Can someone from verizon.net contact me re: mail delivery troubles off
list please? I'm relaying mail for a particular person in one of my
hosted domains who is a verizon.net customer and all I'm getting is
errors. I accept mail, process it for spam and viruses and then
forward it to verizon and I'm getting in specific errors.
Thanks in advance,
Curtis Maurand
Getting Verizon to do anything involving the internet, even if you possess
the phone number of the department to call, is impossible. They do a good
job with circuits. They do an abysmal job with IP and related issues.
Emailing nanog in the hopes that somebody from verizon.net is reading is
like asking your neighbor for an audience with the Premiere of China.
Andy
Curtis Maurand [1/29/2004 4:21 AM] :
Can someone from verizon.net contact me re: mail delivery troubles off list please? I'm relaying mail for a particular person in one of my hosted domains who is a verizon.net customer and all I'm getting is errors. I accept mail, process it for spam and viruses and then forward it to verizon and I'm getting in specific errors.
Their sender verify scheme timing out on you, so that "550 you are not allowed to send mail to foo@verizon.net"?
Andy Dills wrote:
Getting Verizon to do anything involving the internet, even if you possess
the phone number of the department to call, is impossible. They do a good
job with circuits. They do an abysmal job with IP and related issues.
This must be a different Verizon than I dealt with at a colo/small ISP facility then, 'cause the Verizon I dealt with wasn't real great with circuits either. At least, compared to the job the IXCs did at a former job of mine...
Bob
Verizon? Colo? ISP?
You must have been acquired somewhere along the way...in Maryland, native
territory, colo is not even a product available to you unless you have LEC
status, and even then, space is usually so limited that it's not worth
your time trying. And if you do, the procedure involved takes months and
is outrageously expensive compared to industry pricing.
But they've never had a sonet outage once in our entire time of doing
business with them. So they do employ competent people. Plenty of them.
But they aren't concerned with IP or SMTP.
Now, they do have some decent engineers, to be fair. You just have to
manipulate your way through to them...they're in really short supply on
the internet end of things.
Andy
Andy Dills wrote:
Verizon? Colo? ISP?
Probably should have expressed that more clearly. Not colo'ing at Verizon, but an Internet colocation facility that also provides it's customers with T1 and Frame Relay connectivity to the Internet.
But they've never had a sonet outage once in our entire time of doing
business with them. So they do employ competent people. Plenty of them.
But they aren't concerned with IP or SMTP.
This is in NJ, also "native" ex-Bell Atlantic territory. And I agree they have competent people... But I would dispute "Plenty of them." In fact, I think this is where I saw the biggest problem: getting a response from a Verizon tech in a reasonable time when dealing with an outage. Most of the outages were "last mile" type outages, but we did have them mess up some frame relay connections out of the blue with a broken switch configuration.
And if it should be a circuit from NJ to PA via their special "conduit" between the LATAs, it became a finger-pointing nightmare, since the NJ group would say it's the PA group, who'd disagree, and then there's the group responsible for the conduit, which is a separate group from either of them.
And to be fair, this colo facility wasn't that large, buying T3's worth of T1's at a time, whereas the place I was at before had around 6-10K data and voice circuits worldwide that they managed, and the major IXCs had on-site personnel. But even without the on-site folks involved, dealing with the IXCs was a much better experience, more "polished," with good SLAs and escalation paths.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack a search for a Verizon Internet admin. 
We now return you to your mail/worm discussion, already in progress.
Bob
:But they've never had a sonet outage once in our entire time of doing
:business with them. So they do employ competent people. Plenty of them.
:But they aren't concerned with IP or SMTP.
Absolutely. Without delving into regulatory details, prior to the
initiation of VADI (possibly the most egregious misnomer in history) and
again now since VADI has been decomissioned, we're quite happy with their
competence at layers 1 & 2.
There's no question that there's a certain amount of social engineering
involved in contacting (or being allowed to contact) competent folk. It's
advisable to be sure that any staff who will be contacting them are fully versed in
any services they will be discussing. The clueful staff at VZ are much
more receptive and accessible when they know in advance that they can
expect to pick up a likewise-clued individual.
cheers,
brian
My favorite (extreme sarcasm) lines I received from Verizon:
- (At 25 Bway with a T3 from the carrier room.) "The T3 outage you are
experiencing is not our problem." Turned out someone messed up a cable in
to their router in the carrier room. A tech that they dispatched to 25
Bway got access to the carrier room and recrimped the cables in to THEIR
equipment, not ours. Anyone who knows 25Bway knows you can't enter the
carrier room without a purpose. I can't go there and say let me work on
VZ equipment in the Carrier room.
- "I don't see the circuit ID for the T3 you just gave me in here do you
have another CID for it?"
- Random person in back office I had been transferred to,
"(definitively) It's not a problem on our system...What was that CID
again? Let me trace each leg of the Circuit. (pause) Oh wait, there is a
problem in the Central Office that that would affect that line" Me, "How
do I keep up with the progress of this ticket? Is there a ticket number on
that problem?" Him, "It's an internal ticket number. I can't give it out."
- "If you are having intermittent problems, we can't do anything about it.
We can test the line and if the T1 shows clean we will close the ticket."
- Me, "The T1 CID $CID is down." Them, "What would you like us to do?"
- (From a T1 plagued with issues after 9/11. Paraphrased:) "Due to the
wiring in your building it would probably be best if we just ran a new T1
out to you. You will need to sign a new 60 month contract and we will work
out the details of closing the old T1 once the new one is setup." (This
was a sales rep.)
- "Hi, I'm Chris L. I'm your new account manager. I will be your contact
with any problems you have." (Chris no longer answers his phone.
Neither does anyone else from the "Enterprise Services" dept here in NYC.
None of the phone numbers Chris sent to me respond either.)
- The Trouble ticket line has given up any semblance of desire to help
Most companies answer "$Company_Name, This is $Name speaking, how may I
help you?" The TT line, "Verizon?!"
- T1 group, "I can loop the smart jack." Me on site, "The smart jack has
no lights." Them, "Oh, wait I was looping the wrong smart jack, what was
that CID again?"
- My favorite recording from the trouble ticket line: "We are
experiencing an unusually high call volume, please try your call again
later <CLICK>"
- One T1 outage last year: T1 tech says need to dispatch to site, Site
tech says no issue at smart jack need to get basement people in here
(don't remember the name right off), basement people say we can't hear
anything from C.O., C.O. tech says we can't hear anything from the
building. This outage took 5 days to recover from to get techs on site and
dispatched after each person pointed the finger at another person.
I could go on, but it is just depressing. I still have no one to complain
to if I can't get a hold of my sales rep or the T1 TT line screws up
royally.
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Dills
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 10:47 PM
To: Bob Snyder
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Verizon mail troubles
<snip>
Now, they do have some decent engineers, to be fair. You just
have to manipulate your way through to them...they're in
really short supply on the internet end of things.Andy
---
Andy Dills
Xecunet, Inc.
www.xecu.net
301-682-9972
---
Well thanks for for being (somewhat) fair.
1. Verizon does care about IP / Internet
2. While I don't have anything to do with the VOL email operations, I will
see if I can get your contact info/issue to the appropriate people
3. You're on your own with the Premier of China.