To CAIS Engineers - WAKE UP AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS

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1

<FLAME ON>

It has been a trying time at CAIS in the last few days, I'm sure.

PSINet dumped all of their DSL customers onto CAIS. Covad is the backhaul
provider for them both. Need I say more?

Bottom line, I dont know how many thousands of people were without service
for more than a day because the whole transfer was botched.

We have a situation where we had a DSL connection from PSI and were using
our own IP addresses. Problem is that no one changed the
routing tables and the packets dead-ended at PSI.

Getting CAIS to fix this problem has been a nightmare. At first, PSI didnt
stop announcing the routes and now that they have, it seems that
CAIS will not announce the routes till Monday becuase "no one at our NOC
knows how to do this and the one guy (ONE GUY IN THE WHOLE
COMPANY - AND THEY ARE A NATIONWIDE PROVIDER???) who knows how doesn't work
weekends."

Bottom line from CAIS:" S***W the customers, we dont work weekends. We don't
care that your entire business has been dead in the water since
Wednesday, you can go to H**L, we'll get to it Monday, if we feel like it."

Our lawyers are looking at what actions we can take against them. It may be
trickey, but we will try.

Needless to say, we will be moving our connection. I have some choice words
for them when they send us our first monthly bill, which I'm certain, they
will do on weekends just fine.

IF SOMEONE IS THERE AT CAIS - GET OFF OF YOUR LAZY A** AND PUT THOSE
ANNOUNCEMENTS INTO YOUR BGP4
TABLES TODAY (NOT MONDAY, NOT LATER IN THE WEEK)- THERE ARE ABOUT 6 OF YOUR
CUSTOMERS (NOT JUST US)
WHO ARE DEAD IN THE WATER BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO LAZY TO DO A 20 SECOND JOB.

<flame off - sorry to the list for being so loud>
John

2

Welp, you are the one who picked xDSL for your business...

3

Why would anyone purchase dsl to run their business on. Let me guess, the
price was right.

4

The fact its a BGP problem means it has nothing to do with DSL.

-Dan

5

Absolutely correct, but if I was a T1 customer paying $1500 a month, you
best believe my issue would get resolved. xDSL companies are far from being
customer oriented, they only care about the number of lines installed per
month.

6

I believe CAIS also sells T1s. The fact they appear to have only a single
BGP engineer and they dont appear to even be able to call them in means we
wont be buying a T1 or anything else for that matter from CAIS anytime
soon, possibly ever.

-Dan

7

My condolences to you and your situation. This post would be more
appropriate for inet-access or perhaps as an email to the executive staff
of CAIS. This is NANOG. End user DSL support (and lack thereof) problems
don't belong on this list. I appreciate your effort to publically shame
them into helping you or merely as a form of payback. However, every
other network operator (backbone operator) other than CAIS could do
without the rant. C'mon, you're wearing out my "D" key. :wink:

Mike.

<FLAME ON>

It has been a trying time at CAIS in the last few days, I'm sure.

PSINet dumped all of their DSL customers onto CAIS. Covad is the backhaul
provider for them both. Need I say more?

Bottom line, I dont know how many thousands of people were without service
for more than a day because the whole transfer was botched.

We have a situation where we had a DSL connection from PSI and were using
our own IP addresses. Problem is that no one changed the
routing tables and the packets dead-ended at PSI.

Getting CAIS to fix this problem has been a nightmare. At first, PSI didnt
stop announcing the routes and now that they have, it seems that
CAIS will not announce the routes till Monday becuase "no one at our NOC
knows how to do this and the one guy (ONE GUY IN THE WHOLE
COMPANY - AND THEY ARE A NATIONWIDE PROVIDER???) who knows how doesn't work
weekends."

Bottom line from CAIS:" S***W the customers, we dont work weekends. We don't
care that your entire business has been dead in the water since
Wednesday, you can go to H**L, we'll get to it Monday, if we feel like it."

Our lawyers are looking at what actions we can take against them. It may be
trickey, but we will try.

Needless to say, we will be moving our connection. I have some choice words
for them when they send us our first monthly bill, which I'm certain, they
will do on weekends just fine.

IF SOMEONE IS THERE AT CAIS - GET OFF OF YOUR LAZY A** AND PUT THOSE
ANNOUNCEMENTS INTO YOUR BGP4
TABLES TODAY (NOT MONDAY, NOT LATER IN THE WEEK)- THERE ARE ABOUT 6 OF YOUR
CUSTOMERS (NOT JUST US)
WHO ARE DEAD IN THE WATER BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO LAZY TO DO A 20 SECOND JOB.

<flame off - sorry to the list for being so loud>
John

+------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+

8

My condolences to you and your situation. This post would be more
appropriate for inet-access or perhaps as an email to the executive staff
of CAIS. This is NANOG. End user DSL support (and lack thereof) problems
don't belong on this list. I appreciate your effort to publically shame

                                ^^^^^^^^^^
Ooops, this should have read "can understand". Wouldn't do it,
don't want to encourage it, though I can understand it.

them into helping you or merely as a form of payback. However, every
other network operator (backbone operator) other than CAIS could do
without the rant. C'mon, you're wearing out my "D" key. :wink:

Mike.

>
> <FLAME ON>
>
> It has been a trying time at CAIS in the last few days, I'm sure.
>
> PSINet dumped all of their DSL customers onto CAIS. Covad is the backhaul
> provider for them both. Need I say more?
>
> Bottom line, I dont know how many thousands of people were without service
> for more than a day because the whole transfer was botched.
>
> We have a situation where we had a DSL connection from PSI and were using
> our own IP addresses. Problem is that no one changed the
> routing tables and the packets dead-ended at PSI.
>
> Getting CAIS to fix this problem has been a nightmare. At first, PSI didnt
> stop announcing the routes and now that they have, it seems that
> CAIS will not announce the routes till Monday becuase "no one at our NOC
> knows how to do this and the one guy (ONE GUY IN THE WHOLE
> COMPANY - AND THEY ARE A NATIONWIDE PROVIDER???) who knows how doesn't work
> weekends."
>
> Bottom line from CAIS:" S***W the customers, we dont work weekends. We don't
> care that your entire business has been dead in the water since
> Wednesday, you can go to H**L, we'll get to it Monday, if we feel like it."
>
> Our lawyers are looking at what actions we can take against them. It may be
> trickey, but we will try.
>
> Needless to say, we will be moving our connection. I have some choice words
> for them when they send us our first monthly bill, which I'm certain, they
> will do on weekends just fine.
>
> IF SOMEONE IS THERE AT CAIS - GET OFF OF YOUR LAZY A** AND PUT THOSE
> ANNOUNCEMENTS INTO YOUR BGP4
> TABLES TODAY (NOT MONDAY, NOT LATER IN THE WEEK)- THERE ARE ABOUT 6 OF YOUR
> CUSTOMERS (NOT JUST US)
> WHO ARE DEAD IN THE WATER BECAUSE YOU ARE TOO LAZY TO DO A 20 SECOND JOB.
>
> <flame off - sorry to the list for being so loud>
> John
>
>
>
>
>

+------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+
> Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 |
> Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 |
> mleber@he.net http://www.he.net |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+

9

they moved an entire customer segment, dsl, on short notice and in one day.
whew! shame there were glitches, but i'm impressed.

randy

10

You are aware that a good percentage of the T1's you purchase nowadays are
just a pair of bonded 768 dsl lines, right? The phone companies have been
doing that for over 20 years to save on copper.

Hunter Pine
Vice President, Network Operations
hunter@compuhelp.com

11

Why would anyone purchase dsl to run their business on. Let me guess, the
price was right.

I would call it a proven technology, but a very poor business model.
And xDSL is definately not for mission critical operations.

And the list of failed local xDSL providers gets longer. Luckily
we stayed out of it, and are still in business as are our customers.

12

Hunter Pine:

You are aware that a good percentage of the T1's you purchase nowadays are
just a pair of bonded 768 dsl lines, right? The phone companies have been
doing that for over 20 years to save on copper.

Huh?

Just for starters: HDLC circuits run on different voltages, have timing
and a bunch of other characteristics that xDSL never heard of.
We are seeing BellSouth run 2 wire T1's, which have been working well so
far. Still not DSL (approx 900mhz over POTS). --Mike--

13

Joe,

    You have to look at economies of scale. A small to medium sized
business cannot afford to colocate or purchase more reliable bandwidth.
Since their business does not rely on thier line, they can do without more
expensive connection. Second, they may be upgrading from other technologies
such as ISDN or POTS. DSL is far from a reliable technology, yet quite far
from an unreliable technology. I sit on the fence in regrards to its
performance and other characteristics. The work that I have done working
for a CLEC has shown me that a line that works well from the start is likely
to stay up for weeks/months.

14

I don't think anyone is knocking dsl technology, just the expectation
that you can run mission critical services with the level of service you
get with dsl.

15

For the most part, I don't see that the level of service is much different
if you sign up for a business class DSL line.
You get an SLA, like a T1
The phone company (usually) gives you a 24 hour turnaround time on line
repairs, like a T1
If the ISP itself is incompetent, or just doesn't care about their
customers, or is too overwhelmed to manage their business, you can't knock
the technology for that.

/H

16

Sounds like another reason why you're putting your livelihood at risk if
you're relying on DSL and/or a single connection for your business needs.

Here endeth the lesson.

17

However, if a small to medium sized business has made the decision to
go for a cheap option rather than pay for service and reliability, should
they then come whining in inappropriate fora when their connectivity goes
down?

18

x is sometimes "H".

Are you sure you want to say HDSL is not for mission-critical operations?

19

"Since their business does not rely on thier line, they can do without more
expensive connection."

Right, absolutely. If I was a small printer in Albany, New York, and I
wanted a cheap affordable connection to browse the web on, or send some
email then yes, xDSL or Cable would be my choice. But if I had a businees
that relied on the internet, and the impact of an outage would severly
hamper my ability to conduct such business. Then the last thing I would do
is rely on xDSL (not including HDSL which is the technology the some T1's
are ran over).

Besides, if you need a /23 routed for you, then you are a small to medium
size business.

20

Thats bunk,

First off if your an CLEC the relys on LEC for your copper then you have a
problem. My experiance with verizon is that you
first have to dispatch your own fileds services people, shoot the line and
find the issue (4hrs on a good day.
second, you call in a ticket (which takes up to 24 hrs to acknowledge).
Third, the lec dispatches a tech to investigate, if he cant find the problem
the close out your ticket.
Four, if problem isnt resolve a "vendor meet" has to be setup, you have to
handhold the verizon tech and educate him on dsl.(48hr notice).

as for relibility, I cant tell you the number of times a Verizon tech, would
be out to install a phone line and steal one of our dsl lines cuase it did
not have a tone.

Hunter Pine