSL in my area my work agreed to pay for it. YES!! Couldn’t wait to ditch my 56k modem.
Now you have to remember I worked for the company (not the DSL department) but I had access to the ordering database to track the progress.
All was set up, but I had a long wait for Verizon to come to install their portion of the lines. That was done in about 30 days.
Then one day, without warning, Covad shows up and hand delivers me a DSL modem and they tell me that my lines aren’t ready yet.
Verizon turned up their lines and now I’m ready for someone to come and hook my apartment up to Verizon and I will be all set. They tell me I need a written letter saying that my landlord gives permission to run the DSL cable up the wall outside and through the wall if necessary. So I schedule the appointment for the installer.
The installer comes, 4 hours late mind you, and asks for the “permission slip”. He then tells me “Ok, I will take this back to my office for my manager and we will schedule another install appointment”.
WHOA HOLD ON. I took off from work so you can take a piece of paper from me? How about I just fax it over?
He tells me no, I can’t fax it. I ask him for his boss’s phone number so I can call and verify all this. He starts to get angry and tells me he is NOT installing my DSL no matter what. So I said fine, take this paper and go back and I want someone back here to install the DSL. I call his office and they agree, if they can find time, to send a tech. They also promise a call back. That callback doesn’t happen.
Well it’s about 4:45pm and I need to go to the store. I go outside and a Verizon van pulls up. I ask if he is here to install DSL and he said yes but he doesn’t have a full address…. I give him my name and he says I’m the one. He installs the line without much fanfare and does a nice job of it actually through the outside walls etc.
He leaves, and I call my DSL company to rock and roll. They say it is on, and my modem is plugged in. I get a signal but nothing works. I give them the model and everything of my DSL router/modem. They tell me I have the wrong model. I needed a different one! So I said can you please just mail the modem this time so I don’t have to wait for a tech to deliever it? They say NO… that is against policy. They only do installs. They tell me the tech will be in NJ all day tomorrow and can’t make it to NY and I have to wait a week.
I work it out so I can meet the NJ tech in NJ and pick up the new router ffrom him. They give me his name and number and they said he agreed to meet me at such and such address (my work since he was going to be 1 mile away and it would save a whole trip for him the next week).
Tomorrow comes and no tech. I call up and my (and my DSL) company tells me they have NO RECORD of any tech that is supposed to meet me. I ask how is it possible I have his name, his ph #, etc… they deny ever giving me that info.
So I have to succumb and agree for a tech to show up at my apartment a few days later. I get a tech willing to come at 8pm so I don’t miss work and he is in the area anyway. So this tech comes to install my DSL. He asks “where is your modem” and I point to it. I ask “Didn’t you bring one?”
No.
I ask him what he is doing here and he said they told him he needed to install my DSL. Ummm you mean plug it in? I’ve done that see!! He leaves and agrees to come the next night with the proper equipment.
FINALLY he comes with a new modem/router and we plug it in and VIOLA, it works.
——————————————–
So now I move less than a year later and set up a move order with someone at my own company. They do the order and I am able to view it online internally. It is set up for a FULL-PROFESSIONAL install.
I call the person who did my internal order and ask what is the difference between PRO and SELF installs. They tell me a PRO install is when the tech comes and plugs the modem into your PC. I said I don’t need that and take ANOTHER day off from work for that. Please change it to a SELF install.
They change it to a self install — and the order then gets canceled (because the tech cancelled it instead of changing it).
So now the Verizon portion gets pushed back and I have to wait more weeks. I go to that tech’s manager and work with him to get my order re-instated. Done.
I get a shiney new DSL modem in the mail a few days later.
And then another one the next day.
I get the call that the DSL should be live and to give it a try. I plug the modem in, nothing working. I try the other modem, doesn’t work. I call up and sure enough they didn’t register the modem with my service and they have no logs of a modem even beening mailed. Well they activate my modem and I am online!
A few days later, a tech shows up to install my DSL! I am not home of course but he left a note saying I missed the appointment and that they will ship (another!) modem to me.
Sure enough another modem arrives. I call up my ISP and tell them about my THREE modems and ask them where do I send the other 2 back to… and also what about my old modem.router from when I moved… do they want that back? They don’t have a record of anything. I ask them for the address to send them back and they tell me I can’t send it anywhere unless they have it in their system and to just keep everything. I wait a few months and sell them all on eBay.
After that my DSL worked fine for about a year until my company stopped paying for it and then I switched to cable which was a mess in itself (long story short when I ordered the cable internet, their ordering system lost connection mid-process so it was in the system but never finanized so my modem’s MAC was never registered with their system). It took me 3 phone calls to convince them my PC was fine and that I really think that my modem’s MAC isn’t in their system. I finally speak to a “manager” and immediately she says “Oh, your MAC isn’t fully registered… I’ll have a tech do that in a few hours”. I tell her I will hold on and she says no that’s not possible so I tell her how many hours I spent with her Tier 1 and Tier 2 and she agrees to register it herself and then I was online.
The End?
For all those having problems with the Internet cutting on and off… remember PING is your friend.
Simply run a ping to your ISP’s first hop. Don’t be surprised if your ISP has a private IP address also (RoadRunner in NYC uses 10.x.x.x addresses).
Go to a Command Prompt and type in
ping -t 10.10.10.10 (or whatever your ISP’s first hop is).
Also open some more command prompts and ping various other hosts eg:
ping -t http://www.yahoo.com
ping -t localhost (your PC).
With a tech standing there, they can visibly see the packet loss then (as long as your internet goes down while they are there!!)
There should be less than 1% loss to that first hop and ideally 0% to it (and the others also!).
To see what that first hop is, type tracert http://www.google.com
Also someone else made a comment about nslookup. Thats a great resource for testing your DNS resolvers. You can mix and match DNS resolvers in your PC’s setup. I recommend using your ISP for 1 and something like OpenDns for the secondary :D
i TOO HAVE stories from Bellsouth , err - SBC, umm - AT&T - what are they called today? Like the modem, which modem - I also wound up with two or three…
As to the performance, I use
http://www.dslreports.com/stest
every once in awhile just to see if I’m getting my bucks worth…
And I too dont have a good memory to recount about Bellsouth tech support.
In unrelated to DSL horror, I had my home phone moved to a Nextel Cell (when cell portability became law) = my DLS disappeared, and temporarliy lost my home phone number of over 5 years. Bellsouth said nothing could be done to prevent. Luckily they gave me a temp number and new DSL until nextel could release it; I also had to deal with Nextel to fight for my number. And then I had to fight double billilng - got billed for my real services and the temp services. Unfortunately I am not in an area that has a real, modern, multiservice cable company as an alternative.
Who won?
My story is still in progress…
I wake up yesterday Friday, 7/13/2007 to do a bit of work from home. My home network was up all night doing some background torrent downloads of a few game demos. I see that they all downloaded, and I am happy.. but when I click to surf the net.. I am getting no connection.
No big deal, I turn off the router/DSL modem (BellSouth DSL) and restart. Still no connection.. No DNS address. No ISP address.. Nothing showing up in my PPPoE connection except “Connecting…” then “Disconected.”
I pick up my telephone and I hear the worst “BUZZING” sound I can hear. I unplug the modem/router and pick up the phone again.. same BUZZING.
Great.. My phone line is FUBAR. I whip out my cell phone. Call 411 and get the number for ATnT phone line support. I go through a 10 minute ‘voice recognition” automated service that says “There does see to be a problem with your line, we will fix it within 24 hours.”
Sigh.
I wait, and then about 2 hours later I hear my telephone ring 1 time.. (During this time I unplugged all the other phones (except my office line) in the house and left the DSL model unhooked as well.)
I pick up the office line and hear a clear dial tone.. YAY!
I attached the DSL modem and get the SAME ERROR.. will not connect to PPPoE (the modem does get 2 green lights for its connections, like usual).
So I dial “411″ on the home line to get the number to DSL tech support. and I get “We’re sorry you need to dial a 1 or 0 to get that number.”
HuH? I dial “0″ on my home line… same error… WEIRD.
I dial my friend on the home line and get through just fine, I dial my cell phone and it rings OK.
So.. I whip out my cell phone again and dial 411 for DSL support number.
I contact the DSL person using my home phone.. I get a tech person who sounds like she is from India.. but I must be wrong her name is “Mary”.
Mary and I talk for a while…. No I did not change my settings.. No it was working just fine last night. Sure I can reset the modem and check the wires. Sure here is my last 4 social security numbers (she asked this 7 times)….
After 20 minutes Mary says “Well it seems you have an older DSL modem, we will need to send you a new one. It is out of warrenty so you may see a charge on your next bill.” Sigh… Mary continues “It is after our daily hours, this order will go in Monday and you might see your new modem as soon as next Tuesday.”
Grumble… Mary gives me my ticket number and we hang up.
Now.. it is around 4pm, and I needed to do some work so I go in for a few hours.
coming back home around 8:30 I decide to stop by BestBuy to see if they have any DSL modems for sale… They are sold out. At least 2 other people were on that eisle and I heard them asking a sales rep about a DSL modem.. weird…
I go to Wal Mart next door and look… Yup.. They are sold out of DSL modems as well.
My roommate comes home that night, and tells me their DSL was down all day in the store.
Now I am seriously paranoid… I wake up this morning to the same problem. I am currently at a WiFi spot near my house (I have no idea what service they use).
Signed, Josh. Going through Internet withdrawl.