Oolite Bulletins

Fellow Vermin Mediocre users:

Every Tuesday between 7pm and 11pm I lose my internet access, specifically the 'ready' light on my NTL:250 modem begins to blink - indicating that my MAC/credentials have not be authenticated. Sometime during Thursday (when I get back from work) I find a steady ready light and full working internet again.

Ringing VM this morning raised my concerns when I had to go read the MAC address off the bottom of the modem because they "couldn't find it" - having told them the MAC address they could then find it, but could "get into it".

Does this happen to any other VM cable broadband users out there?

They sending an engineer next week - on Wednesday when it should be off, they wanted to send somebody Tuesday to which I queried the point since if it's working (as has happened in the past) they can find nothing that might be causing the error.

For a while they tried the usual wriggling of blaming my router (i.e. using one and then when I wouldn't be fobbed off - the type) and then when this didn't work my OS (Ubuntu), so I explained slowly and carefully that even if I plug an XP based laptop directly into the cable modem this does not encourage the modem connectivity to burst into life.

So, other than access at work - I'll see you guys (hopefully) on Thursday.

Kind of painful in the time-to-slog-through-the-data way, but why not slap Wireshark onto a box and just record the traffic and see what happens?

Good luck. I was with them a few years ago and they were - my god - just unbelievably, apallingly bad at customer service. The worst it's possible to experience. Luckily the service was actually fine and didn't go down often, but when it did you could feel the beads of cold sweat forming and palpitations starting at the impending nightmare stress of having to phone them.

So, good luck!

Possible explanation:
Every Tuesday, your neighbour microwaves a frozen chicken the size of a Cobra Mk III for 4 hours. Why not invite yourself round for a nibble, just turn up at the door with a napkin already tied to your front and a knife and fork in each hand?

Well I'm back up 12 hours earlier than normal - they did say they'd investigate this weekly drop-out at their end - perhaps they did/have?

I have had nothing but trouble with Virgin On The Ridiculous since I joined up with them. Of course, in those days they were still NTL (Numpties, Tools and Liars). No TV signal, pixellated channels, drops in connection, failure of the on-demand service with monotonous regularity and so on.

Recently we've started having some connection problems (daaaaamn slow internet) on top of the usual stuff. Now that's pushing it too far for someone like me. I like my internet. I love my internet. I could give it up any time though.

I am, however, trying to gird my loins to call their support department because I know what will happen. Twifty phone calls, speaking to a different donut each time who thinks I know nothing about computers. The router will be blamed. The computer will be blamed. The wireless network will be blamed. When I start talking technical at them, there will be some sort of small explosion of indignation at the other end then I will be speaking to a member of second level support. That manager will go through the same things again. Then I'll be referred to another number. Then I'll have to reboot the digibox, router and computer all at the same time. Just wait until I tell them about the FAP server and three wireless PC connections to the internet. Maybe I'll put the mobile phone, Wii, PSP and NDS onto the network too.

I should point out that I have indeed had all of these devices on the wifi network at the same time. Fun days. Main point is that even with all of them on I could still get 200 kbps on download speeds. Now, with only the FAP server and my laptop online I'm lucky if I get 20 kbps. Maybe the whole street got cable broadband at the same time.

Selezen wrote:

I am, however, trying to gird my loins to call their support department because I know what will happen. Twifty phone calls, speaking to a different donut each time who thinks I know nothing about computers. The router will be blamed. The computer will be blamed. The wireless network will be blamed. When I start talking technical at them, there will be some sort of small explosion of indignation at the other end then I will be speaking to a member of second level support. That manager will go through the same things again. Then I'll be referred to another number. Then I'll have to reboot the digibox, router and computer all at the same time.

Don't know if it will work for you, but what I've done in the past was say to the first person I called, "Look, I'm an IT tech (network engineer) myself, just switch me through to your 3rd level tech support please...I want to talk to somebody who speaks the same lingo as me." and it's worked.. saved a whole lot of faffing about.. of course, that's in Australia, where we're less inclined to stand on ceremony.

Yeah try that here in the UK and you would get a barrage of indignant "but we need to log your call and document your problem so that we know who to transfer you to."

Most call centres these days run from a set of scripts - flowcharted instructions that mnkeys could follow. I should know - I helped design the ones that a certain electronics and electrical supplier used in their call centre...

Selezen wrote:

Yeah try that here in the UK and you would get a barrage of indignant "but we need to log your call and document your problem so that we know who to transfer you to."

Hmm.. I would go "Fine.. Now, John (I make sure I got their name already) do you understand what I mean by <insert appropriate techno jargon/babble describing problem here>? No? I didn't think so.. So, can you please log that and then switch me through to your L3 support, or do I need to have a word with your supervisor about your attitude first?"

Selezen wrote:

Most call centres these days run from a set of scripts - flowcharted instructions that mnkeys could follow. I should know - I helped design the ones that a certain electronics and electrical supplier used in their call centre...

Yeah, I know.. I've had a little experience with the ISP version of the same thing.

Quite right, Diziet.
Out-techno-babbling them is the only way.

El Viejo wrote:

Quite right, Diziet.
Out-techno-babbling them is the only way.

To misquote:

"babble babble, toil and trouble" - Witch 2, MacBeth

I used to work for MS, and my brother-in-law still does. I had the extreme pleasure of listening to him with his ISP's tech-support one day. Now, please understand - his job is taking kernel dumps after a blue screen, strapping the debugger to it, and walking the stack to find EXACTLY what line of code when KABOOM.

So, he calls up the ISP, gets himself passed to 2nd / 3rd level support fairly quickly, and while they are arguing with him as to what the problem is - He exploited the server, uploaded the fix, placed a note on the main drive with the KB article referencing the behavior / problem / fix, patched the exploit, and then proceeded to tell the tech they needed to reboot their server as he had fixed it already for them and the system needed a reboot.

Yeah, their core networking big-wigs called him half an hour later to say thank you, but to never do that again.

Now THAT would have been a joy to observe/listen to..

I was with Virgin when I lived in the NE of England, but here in sunny Sussex, nobody's dug up the roads to lay fibre optic. So we're all operating thru British Telecom's copper wires and telegraph poles.

My line had been experiencing intermittent crackling for months now, with an predictable impact on my broadband performance. On Tuesday, I'd finally had enough and phoned BT faults (thankfully, the line was crackling while I was talking to the customer support dude). The engineer arrived today and spent 3.5 hours on the fix, but when he was finished, I had a beautifully clear line.

Now my broadband works well, but as I'm only an "Option 1" customer, I think that it's capped at about 512kbps. But that's a hell of a lot faster than it was at the weekend, so I'm not complaining!

I think possibly as one of the few people who has actually read the digital britain report I can safely say that 2Mbit/s minimum that Gordon has set out as the bare minimum is never going to happen, not by any method laid out in the report anyway.