Bigpipe - Am I meant to receive a public IP?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Bigpipe - Am I meant to receive a public IP?

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#2687075 6-Apr-2021 10:18

cbrpilot:

Not sure why he'd be laughing? Everything is working as designed.

A smile perhaps, because everything is still working.

BarTender

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#2687087 6-Apr-2021 10:50

RunningMan:

Contact Bigpipe. This is a provisioning issue, anonymous profile. I'm sure @BarTender will have a laugh about this.

My code lives on.... and causes frustration for punters who aren't properly provisioned... free interwebz for all. <pewpew>

robjg63

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#2687093 6-Apr-2021 11:01

TeaLeaf:
allio:

With Bigpipe you receive a public (i.e. not CG-NAT) dynamic (i.e. not static) IP address. It will change on occasion, but in practice that should be weeks or months apart. The four hour issue you are having is totally separate.

Thanks all.

So nothing I can do to fix Authentication issues at my end? I have emailed them about it, but as was last night not expecting quick reply (it is BP).

So to confirm, I should be on Dynamic IP but not using CG-NAt?

CG-Nat is not what I will have been given, the issue is authentication dropping out etc

The reason I havnt complained is simply I have not been using services that have required a regular IP etc, ie Netflix doesnt care.

I moved physical location, but plan stayed the same, I got a new router from BP and just plugged and played, so never thought it was unusual my IP was changing twice a day minimum.

I just checked and its changed again this morning.

How I know it changes every 6 hours or less, is the service I am using will stop working and I will have to refresh that service. Frustrating but thought, oh this is Dynamic IP for ya, being shared IP etc, assumed that was normal.

Im on BP 100/20 plan. Will post router model asap.

The chat popup on their homepage is usually better than email IMHO. Have found them exceptionally slow to reply to email, then you get all that back and forth with many hours between each email.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

nztim

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#2687133 6-Apr-2021 12:24

Out of interest can someone explain the history behind the “four hour kick” I should check my PPP records but as a I have a static would not have noticed

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

cyril7

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#2687138 6-Apr-2021 12:30

You will only notice it if you connection has incorrect account details in the backend of Sparks system, otherwise the BNG seems to bump connections approx every month.

Cyril

TeaLeaf

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#2687147 6-Apr-2021 13:17

So dynamic IP a kick every 4-6 weeks is fairly normal? That I can handle.

Bigpipe so slow with email, I might try the live chat instead,

TeaLeaf

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#2687155 6-Apr-2021 13:22

robjg63:
The chat popup on their homepage is usually better than email IMHO. Have found them exceptionally slow to reply to email, then you get all that back and forth with many hours between each email.

Yep having that problem. How do I get live support from the chat popup? It just seems to want to give me erroneous suggestions.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

BarTender

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#2687157 6-Apr-2021 13:24

nztim: Out of interest can someone explain the history behind the “four hour kick” I should check my PPP records but as a I have a static would not have noticed

If you turned up on the Spark Broadband network and hadn't been provisioned then you were given a 4 hour session time and then the PPPoE session disconnected and reconnected.

This was so customers would realise something was wrong (or perhaps they wouldn't?) and phone the helpdesk to get it sorted.

It was used as a catch all so folks got service no matter what, as the alternative was you needed to be fully provisioned in the system and if anything went wrong.... Like a new provisioning system being deployed into production and running a full re-provision of all services overnight without proper testing and that system renaming the network identifier of hundreds of thousands of connections with a prefix that they shouldn't have and no one in the network team had requested the provisioning team did. Then only folks with a Static IP would notice that they no longer had a Static IP and the network team would have hurriedly rolled back the changes directly into the network database to return service for the customers focusing first on the connections with a Static IP and then fixing up the remaining records afterwards so there was only a few hundred calls into the call centre rather than being the lead story on the evening news..... Not like anything like that could ever happen in the real world. 😉

cyril7: You will only notice it if you connection has incorrect account details in the backend of Sparks system, otherwise the BNG seems to bump connections approx every month.

This is incorrect, unless there was grooming or BNG OS upgrade work underway there should be no reason why your session should drop, when I left I had some connections up for 6+ months.

bandicoutts

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#2687166 6-Apr-2021 13:37

TeaLeaf:

robjg63:
The chat popup on their homepage is usually better than email IMHO. Have found them exceptionally slow to reply to email, then you get all that back and forth with many hours between each email.

Yep having that problem. How do I get live support from the chat popup? It just seems to want to give me erroneous suggestions.

Type 'real person'. Down the bottom of Mike's chat response there's a 'Connect to Live Chat' option. You should be able to get through to someone during standard support hours (8am-8pm).

TeaLeaf

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#2687190 6-Apr-2021 13:47

Thank you.

What do I tell BP to do? Tell them its not provisioned and iM bounced every 4 hours or so?

TeaLeaf

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#2687197 6-Apr-2021 13:56

What is likely missing at Sparks provisioning end?

They want to just refresh the connection........

They are saying my connection is provisioned correctly.

Isnt that just changing my IP etc, and the problem will just re occur?

TeaLeaf

6325 posts

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#2687248 6-Apr-2021 14:04

So now, I will wait and see if my IP bounces.

cbrpilot

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Spark NZ

#2687254 6-Apr-2021 14:14

nztim: Out of interest can someone explain the history behind the “four hour kick” I should check my PPP records but as a I have a static would not have noticed

@BarTender is almost correct. Most of the time this functionality is used is where there has been a slight delay in provisioning meaning that for a small time window a service shows up on the Spark network before provisioning is complete. When that provisioning is complete it should auto-kick the existing session so that the service comes up correctly as fully provisioned. We set a 4 hour timer on these incompletely provisioned services just in case the auto-kick fails for whatever reason (there are some scenarios). It is not there specifically to annoy customers into calling us! That said it does produce a distinctive behaviour that can help speed up fault resolution if someone contacts us about it.

In a small number of cases services don't get automatically fixed and experience the 4 hour kick - this sounds like what has happened to TeaLeaf.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

TeaLeaf

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#2687293 6-Apr-2021 15:49

Big pipe trying to tell me its normal for my IP to keep changing. And trying to sell me a static IP again.

I told them no and it is not normal for it to be changing 5 times a day.

cyril7

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#2687303 6-Apr-2021 16:02

BarTender:

Snip................

cyril7: You will only notice it if you connection has incorrect account details in the backend of Sparks system, otherwise the BNG seems to bump connections approx every month.

This is incorrect, unless there was grooming or BNG OS upgrade work underway there should be no reason why your session should drop, when I left I had some connections up for 6+ months.

Hi, good to know, I must admit that I have noted often no update for months on end, then from time to time several in only a few weeks, presumably related to upstream firmware upgrades.

Cyril

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