Telecom Equipment Upgrade Affects Wholesale Customers

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Oyajipunk

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#15945 17-Sep-2007 19:48

I am not sure if this is new news to Geekzone, but it appears Telecom's famous system upgrades did not only affect their own customers.

Last week, my Slingshot BB connection would no longer allow e-mails to be sent, although I could receive them OK.
I cannot remember the exact error displayed when trying to send an e-mail, but it was along the lines of 'host not responding' or similar.
The internet was working fine.

The next day I lost the internet as well ("Cannot find server"), so I called my provider, Slingshot.

The reason for my problems was a Telecom equipment upgrade, which had resulted in my account being "erased".
Slingshot called Telecom and had them rebuild my account, and I was back on line in hours.
According to the Slingshot Helpdesk there had been a "few" similar problems that he knew of.

So, if you are experiencing similar problems to the above, it is possible the root cause is the same as what experienced.

I hope this is of help/interest to you all. Just thought you might want to know.

Cheers.

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#86915 17-Sep-2007 19:55

I have no idea how their systems work??!!??

But surely only Slingshot can erase your account?
To me it sounds like another ISP blaming Telecom.

Maybe there was a hardware upgrade, and Slingshot did not to do what was required at their end?

freitasm

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#86916 17-Sep-2007 20:11

This story doesn't sound right... The system upgrade the CSR is referring to is probably the "Bubble" transition, which was only affecting Xtra e-mail customers, and is nowhere close to Slingshot or the other systems.

I think it's someone that doesn't know the whole thing and come up with excuses - sometimes this is probably not even Slingshot's fault but some employee with an imagination too big for his position...

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Oyajipunk

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#86924 17-Sep-2007 21:15

I would be surprised if a provider had sunk to such lows as to diss Telecom, simply for the sake of dissing Telecom (a tempting thing to do, I realise).
Perhaps the truth has been stretched a little, but it is quite possible that something Telecom did caused my account to be disabled.
The fact that it was easily rectified was a windfall.

Ahh, we may never know the real truth...

PenultimateHop

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#86932 17-Sep-2007 21:44

While I don't know the specifics of [b]Oyajipunk[/b]'s incident, however I am aware of situations in the ASAM to ISAM migration project where subscribers have been connected to the new ISAM port but incorrectly provisioned in Telecom's wholesale provisioning system. This problem results in the subscriber not being correctly tunneled to their ISP, and thus no Internet. The ISP can reasonably quickly identify the problem, and get Telecom to correct it.

With a complex migration of thousands of users between separate DSLAM chassis, this sort of problem is likely to crop up in a small percentage of the migrations.

nzbnw

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#86935 17-Sep-2007 21:51

Oyajipunk:

Last week, my Slingshot BB connection would no longer allow e-mails to be sent, although I could receive them OK.
I cannot remember the exact error displayed when trying to send an e-mail, but it was along the lines of 'host not responding' or similar.

Any email problems are Slingshot problems, Telecom has nothing to do with Slingshots POP and or SMTP servers.

nzbnw

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#86936 17-Sep-2007 21:59

nzbnw:
Any email problems are Slingshot problems, Telecom has nothing to do with Slingshots POP and or SMTP servers.

nzbnw

You never know... you know my goldfish also died... guess who slingshot/orcon/telstraclear told me to blame.

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#86937 17-Sep-2007 22:03

We all know the commerce commission was trying to remove Telecoms monopoly on killing goldfish. It seems that during recent gold fish unbundling, they forgot to feed them. Sorry to burst your bubble (bwhahaha) but thats just the way it is.

nzbnw

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#86938 17-Sep-2007 22:12

cokemaster: You never know... you know my goldfish also died... guess who slingshot/orcon/telstraclear told me to blame.

Rotfl, just when I thought Telecom and TelstraClear where getting along rather nicely!

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firewire

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#86948 17-Sep-2007 22:56

It sounds like to me it was a PVC rebuild on the ISAM assuming it was on a migration. It probably didn't want to work the first time.

mikenz

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#86988 18-Sep-2007 10:38

In NZ, you can expect 100% service. Small market, but big competition. Small profit, but high expectation. Can you expect the quality of the shoes you bought from The Warehouse is as good as Shoes in Duty Free Shops? ISPs are in a war. A war that everyone losses, including the customers. Who shall we blame? The Government. Every other country their Government fund the network infrastructure. In NZ, our government are kicking the problems to ISPs. ISPs are fighting to feed their shareholder as well as their employees. Everyone hates Telecom because they are rich. But they are feeding thousands of their employees who are New Zealanders. Imagine you are working for Telecom. Will you blame Telecom for unintentional mistakes?

mruane

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#87003 18-Sep-2007 12:28

If they are "rich" its because they have been charging us too much for far to long. So reduce the price or the goldfish get's it!!!

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Niel

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#87019 18-Sep-2007 13:21

To get back to the topic, on XNet we also had a few hours of receiving e-mails but can't send (or the other way round). I know of at least one other person to whom it also happened. Was a few weeks ago, maybe a week before the Bubble burst. XNet staff did not know about any problems and could not find any fault either, although usually they are pretty good at technical stuff. The problem disappeared after a few hours. Sounds like it might have been a Telecom Wholesale equipment issue.

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nzbnw

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#87021 18-Sep-2007 13:39

Niel: Sounds like it might have been a Telecom Wholesale equipment issue.

I will repeat what I have already said. SMTP and POP errors have nothing to do with Telecom Wholesale. The OP's second issue should have been totally unrelated to their email problems.

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Fraktul

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#87029 18-Sep-2007 15:26

PenultimateHop: While I don't know the specifics of [b]Oyajipunk[/b]'s incident, however I am aware of situations in the ASAM to ISAM migration project where subscribers have been connected to the new ISAM port but incorrectly provisioned in Telecom's wholesale provisioning system. This problem results in the subscriber not being correctly tunneled to their ISP, and thus no Internet. The ISP can reasonably quickly identify the problem, and get Telecom to correct it.

With a complex migration of thousands of users between separate DSLAM chassis, this sort of problem is likely to crop up in a small percentage of the migrations.

It is not unheard of for a customer to be provisioned from the outset tunneled to the incorrect ISP. First time we came across this quite some time back there was a bit of head scratching going on.

KiwiOverseas66

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#87046 18-Sep-2007 17:10

Fraktul:
It is not unheard of for a customer to be provisioned from the outset tunneled to the incorrect ISP. First time we came across this quite some time back there was a bit of head scratching going on.

whoa! that's a neat trick. If the link was useable, I wonder how long you could use it before anyone noticed?

Oyajipunk: Last week, my Slingshot BB connection would no longer allow e-mails to be sent, although I could receive them OK. I cannot remember the exact error displayed when trying to send an e-mail, but it was along the lines of 'host not responding' or similar. The internet was working fine.

The reason for my problems was a Telecom equipment upgrade, which had resulted in my account being "erased".
Slingshot called Telecom and had them rebuild my account, and I was back on line in hours.
According to the Slingshot Helpdesk there had been a "few" similar problems that he knew of.

sniff, sniff, sniff......that would be a rat I smell! rscole86 is correct I think. It sounds like what the CSR was referring to was authentication relay. Authentication would be done by Slingshot, but the information would be relayed via a telecom DSLAM at the exchange. This is how they operate their corporate remote access services. Its possible that a change to the telecom device might "erase" the relay account and stop the connection from being authenticated by slingshot - but it would be the whole connection that would stop working. Initially Oyajipunk's slingshot access had been authenticated and was working, as was his mail service - it was just smtp access the was initially inoperable - and this would have nothing to do with Telecom since once the connection is up and running their part is over (mail is just another service on the connection authenticated and run entirely by slingshot). It was the following day the whole connection stopped running requiring a rebuild of the account. So I wonder if what really happened was...

1) SMTP problem at slingshot - customer rings in and slingshot investigates
2) problem is investigated, can't find cause - lets reset the whole account (access and mail)
3) day 2, since the reset the whole connection has stopped working
4) oh crap, now nothing is working and we have to rebuild the account (at slingshot),
5) and we had better get Telecom to rebuild the account on the authentication relay
6) tell customer step number 5.

Psst...I heard a rumour that a telecom van was seen parked next to the grassy knoll - my CSR swears its true!

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