Seattle - Re: [SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

[Steve Herber]

I am writing to you to see if you can explain the multiple outages I
have had this summer with my Seattle DSL service.

I have been a customer for many years and I have been very happy with
the quality and cost of my service.  I pay on a yearly basis.  Over the
years outages have been short and few and far between.

Unfortunately, there have been multiple unexplained service outages in
the Seattle area this summer.  The service outage web page barely gives
a clue to the problem and no indication that Nationwide management is
aware of the problem and has a more comprehensive solution in hand.

As a result many other Seattle Nationwide customers have started looking
at alternatives as indicated by the email below.  The mailing list is
populated by some of the most technical system administrators from the
Seattle region.

A statement from you describing the problems and your solution would go
a long way to resolving our fears.

The Nationwide response to these problems will substantially affect the
choices these technical people will make to restore the good service we
have learned to expect.

Thank you,

Steve Herber	herber at thing.com		work: 206-221-7262
Security Engineer, UW Medicine, IT Services	home: 425-454-2399

PS

I just had two more short outages.  Here is how Tim responded to 
this outage:

Steve.


 	Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:14:29 -0700
 	From: Tim Maher <tim at consultix-inc.com>
 	Cc: linux-list at ssc.com
 	Subject: Re: [SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

 	Yesterday's outage ended up lasting 4 hours, and this morning
 	there was another for 30 minutes!  So I've placed an order with
 	Speakeasy, and will soon be rid of Nationwide Incompetenternet
 	altogether! Thanks to all for the input.

 	-Tim


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 17:17:59 -0700
From: Tim Maher <tim at consultix-inc.com>
To: linux-list at ssc.com
Subject: Re: [SLL] Nationwide Internet: melting down?

Okay, my "Nationwide Internet" DSL service went out again today (at
4pm), and after listening to the "hold music" for an hour, I was given
the usual explanation -- everybody in "my area" is affected, and
they're working with Qwest to determine what's wrong.

I'm totally fed up with this crappy reliability, and ready to switch
to a more reliable DSL IP -- or maybe even to cable. When I posted a
similar message back in July, Ralph Sims reported that he uses Qwest
DSL, and had never had an outage. But IIRC he's in Shelton, so his
experience may not be relevant to what I'm seeing in Seattle (maybe
they ran a dedicated fiber optic cable right to his house? 8-} )

Question time:

1) Did any other Seattle DSL customers have an outage today (8/9)?
    If not, what ISP are you using?

2) What more reliable ISP would you recommend? (I'm easily satisfied --
    all I need is one (non-RBHL) static IP address, and permission to run
    some standard servers.

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On Tue, Jul 23, 2030 at 02:43:51PM -0700, Tim Maher wrote:
> I've been using Nationwide Internet for many years (since they
> acquired me from The River <- from oz.net), and service has generally
> been fairly reliable -- until this summer.
>
> At 2pm today, my DSL service stopped working (lights still flash
> normally, but I can't successfully ping anything). The recording on
> the support line says "... problem in WA state ... working with our
> vendors to fix ..."
>
> This typically means I'll be Internetless for at least 2 hours, at
> which time things will magically return to normal.
>
> Same thing happened about 10 days ago, with the difference that the
> recording insinuated that Qwest might be to blame for that failure.
>
> A month before that, another outage occurred.
>
> Which leads me to my question:
> * Is this a statewide problem caused by a Qwest screwup,
>   which affects customers of all WA ISPs
>  OR,
>   +  is my ISP trying to tell me that they don't know what they're doing?
>
> -Tim
> *--------------------------------------------------------------------*
> |  Tim Maher, PhD  (206) 781-UNIX   http://www.consultix-inc.com     |
> |  tim at ( Consultix-Inc, TeachMeLinux, or TeachMeUnix ) dot Com    |
> | CLASSES: 8/20: Shell;  8/23: UNIX/Linux Utils;  9/17: Minimal Perl |
> *-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--*
> |  >> My "Minimal Perl for UNIX People" is an Amazon Best Seller! << |
> | # Download chapters, read reviews, and order at MinimalPerl.com #  |
> *--------------------------------------------------------------------*