Yeah. I got that part of it, and I don't disagree that many large carriers have less than stellar support. Some things to consider when looking at the support you get from a large ISP... - Most problems you will have are going to be circuit problems - i.e. "my T-1 is down, AGAIN". Therefore, most carrier's support operations are built around fixing Layer 1 problems. You give them the circuit ID, and then, in theory, you get your circuit fixed. - Routing problems occur, but most are global, across a carrier's entire network, or regional, at a POP or POPs. There are many things that can cause this - bad router code, misconfiguration, etc. In a properly designed network, routing problems that impact a single user are rare. - Resources to assist customers in diagnosing routing problems are scarce, for a variety of reasons, some good, some very bad. This is compounded by the fact that the "hit rate" for customer routing problems is low. Most times when a customer calls and says that their T-3 is down, it really is. Most of the time when a customer calls and says they are having a BGP problem, it's rarely originated by the carrier, and is usually a customer misconfiguration or misunderstanding. - Daniel Golding
-----Original Message----- From: Gregory Urban [mailto:urban@cs.umbc.edu] Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 11:14 AM To: Daniel Golding; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Qwest Support
You totally missed the point. Had this been a real emergency, he would be unable to get resolution since Qwest was unable to dredge up a clue within their customer support machine.
Greg U
At 05:24 PM 4/4/2002, you wrote:
I suppose. Except it's not even certain you were having a problem of any kind at all.
Qwest's presence or absence from public IX's really has nothing to do with your routes being announced. In fact, Qwest privately peers with all the other large networks. While there are many peering sessions at the public NAPs, most traffic is carried over private network interconnects, at least domestically. Certain peering points in Europe (Linx), tend to run the other way.
In fact, if Qwest were publically peering with other networks, it might be a reason why your routes through UUNet were being prefered - private peer originated routes are almost always assigned higher local preferences in carrier networks, then public peer originated routes.
I'm not sure your annoyance with Qwest has any basis in their lack of performance, as far as IP routing. BGP decision rules and other networks' routing policies will govern which paths are used for your routes. Here is an example...
- Network X peers with UUNet in 8 locations. Network X also peers with Qwest, lets say in 6 locations. For whatever reason, network X chooses UUNet's routes to you over, Qwest's. This could be due to local routing policy, dictating that 701 routes get a higher local pref. Or AS path lengths could be the same, and the decision could be falling to something like router ID. Whatever.
- In general, all the UUNet peering will get treated the same by Network X's routing policy. This won't always be the case, but let's say that none of the peering links are congested, etc. So, a certain number of paths are carried throughout Network X via iBGP. If UUNet's routes "won" at all those peering points, you will not see any paths through Qwest on a single carrier route server like Nitrous.
- Route-views, and the like are different animals. They get ebgp multihop views from many providers, so you will tend to see paths from many different vantage points, and are more likely to see paths from both your upstreams.
ISPs get a heavy volume of calls every day. While Qwest may not have the greatest customer service, it's not like you were actually down or had a qwest originated routing issue. If that were the case, my sympathy would be greater.
- Daniel Golding
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Andy Dills Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 5:43 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Qwest Support
Wow, Qwest support is indeed terrible.
Turned up the DS3 today...the connectivity seems fine. I decided to check a couple of routeservers (nitrous); all had my much-prepended UUnet announcement, but NONE had my Qwest announcement. Not a huge deal, but curious to me. Is Qwest just not at the public peering points? When I checked route-views.oregan-ix.net, I felt better, but yet annoyed. Even with the prepends, most networks were announcing UUnet's path.
So I decided to call them and ask...man what a mistake. The guy is like, "Ok, hold on, let me get somebody from our IP noc." 10 minutes goes by, and he comes back with "Couldn't get anybody in the IP noc, let me try to get somebody in your install group" (being that I turned up the DS3 today). Comes back another 10 minutes later with "Well, I left a message for them, but there isn't much I can do. Nobody seems to be answering their phone. If somebody doesn't call you back within 30 minutes, here's a number to call..."
So what if my routes were actually hosed? I'd just be screwed because they can't get anybody at the IP noc?
I wait. Nobody calls back within 30 minutes. I call the number he gave me. Busy. You gotta be kidding me.
So I call the main number again, talk to somebody different. She has me hold, and then brings some guy on the line "who can help me". I start to talk about route servers, and he's immediately like "Woah, this is a BGP problem...I can't help you. Let me try to get somebody from the IP noc."
So, I wait on hold for about 15 minutes, only to be given dial tone.
Please tell me it isn't always THIS bad?
Andy
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