[TelstraClear] Internet usage when modem is off!!

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TelstraClear

Reply # 524548 22-Sep-2011 12:03

DonGould: Does this mean you now won't be answering the direct questions I asked above?

D

Hi Don,

If you tell me what the problem is that you're having I can get one of the technical people to look into it for you. None of the questions you've asked appear (to me at least) to relate to solving a specific issue.

Cheers, Gary

jnawk

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Reply # 524559 22-Sep-2011 12:21

TelstraClear:We protect you by operating sophisticated security systems that detect and deflect denial of service and other attacks.

I call bull on this statement. Last year, not only was my SIP server repeatedly attacked, when I brought the matter to the help desk's attention, despite a promise of a firewall rule being put in place, nothing was done.

Things might have changed now. Call me out if they have.

DonGould

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Reply # 524575 22-Sep-2011 12:49

TelstraClear: At the time, we acknowledged this problem and apologised for the inconvenience it may have caused.

No. Your staff gave me a lecture about wifi security. Did not look at the usage meter online that I was looking at, then after some discussion agreed the mater would be raised with level 2 support, they did not offer me any credit.

They then sent me a boiler plate email of the same wifi security access rant and did not take it further.

At that point I took the effort to ask someone:

"Not sure what to say...

Your thoughts? "

At that point that person took a closer look directly for me... (and was more than a little annoyed at the response from the lower level support people who were advised of the July problem but clearly didn't know when I asked).

Jul 29 22:30:53 - To Cust Octets= 3856475970, From Cust Octets= 2921741872
Aug 1 10:30:52 - To Cust Octets; 2451043799, From Cust Octects = 3405411410

You will note that the Octets counters for August 1 'to cust' are lower than the counts on July 29.

Comments were apparnetly then put on my account about the ERX disconnection issue and I contacted Customer Service to talk about a credit per the suggestion I was given.

After some time debating with CS about what the ERX notes mean, and them going away to get someone to explain the notes I was eventually offered $10.

I pointed out that at $3 per gig - the credit for 20 gigs should be $30 and that was apparently agreed.

My next account came on. No credit.

I called up. I was then told 'yes there is a credit' and my attention drawn to the $32 dollar credit which was applied when I changed from 40 gb to 60 gb.

After some debate and a few long pauses from me I eventually gained agreement for the credit again but was told it would have to be 'authorised' as your front line staff do not have authority. Having read my posts so far, you can just imagine how that sort of comment went down.

So no Gary, your claim is anything but representative of my experience.

It was not until I posted here in a public forum that I got any sort of sensible response and I will commend your personal service so far because I'm sure you're starting to get a picture for just how upset this whole mater got me and the impacting stress.

TelstraClear: Hi Don,

If you tell me what the problem is that you're having I can get one of the technical people to look into it for you. None of the questions you've asked appear (to me at least) to relate to solving a specific issue.

Cheers, Gary

The problem is I now don't trust your usage system, you can review my posts to understand why, and would like to accept your offer of data to compare your details with my own.

To do this, I would like to know how the data is going to be provided per my explanation above.

I would also like to know any cost that I may encure per http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/company-info/complaints.cfm - "we may charge you to retrieve that information."

Also it has been made very clear on GZ in the past that some providers take measures to ensure such tests don't fail where they may normally. I have yet to find a company named, but it seems like an 'in joke' that I'm just not party to. Hence why I asked if all users can get such information for free, because it seemed that designing a test system and then letting users do their own checking would be more sensible.

I was thinking that understanding how the system is audited and if it's a neutral body such as PWC doing the audits would be ok. However you choose not to answer that.

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freitasm

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Reply # 524614 22-Sep-2011 13:46

jnawk:
freitasm:
DonGould:?So, in short what you are saying is that you meter based on traffic thrown at the IP address.? So even if the modem is off, any traffic thrown at the IP address is counted by the ERX.? Is this correct?

I gave my time and loyalty to your company, yet today I feel fobbed off.? I clearly don't trust in your systems and I feel lied to and miss-lead on many levels.

I don't understand why the surprise. This seems to be the norm in the industry. Not only ISPs but hosting providers will charge users by the traffic directed at their IP, regardless if there's a box at the end of the pipe receiving those bits.

I don't know that Don is surprised. Just because it might be the "norm" doesn't make it right.

I didn't say it is right. I just said it's common. If there's a change here then other ISPs should have their practices looked under the microscope as well.

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jnawk

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Reply # 524627 22-Sep-2011 14:13

freitasm: I didn't say it is right. I just said it's common. If there's a change here then other ISPs should have their practices looked under the microscope as well.

Agree. So perhaps people aren't surprised, just pissed. Don certainly seems that way - did you see his tin-hat earlier? He can't be having those thoughts and still be surprised!

Beccara

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Reply # 524634 22-Sep-2011 14:26

freitasm:
jnawk:
freitasm:
DonGould:?So, in short what you are saying is that you meter based on traffic thrown at the IP address.? So even if the modem is off, any traffic thrown at the IP address is counted by the ERX.? Is this correct?

I gave my time and loyalty to your company, yet today I feel fobbed off.? I clearly don't trust in your systems and I feel lied to and miss-lead on many levels.

I don't understand why the surprise. This seems to be the norm in the industry. Not only ISPs but hosting providers will charge users by the traffic directed at their IP, regardless if there's a box at the end of the pipe receiving those bits.

I don't know that Don is surprised. Just because it might be the "norm" doesn't make it right.

I didn't say it is right. I just said it's common. If there's a change here then other ISPs should have their practices looked under the microscope as well.

I'm not sure where you are getting that it's common, Telecom the largest ISP in the country still uses PPP based connections which result in modem off = no usage as do the bulk of DSL connections which make up the vast majority of internet connections in NZ, Even outside of DSL PPP* is still the most widely used

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

All comment's I make are my own personal opinion and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the views of current or former employers unless specifically stated

DonGould

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Reply # 524646 22-Sep-2011 14:49

freitasm: other ISPs should have their practices looked under the microscope as well.

Agreed.

This is why I presented the question of regulation to the discussion, though the comment got very little traction either way.

It's clear that we're not even sure how to test this stuff. What systems to we accept as authoritative.

Pen says no netflow... (though I'm just looking further at that now).

So this is the sort of stuff that is the roll of the regulator to assist with.

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Reply # 524699 22-Sep-2011 17:37

jnawk:
DonGould:I think it's a reasonable consumer expectation that when the modem is off it doesn't use your data cap.

+1

graemeh

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Reply # 524817 22-Sep-2011 22:53

phantomdb:
jnawk:
DonGould:I think it's a reasonable consumer expectation that when the modem is off it doesn't use your data cap.

+1

+1

I think it is also a reasonable consumer expectation that if you are being charged for the usage of something (in this case data) then you should be able to control it.

Unfortunately the technology makes this impossible :(

We need to come up with a better product.

jnawk

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Reply # 524862 23-Sep-2011 07:55

graemeh:
phantomdb:
jnawk:
DonGould:I think it's a reasonable consumer expectation that when the modem is off it doesn't use your data cap.

+1

+1

I think it is also a reasonable consumer expectation that if you are being charged for the usage of something (in this case data) then you should be able to control it.

Unfortunately the technology makes this impossible :(

We need to come up with a better product.?

What about a firewall protocol to propagate firewall rules upstream? The rules would have to be fully qualified, and filterable, of course! Wouldn't want me creating a rule like follows:
iptables -A INPUT -s ${not_my_address} -d ${someone_elses_address} -j DROP

BiDi

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Reply # 525348 24-Sep-2011 15:33

DonGould:
BiDi: Of course, my mistake, how silly. I just saw the TC graph with time marked off in hours and I just figured that was intended to mean something!

Well it does. It's an indication of when the traffic was counted against your account, not when you actually down loaded it.

I have gone back to my raw data and prepared a few more graphs.

This time, I have taken the timestamp on the TC data and summed all my Netlimit information into one number, to match the time interval between the TC data updates. In fairness to TC, they timestamp data a couple of minutes before the hour is up, whereas my data is accumulated from 0 - 60 minutes. However, this will not make a big difference to the presentation.

So, now, I expect good agreement between my results and TC's.

Mmmm, that's not what I see (horizontal axis is MB, vertical is divided into bins of one hour).

Here's two examples

Integrated traffic

So, really, to brush this off as just a matter of 'perception' is a bit rich.

The TC meter indication may very well show how my bill is increasing. It does not seem to tell me very much at all about how those increments are related to my actual usage.

I therefore reiterate my opinion that the meter, in its present form, is good for nothing at all. It is more likely to mislead clients who consult it with a genuine interest in checking their own internet usage. It certainly did that for me.

cyril7

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Reply # 525525 25-Sep-2011 11:44

Hi, it seems to me that there very well are some inconsistencies in the quality of the recorded usage.

In a past working life I spent 5-6yrs designing smart power metering equipment and am reasonably familiar with the regulations that power retailers must adhere to with regard to the quality and accuracy of recorded data.

Failing to keep within very tight regulatory guidelines results in heavy penalties been handed to retailers at the end of each months reconciliation, maybe its time such regulation was applied to these cowboys (I refer to the ISP industry in general not just TCL).

Cyril

phantomdb

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Reply # 525668 25-Sep-2011 23:27

cyril7: Hi, it seems to me that there very well are some inconsistencies in the quality of the recorded usage.

In a past working life I spent 5-6yrs designing smart power metering equipment and am reasonably familiar with the regulations that power retailers must adhere to with regard to the quality and accuracy of recorded data.

Failing to keep within very tight regulatory guidelines results in heavy penalties been handed to retailers at the end of each months reconciliation, maybe its time such regulation was applied to these cowboys (I refer to the ISP industry in general not just TCL).

Cyril

PenultimateHop

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Reply # 525710 26-Sep-2011 10:23

graemeh: I didn't think the cable network was session based. The cable modem is just a bridge. Unfortunately the network architecture is not suited to the business model of usage based billing as when routing the traffic you don't know if the customer end is on or off.

ADSL is much better suited to usage based billing as the customer equipment sets up an active session when it is connected.

I don't agree.

Cable networks are usually session based. I don't recall much about how TCL's network is implemented, but certainly the CableLabs specifications (DOCSIS 3.0, PCMM, etc) all rely on the construct of user sessions. Broadband Forum WT-146 also goes into IP sessions extensively, particularly in the context of HFC/DOCSIS networks.

Any time there's a dynamic configuration event (e.g. DHCP), you can consider it a session based network.

Equally, ADSL doesn't have to be session based either (e.g. 2684 bridging) as you can configure it statically, but most operators don't do this and continue to use IP sessions even when PPP is removed. Same story in FTTH world.

jnawk

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Reply # 525713 26-Sep-2011 10:33

PenultimateHop:
graemeh: I didn't think the cable network was session based.? The cable modem is just a bridge.? Unfortunately the network architecture is not suited to the business model of usage based billing as when routing the traffic you don't know if the customer end is on or off.

ADSL is much better?suited to usage based billing as the customer equipment sets up an active session when it is connected.

I don't agree.

Cable networks are usually session based. I don't recall much about how TCL's network is implemented, but certainly the CableLabs specifications (DOCSIS 3.0, PCMM, etc) all rely on the construct of user sessions. Broadband Forum WT-146 also goes into IP sessions extensively, particularly in the context of HFC/DOCSIS networks.

Any time there's a dynamic configuration event (e.g. DHCP), you can consider it a session based network.

Equally, ADSL doesn't have to be session based either (e.g. 2684 bridging) as you can configure it statically, but most operators don't do this and continue to use IP sessions even when PPP is removed. Same story in FTTH world.

It appears that TCL don't use session information in their IP accounting. And no, there is no DHCP on the TCL Cable network - we are all assigned a static IP address, given a mask (usually class C), and a gateway.

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