[Sussex] Openworld goes pingless ....

[Mark Harrison]

I have, in the past, got very fed up of people who think that anything with
the word Linux in it is automatically an appropriate place to cast stones in
the direction of Microsoft.

However, when it comes to casting stones in the direction of BT, I am fully
behind you :-)

Can I ask whether you're tied into a minimum service contract? If not, I
would be happy to recommend you a FAR more reliable ADSL provider.

Not a commission sale, but I'd be delighted to offer my consultancy services
to do the migration :-)

Regards,

Mark

----- Original Message -----
From: "Iain Stevenson" <iain at iainstevenson.com>
To: "sussex" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 6:03 PM
Subject: [Sussex] Openworld goes pingless ....


>
> Last week was a bad week for my DSL connection.  It went slow, it went
> completely .... then ping stopped working.
>
> Why is this important?  Well, because of the previous unreliability of BT
> Openworld I'd written a script for my (Linux) server that uses ping to see
> that the Internet is reachable and, if it isn't, cycles the power supply
to
> the ADSL router - which often restores service.
>
> I wearily phoned Openworld's technical support line ....
>
>    "I think you've tampered with ping" said I.
>    "Yes, we have" they said - "BECAUSE MICROSOFT TOLD US TO".   Grrrrrr.
>    "So when are you going to restore it?"
>    "We're not sure", they said.
>
> Of course, they hadn't bothered to tell their customers (I'm on the
> business service too) they'd changed the technical parameters of the
> service.  Furthermore, why should everyone be affected because Microsoft
> wants to help its own efforts to patch weaknesses in its own code (oh,
> sorry, they probably sell this as defending the Internet against "the
> worm").
>
> A plague on both their shabby houses!
>
>   Iain
>