Well it is with great sadness that I have to write this article, After about 4 days of having a network issue and several conversations with Ihug Business there seems to be no resolve in sight.
In sort there appears to be router somewhere that is mangling packets. I have checked out our local network and then we route over to alternative connection. there were no issues. Then changed back to the Ultra connection and we are faced again with a slow connection and mangled pings.
Basically we pay about $170.00/mth for our business connection, up until 3 to 4 days ago it was working well with very few issues. then we noticed huge amounts of latency on the network, In addition we noticed pings were being mangled and getting errors such as:
wrong data byte #1093 should be 0x45 but was 0xc5
then a big fat hex dump.
After calling Ihug business and asking to have the issue resolved someone decided to reboot one of their routers, the issue went away for a short time then came back.
I then sent numerous emails and called their business team several times during the day, I was promised a call-back on more than one occasion and still have not received one. Now its the weekend (our busiest time) and there is no one on staff that can sort the issue out.
When I asked to talk to the technical team I was told that I can not speak to them and would have to wait until next week when the business team where back.
Had I not already invested so much money and built my network around this service I would be tempted to seek an alternative. but as it is I have invested considerable time, money and other resources in setting up.
The fact is that their tech staff need a good kick in the pants by the management, treating customers like they are brain-dead fools is really bad form and not responding to issues promptly does not rate very high in my book.
I would be interested to see what would happen if Ihugs primary connection went down, or Telecom terminated their connections on a weekend. I bet they would not be happy with the response from telecom saying "Please call back when out business team are available".
Well i should really clarifiy a couple of things.
3 days of phone calls. speaking to various people regarding the issue. atleast 2 hours today and several promises about how their tech's are going to get in contact with me regarding the problem.
I must admit that some times tech stass do get fed up with johny expert calling however i would have expected better service from the technical support team when a business account is having issues.
an SLA can be a curse and a blessing in one neat, legal, yesmoneyisinvolved package. Though this does depend on what type of SLA you've got...
Regardless, being a business connection I'd say your fault has well passed its escalation points and you need to be demanding to speak to a supervisor/team leader/CSM
In saying that, having been an ihug customer for many years now, their service levels went down the crapper when they were brought out by those aussies...
Well todays events were rather amusing, I again called business support and again was given the promise that someone will call me back and they would work to resolve the issue.
However the person who took the call this time did sugest that we get one of the installers out to check the gear at this end however we both discussed thefigures being reported by the sat card and agreed that it was unlikley that this was the issue as the signal levels were very good and stable.
Good News.
I finally got some comitment from one of the team leaders to look at the issue. Today we will either have had a visit from their installer to check the alignment of the dish or will have had a visit from one of their staff.
I've been with IHUG on 128kb Jetsream Starter for around 18 months or so...they've been great...then we switched to IHUG's 256kb 'Bliink' plan.
For starters it took three weeks for the switch to happen. IHUG blames Telescum for that, and of course I have no trouble whatsoever believing it.
But once we were switched to Bliink I discovered we were only getting 256kb from local servers...o'seas stuff was coming down the pipe at the old 128k rate.
Numerous phonecalls and emails to IHUG have so far failed to resolve this. Once again they blame Telescum, and once again I'm prepared to accept that, since we've had endless fun and games with our local exchange.
But IHUG's tier-1 leaves a lot to be desired. I encountered only one guy who didn't sound like some high school kid reading a cue-card, and was reasonably helpful (good work Vikash!).
They've promised to chase it up with NZ Monopoly Ltd, but so far not only has nothing improved, but just the opposite, and I now find that my dial-up is faster than my ADSL service.
Again I'm really glad I did not hold my breath.
I waited all morning and a good deal of the afternoon, then had to go out to a meeting. The instructions were that their IT guy would call me to arrange a meeting and come over to test the gear at this end. He apparently turned up late this afternoon and asked my wife if he could borrow a ladder so as to get on the roof.
Well I carry the ladder with me in the Jeep and hence one of the reasons I suggested they give me a call to arrange a time.
System is still not working correctly.
However I have now been told that the service person will make this a priority.
Very slack, reminds me of UK how slack the service can be over there but didn't think you got it in NZ... Management should be aware of this, and a letter to IHUG wouldn't go a miss, just so it doesn't happen again to someone else and they have to go through the pain you are going through ShadowX....
Your not alone,
I had a microwave link off Waiatarua, first few months were to spec then suddenly speeds were crap.
No amount of bleating to the Wood tossers resolved it, so I ended up taking my money back to Telespunk.
Seems nothing will ever change with these lot.
I think that is why Telespoof don't care either as they know there is no real competition.
Very slack, reminds me of UK how slack the service can be over there but didn't think you got it in NZ...
This made me think of something....
Quote:
Dear Cretins,
I have been an NTL customer since 9the July 2001, when I signed up for your four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm monitoring.
During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions.
Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties---or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.
My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire
Saturday sitting on my fat arse, waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website. HOW? I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes --- an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools – such as a drill bit, and his cerebrum.
Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over four weeks my modem arrived, six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate your internet servers downtime is roughly 35% -- the hours between about 6 pm and midnight, Monday through Friday, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection.
I have made nine calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals who are, it seems, also highly skilled bullock jugglers. I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answering machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman. And several other variations on this theme. Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore and also another one of those crucially important testicle moments to attend to.
Frankly I don’t care. It’s far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at you unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue. I thought British Telecom was shit; that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god awful customer relations; and that no one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That’s why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn’t anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order. BT – wankers though they are – shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver. Any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief and will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat’s litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit – they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees. Have a nice day. May it be the last in your miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats.
Happens all the time whetu in UK, they don't give a toss. Took me 9 weeks to get ADSL in London cause they kept mucking up my line etc etc Long story but you get the picture...
Telecom NZ have a monopoly...this needs to change for things to move forward!!!
And actually, having dealt with both Telecom and Telstra on both a personal and professional (I work in corporate IT) level, I'd say things arent much different here...
Sure, Telstra is the main competition (of what competition we do have in the market), but Telecom is definately the lesser of those two evils.
Resonates well with this excerpt:
Quote:
That’s why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn’t anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order. BT – wankers though they are – shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.
After blowing away a good portion of the day yesterday I received a call from one of the team leaders telling me that the tech would be out to check the dish and LMB. Then later in the day the tech called to tell me he was going to be out in the afternoon. Unfortunatley I was noat avalible at that time as i had a number of meetings planned.
He has rescheduled to come out today at 9am this morning.
oops, looks like this thread was about to fall off the bottom of the left forum box, so I had to post to it so that it doesn't cause I wanna make another example of ISlug.
I remember when I tried their satellite service in Dunedin, South Island (remember this part as you'll be tested later)
Now I had problems with this 90cm dish on my roof not working when it was either raining or other kinds of heavy cloud or mist.
So they tried a 1200cm dish, thats 1.2 metres, in other words you could see it halfway across town!
Anyways, similar results! So I called their helpdesk again...
The nice young girl there asked which side of the Sky Tower I could see, I laughed... Then she asked me if I couldn't see that, then how much of the Rimatuka's could I see, about then I said ok this trial sucks and to come take it off my roof, they never did take it off so I took it off myself and left it on my doorstep to collect. (they may have collected it or they may not have, I may have introduced it to TradeMe...)
Anyways yeh had issues with them billing me for a few months also when I wasn't even using it and had called up numerous times to cancel.
That was a few years ago and yeh still haven't dealt with them since. We dont all live in Auckland, and although the Sky Tower is rather high the earth is round...
__________________ Kind Regards
Dan Clark
Network Manager
DunedinWireless
Scarfies.Net Ltd
I finally met up with the Ihug Tech, Firstly we went up o the roof to check that the Dish and LMB were aligned, They were and there was a very usable signal being received.
The next step was to check the signal where the card is located, did this and everything checked out OK.
However the issue of poor performance remains and the mangled ping packets continue.
The tech then set up his laptop with a sat device and used a phone line to test the connection, a ping revealed the same issue and he was getting ping timeouts because XP's Ping is somewhat less advanced than the Linux ping in that it will not report all the information received, If its information it can not handle it will just report it as a ping timeout.
Well it was great to see that the problem continued even after all of my equipment had been taken out of the loop however this leaves me in the situation where I have wasted pleanty of my time trying to resolve an issue that is not on my network, and that the Ihug technical staff on more than one occasion would not beleive me when I told them about the issue. They were quick to blame my equipment without checking the full details.
We have been opperating at a much reduced capacity for over a week now, other interesting things include the timing out of piped connections and tunels and anything that relies on a socket.
Sounds like you ppl have been having trouble with Ihug's satellite services. Well I’ve been having trouble with their plane old DSL connection.
First of all we (flatmate and I) rung them up wanting to change over to the new DSL service they where offering. After two weeks they still had not done anything so the flatmate rung them again and they had lost our details (How do you lose details that are entered into a computer database (if any one from Ihug is reading this, please remember to click the save button)).
By week four we where getting a little pissed at the delay so we rung them again, and now they said that it was Telecom’s fault as they had not connected us at the local exchange yet. We where also told that we where in a list of ppl waiting to be connected. (If I remember right we where about 7 or 8 )
Week five, we where now very annoyed.
Friends had informed us that telecom was limiting the number of DSL users being connected by other ISP's (Not sure if that’s true tho).
Week six. Contemplating giving up and staying with 56k dial up. Or converting to Xtra and allow our selves to be assimilated by telecom.
Thursday- week six we got a call from telecom saying we would be connected by Friday. The next day we got a call from Ihug saying we where connected.
Now we just have problems with a high latency and the DSL randomly disconnecting every now and then
Sounds like you ppl have been having trouble with Ihug's satellite services. Well I’ve been having trouble with their plane old DSL connection....
Refer my post earlier in the thread...identical issues.
I believe much of the problem lies with the fact that nobody will accept responsibility. They all deny being the problem, even when it's obvious who's at fault. I pity the poor tier-1 joes...I bet they are threatened with the sack if they ever 'fess-up and admit that the company they work for is the cause of whatever problem we -- the paying customer -- are experiencing.
The observatory is still experiencing fluctuating throughput. Sometimes we get the full 256 but just as often we're getting 128k or less. And this is what Monopoly NZ Ltd laughingly describe as "broadband".
Don't be fooled that Ihug has Tier'd levels of support or that they have 'technicians'...
Dude I'll tell you why nothing is getting resolved....
There is NO technical team,
There is NO one who knows diddly squat about how Ihug Ultra works left in the company - theyv all been replaced by refugees...
Ihug business would probably be the least technical department in the company as far as Ultra goes, the helpdesk is full of noobs, Ihug are winding their Ultra service down (ie they don't give a shit about Ultra or Internet, theyre focusing on voice) and the only people who could actually offer any assistance based on actual understanding of the network are probably over in Perth where Ihug's network operations has relocated to and they DON'T talk to customers.
I doubt theyre gonna fly someone over to check your polarity settings, MPE settings or whatever you've got setup wrong...
If you want something fixed at Ihug, beleive it or not the best time is to call between 11.30pm and 8am where the Helpdesk cue is casually looked after by the NOC who have all had several years experience with Ultra and work on the network every day.
If that doesn't work, my advice would be to send a link to this thread to complaints@ihug.co.nz or even better HR@staff.ihug.co.nz, they have dinosaurs on the end of those mailboxes.
See what happens then *snicker*
(I heard all this from a mate of a mate of a mate, I'v never worked for Ihug
THanks for the advice, The problem is not at my end and im prety sure its not with my gear as when the Ihug tech came out and tested it with his own gear he got exactly the same results.
I have installed a new SAT mount on the ridge of the house, although the results have improved a little the stability is still not there. I have installed a new dish and LMB for this mount to ensure that the issue is not with the dish or my end.
It is an intereting issue and I would love to figure out what is causing it. I have nother card I will try out just to be sure and also I have just ordered in a roll of cable and will replace that over the holidays.
Do they know you'v installed your own dish and LNB?
To my knowledge their willingness to support you would be pretty close to none if they knew that.
Yea, they sent me the card and dish after discussing the issues at length and decided that it would be easiest for me to install it as i was about to install another sat dish up there so as to pick up SBS and the australian TV channels
Quote:
What type of card is it? SM200, SM200D?, Telstat Turbo?
I have both SM200 and SM200D's however its only the 200 that im using at tha moment. this is in a linux box.
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Is it a multicast connection? VPN over dsl/dialup? or standard Ultra connection?
VPN over DSL
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Where are you? what network are you on ? Skytower, Satelite, Waiaturua?
Im in Bucklands Beach and pointed at Waiatarua. the system was working well until recently.
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Is your Multiprotocol Encapsulation set to 8? or something else?
Horizontal or Vertical polarty?
Frequency?
And just for kicks i stuck the LMB in my 80cm dish and tested it but ended up with exactly the same results. another thing that i have found is when I ping anything with a large packet i end up getting some really screwy hex dump back. when the Tech from ihug tested it instead of getting a hex dump the latencey went up. Im guesing this is because the Ping in linux is a little more advanced than the ping in XP.
Also the tech from Ihug was using an alternative USB type sat decoder and a dialup so it is a lot less likley to be caused by my DSL connection or the Skymedia card im using.
I will be replacing all the cable sometime this weekend.
Using Waiatarua doesn't sound right if your in bucklands beach. It may work but Id say Bucklands beach would be either Sky Tower or PAS2 (more likely pas2)
But yeh - SM200 doesn't work in linux, we used to have a haxed 10meg Ultra connection and I remember that we required a sm200D for compatibility.
We had the LNB taped to the window with insulation tape and NO dish and it worked sweet as ;D
The strange this was that it had been working up until about 2 mybe 3 months ago and was working really well with peaks of about 1.2mb/s downloads. Nothing on this end changed but the speed dropped to 200kb/s or there abouts and enede up with those really screwed up ping packets.
I have Clear LOS to the Waiatarua tower. I can not see Sky at all. and would rather not use PAS2.
The card i have here sitting beside me is a 200D Telemann with the slot. the one in the linux box is a 200D from what i remember. I spose i should just swap them over ands see if there is any improvement.
when things were working well the AGC was sitting at 196 I think, however with the new dish in its new position I get 200 up to 207 if i try hard to tweak it
Ihugs issues and crap service/tech support! 
Linear Mode
