2degrees: Changes to IP Addresses (CGNAT)

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › 2degrees: Changes to IP Addresses (CGNAT)

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meow
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#2340488 19-Oct-2019 11:06

@JohnFlower You totally avoided the 2nd part of that statement. Get on the phone and talk to them then... There is no point complaining until you've done this.

I work in an industry where breaking changes are common to customers - I don't go and tell the customers still on Windows XP that I am turning off TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 on the apps I support as an example. But you've got to look at this the other way. Somebody non-technical who just has their Fritz!Box doing their home phone and internet and uses WiFi won't care about the CG-NAT change. If you tell them, you potentially cause panic as customers may misunderstand what it means to them. For almost all of their customers this is not a breaking change as most IoT doesn't require a port forward (and if it does - it should be in the bin), gaming will still work on most platforms and in the rare cases something does fully break then they'll make it right for the customer again.

As also stated - this exact move was done by other ISP's in NZ who didn't tell customers. Telling the customer just isn't the smartest thing to do in this case.

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jcddcjjcd

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#2340492 19-Oct-2019 11:31

I just got caught by this and after 6 hours of trying everything including re-visiting my software which does most of my external access I came across this thread and everything fell in place.

I love 2degrees and always back them but an email advising that a change to cg-nat may impact some would have been very helpful.

I got on the phone and the issue has been resolved for me.

Handle9

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#2340497 19-Oct-2019 11:58

michaelmurfy:
As also stated - this exact move was done by other ISP's in NZ who didn't tell customers. Telling the customer just isn't the smartest thing to do in this case.

It's the most convenient for 2degrees. It's not the best thing for their customers. I really don't understand how you can defend this.

When you have customers spending 6 hours trying to resolve issues caused by an ISP change IMO there is a duty of care to tell people. It'd cause 2degrees to incur some costs and be a hassle for them but they are making a significant change in their service.

It's not going to impact the vast majority of customers but the customers who are impacted are impacted significantly. It's very poor not to tell them.

ripdog

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#2340508 19-Oct-2019 12:27

michaelmurfy:

But look at it from another point of view. I can see why customers were not notified by this change. IPv4 addressing is very, very expensive these days

...

in reality this is what is required as IPv4 space is both expensive, and limited.

IP addresses are getting more expensive, yes, but I don't see why 2d has any excuse for not giving public IPs to anyone who asks. After all, didn't they just free up 99+% of their IP space by implementing CG-NAT? I don't know how many people are behind each IP now, but a conservative estimate of 100 people/IP would free up more-or-less 99% of their owned IPs.

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#2340510 19-Oct-2019 12:34

ripdog:

michaelmurfy:

But look at it from another point of view. I can see why customers were not notified by this change. IPv4 addressing is very, very expensive these days

...

in reality this is what is required as IPv4 space is both expensive, and limited.

IP addresses are getting more expensive, yes, but I don't see why 2d has any excuse for not giving public IPs to anyone who asks. After all, didn't they just free up 99+% of their IP space by implementing CG-NAT? I don't know how many people are behind each IP now, but a conservative estimate of 100 people/IP would free up more-or-less 99% of their owned IPs.

As I understand it 2D are not with holding public IPs (static or dynamic) from those who ask. If you find your inbound initiated connections are failing, get on the phone and log a ticket, the end result is they will then see who needs public IPs and happily assign you one, job done. For the 99.99% of customers, life will simply go on behind a CG-NAT as they are oblivous and have no use of a full public IP.............period

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#2340519 19-Oct-2019 13:10

Handle9:
michaelmurfy:

As also stated - this exact move was done by other ISP's in NZ who didn't tell customers. Telling the customer just isn't the smartest thing to do in this case.

It's the most convenient for 2degrees. It's not the best thing for their customers. I really don't understand how you can defend this.

I'm defending this as I work in a role where breaking changes are common, and understand exactly why they would have done this. There is no need to cause panic for all their customers where only a very small percentage of their total customer-base would be affected by this change.

It isn't at-all convenient for 2degrees, it isn't convenient for customers who are affected but tell them and suddenly it isn't convenient for all their customers. They've just picked the lesser of 2 evils here.

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#2340522 19-Oct-2019 13:16

michaelmurfy:

Handle9:
michaelmurfy:

As also stated - this exact move was done by other ISP's in NZ who didn't tell customers. Telling the customer just isn't the smartest thing to do in this case.

It's the most convenient for 2degrees. It's not the best thing for their customers. I really don't understand how you can defend this.

I'm defending this as I work in a role where breaking changes are common, and understand exactly why they would have done this. There is no need to cause panic for all their customers where only a very small percentage of their total customer-base would be affected by this change.

It isn't at-all convenient for 2degrees, it isn't convenient for customers who are affected but tell them and suddenly it isn't convenient for all their customers. They've just picked the lesser of 2 evils here.

As someone who is from another provider, and is in a role where i too work in a role where massive changes can happen i must agree here.

You can guarantee there was a heck of alot of thought that went into this move. Almost certainly there are a ton of layers to it..

As others have said, pickup the phone and have a calm conversation with their reps.

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#2340531 19-Oct-2019 13:31

hio77:
michaelmurfy:

Handle9:
michaelmurfy:

As also stated - this exact move was done by other ISP's in NZ who didn't tell customers. Telling the customer just isn't the smartest thing to do in this case.

It's the most convenient for 2degrees. It's not the best thing for their customers. I really don't understand how you can defend this.

I'm defending this as I work in a role where breaking changes are common, and understand exactly why they would have done this. There is no need to cause panic for all their customers where only a very small percentage of their total customer-base would be affected by this change.

It isn't at-all convenient for 2degrees, it isn't convenient for customers who are affected but tell them and suddenly it isn't convenient for all their customers. They've just picked the lesser of 2 evils here.

As someone who is from another provider, and is in a role where i too work in a role where massive changes can happen i must agree here.

You can guarantee there was a heck of alot of thought that went into this move. Almost certainly there are a ton of layers to it..

As others have said, pickup the phone and have a calm conversation with their reps.

Thirding this, I wore every hat you can wear in my previous ISP role, and there's just no viable way to do these sort of changes without either doing it quietly or causing a weird customer panic over nothing.

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2340603 19-Oct-2019 14:24

So what?

The relative difficulty of bringing about this change in no way excuses the actions of 2degrees in this case. We are fourteen pages in to what should have been a simple discussion, put to rest by a simple statement from 2degrees.

Instead of making a clear and concise statement informing users of their options, they waited five days and provided a statement that was obviously written by their marketing team, specifically intended to downplay the significance of the change, while ignoring the very real concerns of users posted on the forum. They further instructed users to get in touch via PM, not specifically to phone. Users who contacted them were then given inconsistent information regarding their options, or did not receive responses. Some posts here indicate users were told they'd have to pay $120 per year for a static IP, others got some sort of resolution for free. It sounds like a free IP is available, but even if so, 2degrees should have been ready with that information when the change was made public.

All that needed to happen was for 2degrees to state exactly what is happening, when, and what options existed for customers. Yes, people would still complain about breaking changes, and rightfully so, but most of this discussion wouldn't have been necessary.

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#2340605 19-Oct-2019 14:33

If only people could understand the complexities of running an ISP..... But prefer to complain.

skewt

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#2340656 19-Oct-2019 16:49

I would be annoyed too if I spent hours diagnosing why my inbound connections weren’t working only to find out my ISP broke it by switching the connection to CGNAT.

I can understand why they didn’t want to email everyone but they could at least gone middle ground and placed it on the service status page - unfortunately ISPs seem to have an aversion to using those

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BarTender

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#2340727 19-Oct-2019 18:00

skewt: I would be annoyed too if I spent hours diagnosing why my inbound connections weren’t working only to find out my ISP broke it by switching the connection to CGNAT.

I can understand why they didn’t want to email everyone but they could at least gone middle ground and placed it on the service status page - unfortunately ISPs seem to have an aversion to using those

The main issue with having comms is it confuses oldies and non-technical people and generates a whole lot of calls into the helpdesk for no reason.

Doing a google for "what is my ip" and then comparing it against the IP on the WAN interface and seeing they are different then you know something is up. I would hope it wouldn't take hours to figure out.

ripdog

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#2340738 19-Oct-2019 18:14

BarTender:

skewt: I would be annoyed too if I spent hours diagnosing why my inbound connections weren’t working only to find out my ISP broke it by switching the connection to CGNAT.

I can understand why they didn’t want to email everyone but they could at least gone middle ground and placed it on the service status page - unfortunately ISPs seem to have an aversion to using those

The main issue with having comms is it confuses oldies and non-technical people and generates a whole lot of calls into the helpdesk for no reason.

Doing a google for "what is my ip" and then comparing it against the IP on the WAN interface and seeing they are different then you know something is up. I would hope it wouldn't take hours to figure out.

Bartender, every problem is easy to diagnose when you know what it is beforehand. I don't think most people would reasonably expect a second layer of NAT to be unceremoniously dumped on their connection with no notice. If I didn't follow GZ, I would have been blindsided by this change too - and comparing my router WAN IP and my public IP would NOT have been anywhere near the top of my troubleshooting list.

I'm not saying I have a better solution. I recognise that you're right about panicking non-tech people. But a little empathy would have been nice. It took 2d until page 7 to reply to this thread, and instead of apologising for breaking people's internet and wasting their time, they said: "Whilst we’ve been really chuffed so far, we understand there might be some instances where customers may notice the change".

Chuffed? Really? CG-NAT has literally no advantages for anyone except saving the operator money, and that was their statement?

Also trying to keep the free static IP offer a secret was really odd, almost like they had something to hide. Openly advertising it would have mollified a lot of people in this thread, and showed their desire as an organization to make this right with customers. As I mentioned earlier, they should be swimming in IPv4 now, so why the interview before offering it?

Handle9

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#2340743 19-Oct-2019 18:23

BarTender:
skewt: I would be annoyed too if I spent hours diagnosing why my inbound connections weren’t working only to find out my ISP broke it by switching the connection to CGNAT.

I can understand why they didn’t want to email everyone but they could at least gone middle ground and placed it on the service status page - unfortunately ISPs seem to have an aversion to using those

The main issue with having comms is it confuses oldies and non-technical people and generates a whole lot of calls into the helpdesk for no reason.

Doing a google for "what is my ip" and then comparing it against the IP on the WAN interface and seeing they are different then you know something is up. I would hope it wouldn't take hours to figure out.

Read the post above which describes a customer spending six hours trying to fix something that 2degrees broke and didn't inform them.

Saying it's complex and saying that communication with customers would cause unecessary help desk calls are true.

Lack of communication is also causing customers significant problems, which is 2degrees business choice. They will of course hide behind best effort service and no SLA to avoid compensation for customers who they have chosen to break their service without telling them.

It's 2degrees business choice to fail a group of customers. It's pretty rich to blame the customers who are upset and complain about it or aren't able to quickly diagnose problems. This is 2degrees problem not the customers.

I'm not a 2degrees customer but this type of thing drives me nuts. It's blatantly focussed on minimising the impact on 2degrees, not customers. 2degrees could have employed extra call centre staff, it could have engaged in a fairly simple comms campaign (even immediately after it changed customers over).

This is going round in circles at this point but it's IMO not how a business should treat customers.

iceagecoming

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#2340752 19-Oct-2019 19:02

Yesterday my game server suddenly dropped out, only today i realised it was this. Rung up 2D and they gave me a static IP. Is anyone else having slow speeds tonight? Only hitting 70 Mb/s on a 100 plan

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