MediaOne/ATT: no more servers, hostnames

[drew at drewtaylor.com (Drew Taylor)]

At 09:44 PM 10/21/01 -0400, David Kramer wrote:
>I signed up Thursday with speakeasy.net for their DSL, which comes highly
>recommended.  Friday I get an email saying the service is cancelled
>because I already have DSL provisioned on that phone line, which I don't.
>I call Verizon, and they say that I do have that line provisioned for DSL,
>but it's not theirs, and they can't tell me whose it is, and they can't
>cancel it without hearing from the providor, even though they don't know
>who that is ??!?!?   Five phone calls later, I finally reach someone at
>Verizon who knows their own g*damn system codes, and recognizes the
>providor as themselves.  I had ordered Verizon DSL and cancelled it the
>next day, but they never took it off my records.   Then I call
>Speakeasy.net, and they tell me I have to start from scratch with them
>again.  Oh joy.

Oh yes, welcome to the joys of the CLEC! Verizon is mostly clueless I've 
found. For instance, recently I had a problem with my DSL (Speakeasy - 
first time in close to a year :-) We did the usual stuff and concluded that 
there was a problem with my loop. According to the tests, there was a "loop 
imbalance", which basically means one wire in the pair is longer than the 
other. After a bunch of hassle and several days of near complete downtime, 
a Covad guy comes out. Tests insue, and it is determined that it is an 
inside wiring problem.  But nothing has changed in a year! So Verizon comes 
out (allegedly - I never saw the guy) and says everything is fine on their 
end of things. They are still saying there is an imbalance in the line. 
Covad comes out again, we try several things and the imbalance still persists.

However, on Sat the DSL came back up. I didn't know why, but it stayed up. 
The Covad guy comes out a second time. I tell him that the DSL came back up 
on Sat and has stayed up. But it was going slower than it should. He tells 
me, oh yeah we changed the card on Sat and the line was in "Safe mode" 
which explained the slow speed. A reprovision later, I'm back to normal. We 
fiddle with the inside wiring, but the "imbalance" is still there. The guy 
gives up and goes back. He gives me him cell number so I can call him 
directly if something else comes up.

Moral of the story, nobody really knows what they are doing. But somehow it 
manages to work. I should mention that my loop length is about 2500 ft. :-) 
Good luck, it's worth the wait. Speakeasy is very clueful and likes power 
users as far as I can tell. Just make sure your NT boxes are patched. ;-)


Drew Taylor                     JA[P|m_p|SQL]H
http://www.drewtaylor.com/      Just Another Perl|mod_perl|SQL Hacker
mailto:drew at drewtaylor.com      *** God bless America! ***
ICQ: 135298242




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