[ale] AT&T Broadbrand and Linux

[Chuck Mattern]

We have had similar problems in my neighborhood.  I've been down for days at a 
time, two hour on hold time for techs support, both me and my nextdoor 
neighbor down for hours at the same time then both magically back online but 
M1 insisting there is no connection (no pun intended there).  And it has gone 
beyond the tech issues.  Just after then name change I got a disconnect notice 
from them.  I thought I had paid but was unsure. I attempted to call their 
payment line with credit card in hand and ended up getting dropped after a 30 
minute hold time, please note that at this time I was only trying to give them 
money!  I tried again on my way to work over the cell phone since I didn't 
want the kids to go with our Disney that night.  Same result, 45 minutes on 
hold, ring, ring, click!  I eventually ended up taking my lunch hour to go to 
a Winn Dixie and pay there.  The lady there commented that a lot of folks had 
come in with disconnect notices voer the last fiew days, hmmmm...  Then came 
the revalation.  When my next bill came there was a $0 balance due.  I took a 
better look at all of the paperwork,  The disconnect notice was printed on the 
4th of September, postmarked on the6th, delevered to my house on the 9th with 
threatened disconnect on the 11th.  This in itself sucks.  But when I reviewed 
the bill I found the real shock, my "missing" payment had been processed on 
September 1st, three days before the slow moving threat was even printed.  I'm 
not sugesting villany, I'm suggesting incometence.  For those of you in the 
Tech Support field imagine how long you'd be on the job if your customers were 
supported this way...

For the moment things are stable, I have not gotten any more disconnects 
(threatened or unintentionally inflicted) maybe it will get better after AT&T 
settles in, but I have yet to recieve a reply to six e-mails  (other than from 
the auto mailer indicating that the messages did get there) complaining about 
this problem,  I have sent another mail via US Postal Service, we'll see if 
that brings anything.

For now I eagerly await the coming of xDSL and Bell South.

> Chris,
> I also tried Roadrunner.  I was using RH 6.1 and win98.  No problem
> getting up up and running on either of the os's.  I worked great WHEN it was
> up.  Over a two week period, it was down over 50% of the time (and so was
> my neighbor using only 98.) Their tech support bit the big one (average
> 2 hrs to talk to a person).  Even though multiple peopl in my neighborhood
> were having the same problems AT the same time (I was polling them when I 
> went down, and M1 was aware of this.) MediaOne tech refused to
> acknowledge this, insisting that it was a problem on my end.  They were
> requiring me to take a day off from work to wait on them to show up.
> 
> Needless to say, I kept my mindspring account and dumped Mediaone.  I
> might add this was ~two weeks before the name change.  As I do work for
> the Board of Regents for the University System of Ga. I couldn't afford
> the downtime.
> 
> If I sound bitter, I am.  I had high hopes for this endeavor.  But their
> support drove me the other way.  If you have better results, please let me
> know.  I'm out of the circle for adsl, might can get idsl.  
> 
> Steve
> 
> =======================================================
> | Steve Nicholas             |                        |
> | Unix System Programmer     |  A risk is not a risk  |
> | Georgia State University   |  until it is taken.    | 
> | snicholas at gsu.edu          |                        |
> | 404-651-1062               |  BBROYGBVGW            |
> =======================================================
> 
> On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Chris Woodruff wrote:
> 
> > I thought I would share my experiences with the list.  I had a cable
> > modem installed from AT&T (formerly MediaOne) on Tuesday.  The tech got
> > it running with Win98 and it was simple.  Loaded up a win32 firewall app
> > and was enjoying speeds up to 1100k.  I was told that next month AT&T
> > will be doubling the bandwidths on the network to 3000k from 1500k.  So
> > then I went to work with getting Linux to work with the cable modem.  I
> > was using RH 6.2 but couldn't get the system to find my new ethernet
> > card.  So I downloaded the RH 7 iso's (thanks to the person at GaTech
> > for the mirror), burned the CD's and reinstalled.  I was amazed to find
> > that after the install everything was working correctly.  I have to
> > recommend AT&T broadband.  They seem to have really corrected the issues
> > that MediaOne had.
> > 
> > My question is now about security.  What services do I shutdown to
> > secure my system to stop any havoc from the outside?  I have shutdown
> > sendmail and httpd.  Does anyone know of a good security site that will
> > help?
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Chris Woodruff
> > --
> > To unsubscribe: mail majordomo at ale.org with "unsubscribe ale" in message bo
dy.
> > 
> 
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-- 
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|Chuck Mattern           | "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."|
|cmattern at mediaone.net   | -Friedrich Nietzsche-                            |
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