Simple question: What do you look in a NOC when considering someone for service? In other words, what would be the ideal NOC?
Forget technology, facilities and everything but the quality of the people involved. --Mike--
The people do make the difference. Other things involved are accountability and the NOCs ability to work effectively with IP and field engineering groups. Accountability meaning when they handle an issue you requested assistance on you get a name of the person handling your issue and that if you don't feel things are being done correctly you can get things escalated. I talk to NOCs all day and those that have good resources (network monitoring soft., circuit databases, routing layouts) don't compare to those NOCs that have a divining rod and a ouija board for tools but are commited to gettings things fixed. Joseph
Joseph Birthisel wrote:
The people do make the difference.
Case in point: Last night I called USless West to complain (again) about the horrible service on my DSL connection. I'm seeing between 4% and 30% packet loss continuously since their big (unreported, 'cept here) outage a week or so ago. Last time I called the rep. could barely spell DSL and all they did was search their knowledgebase and read the answers back. This time, the guy did a bunch of pings and traceroutes, found the leaky router (which I confirmed) and put in a Trouble Ticket with uswest.net. No resolution yet, but the person made ALL the difference. Too bad, US West has so few good people. -- John Hall <j.hall@f5.com> F5 Networks, Inc. Senior Test Engineer 206-505-0800 Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
John Hall wrote:
Joseph Birthisel wrote:
The people do make the difference.
Case in point:
Got up this morning and now I have no dialtone AGAIN! DSL is still up and flakey. I lead a charmed life! -- John Hall <j.hall@f5.com> F5 Networks, Inc. Senior Test Engineer 206-505-0800 ... the flaw that makes perfection perfect.
Got up this morning and now I have no dialtone AGAIN! DSL is still up and flakey. I lead a charmed life!
I've heard a couple of different reasons for the poor performance of residential DSL: 1. Other types of DSL running in your bundle of copper. (Say, you have aDSL for your home use, but the Telco uses PairGain's DSL to distribute their T1 services.) 2. A lot of the equipment is still WAY TOO NEW for Telco use. I'm sure there is a murder of training and traffic engineering issues that still need to be worked out... -brad (Rural CNE)
Bradly Walters wrote:
1. Other types of DSL running in your bundle of copper. (Say, you have aDSL for your home use, but the Telco uses PairGain's DSL to distribute their T1 services.)
That effects bandwidth available between the CO and house. The problems I'm having are all at the CO or later. Currently, the voice line is not connected to the DSL injector at the CO, they are moving things around and have cut or unplugged the wire again (at least that's been their excuse before). The second problem is packet loss at an aggregating router for the ISP (uswest.net), I can get to routers closer to me with no loss. They claim the router's CPU is overloaded. It seems a surmountable problem to me, they just don't seem to want to fix it very fast.
2. A lot of the equipment is still WAY TOO NEW for Telco use.
Agreed, but I think the problems I'm seeing are planning and pilot errors.
I'm sure there is a murder of training and traffic engineering issues that still need to be worked out...
Agreed.
-brad (Rural CNE)
I think this is off-topic enough to be getting annoying, so I'll shut up unless they come back with a real explanation. I'm not holding my breath. -- John Hall <j.hall@f5.com> F5 Networks, Inc. Senior Test Engineer 206-505-0800 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. -- Dorothy Parker, "Comment"
Well In my case, I have dialtone but no DSL. Pacbell will not return my calls or emails. I am back to a 56K modem for doing work from home. The funny thing is Pacbell is showing these commercials against the cable modem company on TV. I had cable modem for 2 years before I moved to the Bay Area and had only one outage that lasted less than a day (fiber cut, cox cable, arizona). I think Pacbell hasn't a clue. Go figure. Bora Akyol ----- Original Message ----- From: John Hall <j.hall@f5.com> To: <bwalters@inet-direct.com> Cc: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2000 7:21 PM Subject: Re: DSL (was shopping for NOCs)
Bradly Walters wrote:
1. Other types of DSL running in your bundle of copper. (Say, you have aDSL for your home use, but the Telco uses PairGain's DSL to distribute their T1 services.)
That effects bandwidth available between the CO and house. The problems I'm having are all at the CO or later. Currently, the voice line is not connected to the DSL injector at the CO, they are moving things around and have cut or unplugged the wire again (at least that's been their excuse before). The second problem is packet loss at an aggregating router for the ISP (uswest.net), I can get to routers closer to me with no loss. They claim the router's CPU is overloaded. It seems a surmountable problem to me, they just don't seem to want to fix it very fast.
2. A lot of the equipment is still WAY TOO NEW for Telco use.
Agreed, but I think the problems I'm seeing are planning and pilot errors.
I'm sure there is a murder of training and traffic engineering issues that still need to be worked out...
Agreed.
-brad (Rural CNE)
I think this is off-topic enough to be getting annoying, so I'll shut up unless they come back with a real explanation. I'm not holding my breath.
-- John Hall <j.hall@f5.com> F5 Networks,
Inc.
Senior Test Engineer 206-505-0800
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. -- Dorothy Parker, "Comment"
"Bradly" == Bradly Walters <bwalters@inet-direct.com> writes:
>> Got up this morning and now I have no dialtone AGAIN! DSL is >> still up and flakey. I lead a charmed life! Bradly> I've heard a couple of different reasons for the poor Bradly> performance of residential DSL: Around here (Toronto), load coils have been known to mysteriously appear on the line, and pairs in the CO swapped in the middle of the night... Of course, they only guarantee you can do 9600 baud on an LDDS circuit... ;) -w -- Will Waites \________ ww@shadowfax.styx.org\____________________________ Idiosyntactix Ministry of Research and Development\
On Wed, 31 May 2000, John Hall wrote: [snip]
No resolution yet, but the person made ALL the difference. Too bad, US West has so few good people.
The situation is excerbated by the tendency of good support personnel to climb the corporate ladder into systems/routing. Very often I've seen tech support hired as little more than answerphone monkeys, naturally encouraging those with an emerging clue to either leave or rise. However, look at the twentysomethings now populating engineering teams: many of the very best have been through what they regard as the "tempering fire" of doing ISP telephone support. Is that a good indicator? I suspect it's just a specific example of apprenticeship before mastery. joshua -- Joshua Goodall IP Data Systems Architect Cook, Thief, Lover joshuag@interxion.com joshua@roughtrade.net
Unnamed Administration sources reported that Joshua Goodall said:
The situation is excerbated by the tendency of good support personnel to climb the corporate ladder into systems/routing. Very often I've seen tech support hired as little more than answerphone monkeys, naturally encouraging those with an emerging clue to either leave or rise.
Some of the best firms have EVERYONE do a [week?] tour in Phone Support every [6 mon, year]. I have talked to sales managers, presidents and such ilk. You *know* that they understand the business, and the product. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
participants (8)
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Bora Akyol -
Bradly Walters -
David Lesher -
John Hall -
Joseph Birthisel -
Joshua Goodall -
mike harrison -
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