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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: People who purchase unproven technologies to support theirBusiness, and whine about it. RE: To CAIS Engineers - WAKE UP AND TAKE CAREOF YOUR CUSTOMERS
This post is long, but is not a rant. Joe's post is pretty accurate. I worked for a DSL CLEC for almost three years. Verizon is on the poorer side of ILEC performance, but the same problems happen throughout the US. DSL is certainly not an "unproven" technology. It's very reliable, if we're talking hardware. In favorable circumstances, it is every bit as reliable as DS-1. The vulnerabilities (in order) are: 1) ISP's who deploy DSL are on a very slim margin. They can't afford to be "full service." That doesn't mean that the best DSL ISP's don't provide better service than the mediocre or poor DS-1 ISP's, but don't expect $500/month support for your $150/month line. 2) Data CLEC's who provide most of the lines for independent ISP's have a challenging business model. Northpoint went down hard. That doesn't mean that the others will go down hard, too, but they have the same kind of risks. They needed lots of capital and got most of it through debt financing. 3) ILEC's don't have a clue. Some of them are well-intentioned (although I'm not sure Verizon is on that list), but their techs have years of experience with dial tone. They don't know how to troubleshoot anything but dial tone and DS-1 (which looks very different at the phone closet than CLEC DSL). CLEC's deployed equipment that puts moderate voltage on the line and no tone. ILEC techs are clueless. Note that all ILEC DSL IP services run over lines with dial tone... 4) ILEC's can be obstructionist. This is mostly at the top and middle management, but you see it in the line and lower management every once in a while. Here are some serious recommendations for DSL users (and network operators who deploy DSL can take note): 1) Get it if it's right for you. Your budget will know if it's right. 2) Choose an ISP who cares and is able. That may mean that the price is $500/month instead of $150 or $250/month, but you avoid the DS-1 costs of $1500/month. 3) Have a contingency plan -- perhaps ISDN (shudder) or bonded 56k. 4) Have your access ISP host critical services (or another provider, perhaps the one you've lined up for your contingency plan). 5) Get a line-shared DSL line. (That means that you get phone service over the same copper pair.) The ILEC maintaining the copper knows how to troubleshoot the pair. Anyway, this entire stream is off topic and 90+% of us know it's not the hardware. -steve Definitely my own views, not necessarily those of my current (or former!) employer. On Mon, 14 May 2001, Joe Marr wrote: > > Thats bunk, > > First off if your an CLEC the relys on LEC for your copper then you have a > problem. My experiance with verizon is that you > first have to dispatch your own fileds services people, shoot the line and > find the issue (4hrs on a good day. > second, you call in a ticket (which takes up to 24 hrs to acknowledge). > Third, the lec dispatches a tech to investigate, if he cant find the problem > the close out your ticket. > Four, if problem isnt resolve a "vendor meet" has to be setup, you have to > handhold the verizon tech and educate him on dsl.(48hr notice). > > as for relibility, I cant tell you the number of times a Verizon tech, would > be out to install a phone line and steal one of our dsl lines cuase it did > not have a tone. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of > Hunter Pine > Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 8:28 AM > To: John Payne > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: People who purchase unproven technologies to support their > Business, and whine about it. RE: To CAIS Engineers - WAKE UP AND TAKE > CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS > > > > For the most part, I don't see that the level of service is much different > if you sign up for a business class DSL line. > You get an SLA, like a T1 > The phone company (usually) gives you a 24 hour turnaround time on line > repairs, like a T1 > If the ISP itself is incompetent, or just doesn't care about their > customers, or is too overwhelmed to manage their business, you can't knock > the technology for that. > > /H > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John Payne" <[email protected]> > To: "Hunter Pine" <[email protected]> > Cc: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 8:24 AM > Subject: Re: People who purchase unproven technologies to support their > Business, and whine about it. RE: To CAIS Engineers - WAKE UP AND TAKE CARE > OF YOUR CUSTOMERS > > > > On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 07:46:32AM -0400, Hunter Pine wrote: > > > > > > You are aware that a good percentage of the T1's you purchase nowadays > are > > > just a pair of bonded 768 dsl lines, right? The phone companies have > been > > > doing that for over 20 years to save on copper. > > > > I don't think anyone is knocking dsl technology, just the expectation > > that you can run mission critical services with the level of service you > > get with dsl. > > > > -- > > John Payne http://www.sackheads.org/jpayne/ [email protected] > > http://www.sackheads.org/uce/ Fax: +44 870 0547954 > > To send me mail, use the address in the From: header > >
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