I'm a tad pi**ed off...

[Toaster]

God you sound like the Telecom help desk, I reckon if I ever get that question asked of me again after losing service I will give up...........YES I HAVE! is the answer.

"Help Desk" now isn't that a contradiction in terms!!

[Lias]

Bahahaha. I wonder if the support staff are aware of the fact that Cisco equipment is probably keeping the entire of their own network setup running? They make some of the nicest heavy-duty ISP equipment around.

I have no idea about currently, but back in the day Xtra used to use alot of Ascend gear (who got brought out by Lucent, who in turn just got brought out by Alcatel).

They had a rather brilliant young chap called Josh Bailey, who got so clued up on Ascend gear that Ascend poached him to work as a senior troubleshooter (they flew him all around the pacific and SE Asia etc), and then ascend Headh office poached him and he enved up developing the gear in the US.. San Franciso I think.

[imdying]

Had a good experience last week getting our ADSL sorted.

Performance has been getting worse of late, which I can live with, but we were also starting to get drop outs every 10 minutes for about a minute.

They (Xtra) sent us some replacement splitters, which didn't help, then monitored the line for three or four days. After watching the line, they made some adjustments to our profile at the exchange, and we now have SnR and Attenuation that is near perfect. No more drop outs, plus they've credited us a months broadband for the bother.

Have an 857 here if someone is looking for a bad ass router.

[Blackbird]

Had a good experience last week getting our ADSL sorted.

Performance has been getting worse of late, which I can live with, but we were also starting to get drop outs every 10 minutes for about a minute.

They (Xtra) sent us some replacement splitters, which didn't help, then monitored the line for three or four days. After watching the line, they made some adjustments to our profile at the exchange, and we now have SnR and Attenuation that is near perfect. No more drop outs, plus they've credited us a months broadband for the bother.

Have an 857 here if someone is looking for a bad ass router.

Thanks for that! I'll monitor our performance for a few days before jumping in boots and all

Geoff

[avgas]

Its doesn't surprise me that help desk didn't know what Cisco was.
The don't know what vdsl is either.
Wouldn't it be great if Vector Comms was an internet provider. But alas no - turns out NZ isn't ready for a a well managed system.

[imdying]

Given that Cisco isn't generally considered consumer level, and that Telecom don't sell those to consumers, there is no reason why they should support them, or even know what/who they are.

The installed user base of Cicso routers in residential applications is almost certainly less than a percent of all broadband users in New Zealand (hell, even including commercial users it is still going to be less than a percent). Given that that makes them 'obscure' in the context of their job, and that it would be impossible to train all their staff in all of the different routers available, those that want to use obscure equipment are on their own.

Essentially, if you have enough knowledge to even know why you'd want to differ from the ADSL modems that they supply for free, then you should have enough knowledge to make it function correctly.

[mstriumph]

I never meant to imply that they were liable in any litigatable sense, but given the current situation, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a week or two of energetic noisemaking on the subject would get Blackbird the relevant amount credited to his Xtra account.

I reckon it'd be well worth making a fuss over.

i've actually been credited for all sorts of stuff i shouldn't have got away with over here ....... just need the face to fly it is all

[Ixion]

Given that Cisco isn't generally considered consumer level, and that Telecom don't sell those to consumers, there is no reason why they should support them, or even know what/who they are.

The installed user base of Cicso routers in residential applications is almost certainly less than a percent of all broadband users in New Zealand (hell, even including commercial users it is still going to be less than a percent). Given that that makes them 'obscure' in the context of their job, and that it would be impossible to train all their staff in all of the different routers available, those that want to use obscure equipment are on their own.

Essentially, if you have enough knowledge to even know why you'd want to differ from the ADSL modems that they supply for free, then you should have enough knowledge to make it function correctly.

I do have enough knowledge. The time I called them (one of the only three, ever) was nothing to do with the router. I knew it wasn't.

Their DNS wasn't resolving. I could ping it, it was set as the primary DNS, but it would not resolve. nslookup returned a time out.

So the only purpose of the call was to ask (a) did they know; and (b) did they have an alternate (other than the "official secondary" which was doing the same thing) and (c) any idea of how long.

I wasn't too bothered, even if was going to be quite a while.

But the chick on the Helplessdesk insisted on asking a bunch of predigested questions (none of which had anything to do with the problem). And when we got to "What sort of ADSL modem do you have", that was the end of the case. "Oh you must have some cheap sort of modem that's is not supported. Your internet will never work until you get one of the ones on our list".

For the non-tecnical - a DNS is a computer that turns names , like www.kiwibiker.co.nz into IP addresses like 216.237.127.130. If you can send a mesage to the DNS ("ping" it) but it won't turn addresses into names it is EXCEEDINGLY improbable that it is anything to do with your router (assuming you have the IP address of the DNS correct). The router make and model was totally irrelevant.

[The Pastor]

yeah and they put all those forreninors on the phone that speak way to damn fast and so softly you can't understand a word they say, and when you ask them to speak clearer they lose it on you call you a racsit and shut down your service.

Well I just made that last little bit up, but you can't ring up and say "what is my username suffix eg .xdsl@xtra.co.nz or sumthin" they simply won't tell you straight away. I asked that, then spent 30 freeking minnutes with some noob who finally told me what that was, then I asked him how to set up port fowarding on the completely shitty routers they send out, It was like trying to draw out a hen tooth!. And If they ask me to reset my router one more time............

[Quartermile]

You think thats bad, I had that happen to me while bidding on a Bike last year

[scracha]

Their DNS wasn't resolving. I could ping it, it was set as the primary DNS, but it would not resolve. nslookup returned a time out.

Spot on dude. The Dlink's are OK (much better than the Linksys WRT $hite that I've stopped flogging as their range is $hite and so many died) but their routing tables can get a bit borked after a while, especially with psp stuff. Combined with Xtra's DNS servers being continuously overloaded this means lots of problems for their customers. It's a bit naughty but I just stick 60.234.1.1 or 58.28.4.2 as a secondary DNS on a hell of a lot of my customers.

ps. Don't tell people to ping Xtra's DNS server or they'll get worried. nslookup

[imdying]

There are a number of common alternative DNS in use by a number of New Zealanders that I could provide the details of if you like.