Out of curiousity, how does the telco world handle this? When some one signs up for MCI longdistance, I assume that on some calls they will cross off the MCI network (and potentially though several others) that will be piled mile high in static. The customers will complain about their connection to their respective local and long distance companies. But I believe it isn't an option to contact the networks that they may transit mid-stream. However, some QC must be in place to achieve some level of consistancy to get that expected "pin drop" quality we've apparently come to take for granted... Is it cooperation amongst the networks possibly? Cooperation among the NOC's seems in order wherever possible and I rarely run into uncooperative NOCs (unless I find myself in the sad state of being unreasonable). IMHO, it's probably asking too much for every network to answer to every Tom, Dick, & Harry when everyone is fighting for peering b/w, praying for equipment that lives up to expectations, filtering script kiddies, and keeping the typical high b/w access to less than $45.00/month. Of course, I could be wrong and accept that possibility. Karyn

-----Original Message----- From: Troy Davis [mailto:troy@nack.net] Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2000 12:44 AM To: Derek J. Balling Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Wanted: Clueful Individual @ TeleGlobe.net

On Sat, 15 Jul 2000, Derek J. Balling <dredd@megacity.org> wrote:

...

Sample snip from phone call:

This mirrors my experience with the AT&T NOC on Friday after seeing latency between GlobalCenter and AT&T. The GlobalCenter NOC had no problem opening a ticket without caring whether I was a customer or not. They spent a few hours on it and said it appeared to be an over-loaded AT&T router.

Not entirely sure of that - and if it was true, wanting to see what AT&T was doing about it - I called AT&T, was transferred 3 times to reach the IP folks, and was promptly stonewalled.

The level 1 tech didn't know latency from Adam but wasn't willing to find someone who did. He said he couldn't open a ticket for a non-customer and we argued for 10 minutes about what to do next - hang up or talk to the next guy up the chain. I convinced him that it was an actual issue and that he should indeed tell his boss - or maybe he just got tired of talking.

Anyhow, his boss came on the line and said the same thing, emphasizing that they couldn't open tickets for non-customers. Even informing him that AT&T customers were calling us to complain and that AT&T users were affected didn't help. This guy claimed to be the engineering manager and said there was nobody above him to go to. We talked for a while - 10-20 minutes - and apparantly he finally got tired too, since he took my name/number.

A couple minutes later I got a call from a third guy there, who said that any issues were between AT&T and GlobalCenter and that I had no business calling. I asked if there was an open ticket or even someone addressing it and he had no idea. He didn't seem to know any more about networking than the first guy.

The most discouraging part was that the last two people understood that it was a service-affecting problem and yet hadn't been given any procedures to solve it. It felt like I was asking a secretary - they all stated that they understood it was a problem but couldn't do a damn thing.

I ended up sending a note to noc@att.net telling them the problem, my support story, and noting that their NOC folks couldn't do any of these things (all of which I asked to do): - open a trouble ticket for a non-customer - transfer me to someone who could - transfer me to the IP engineers - verify/deny that the problem was within AT&T (a traceroute, perhaps?) - call GlobalCenter and work on the ticket I had open with them - provide me with an escalation or complaint path, either for the original problem or to complain about the NOC's useless procedures

.. any of which would have been more useful than hanging up and sending an email. I still haven't received a reply or even an automated ticket #.

Cheers,

Troy