VM ... www != Internet?

[Mezzle]

Earlier today, a problem manifested itself earlier where my internet connection became extremely sporadic.

I am unable to ping any server, and am also unable to ssh into my own server in London.

First call, I was cut off.

The first tech support person cut me off when I told him that while my web browsing was working.

The second tech (Sachin) didn't seem to understand that my issue was with other services than the web. I asked to be transferred to second line support, was transferred to customer services, who seemed confused when I gave them my technical issues. They then transferred me back to tech support, where I got cut off while the line was cut off while on hold in the queue.

The third tech support (didnt take his name) transferred me straight through to a supervisor (Abbas), as requested. This supervisor didn't seem interested in addressing the issue with the tech support agent, so I discussed my problem with him, telling him that I couldn't ping google.com.

He then asked me for the output of ping, so I told him, and was told that that was not possible, as the numbers should be "sent 4" or similar.

I don't use Windows, and told the supervisor this at the start of the call, but offered to run the equivalent commands. He seemed unhappy when I told him that I was sending more than 4, even though I told him that I was recieving 100% packet loss. I was also told that it was not possible to send out pings and not get anything returned.

I was then told that because I didn't run Windows, or Mac OSX (I infact, run Ubuntu) that I couldn't be supported.

*sighs* It seems that even given the problem, a breakdown, and the information they requested, that these tech support people don't seem to have the ability to think outside of the box.

Now I can't recieve my email....

*sigh*

-- Edit --
Oh, and at one point the Supervisor cut out - sending me into a flurry of swearing and throwing things round the room.
Then my mobile rang.... Nice touch... but really doesn't make up for it

[graf_von_anonym]

Alright, you can't ping the remote servers. I can't pretend to any great familiarity with Ubuntu, but I'll talk about that subsequent to some questions:

Can you ping the default gateway being assigned to your computer (or the router to which it is connected)? Can you ping the modem? Can you ping the loopback address?

It's unlikely that you're being limited to port 80 alone, given the general rule I will also outline below, at least by something external. Do you connect through a router? Have you tried bypassing it?

Finally, in this questioning phase, can you access newsgroups? You may get some assistance from 2nd line who monitor the Virgin Media support newsgroup. While they too are limited by what is known as a "support scope", they have greater leeway to stray.

So, the two things I said I would mention:

Call-centres are in in India and other places because there is a ready supply of labour that is cheap and the populace speak English (or an approximation thereof), for the same reason that there are call centres in places like Wales, Scotland, or the Midlands. They are almost all out-sourced to as a cost-saving measure. They have targets to deliver, and these almost all revolve around handling calls in a specific way. Because of perception-warping artifacts of management nonsense like Six Sigma and ISO9000 these almost all relate to physical measurements: volume of calls handled; average call length; staff hours lost to illness, indolence, training; and perhaps some arbitary box-ticking or hoop-jumping exercise that masquerades as 'quality'.

This focus on technical support as an extruded product rather than a process has a number of advantages - it makes it very easy to stamp out "solutions" for most needs. It falls apart at the edge cases, however, for the same reason that some house are furnished differently - think of your floor, for a second. Call-centres, as an industry, want to be in the industry of selling rugs, not fitting carpets. The latter takes time, skill, attention, and engenders a certain measure of waste. It is also an exact fit. Given the choice between cheap but imperfect and difficult but expensive, people and organisations will usually choose the former. Even more frustrating, however, is that "support scope" gives companies like Virgin the option of limiting the rooms they will furnish to those that are specifically proportioned rectangles. This is why you are being stymied - you are going to people who have only been asked to sell you rugs and asking them to help you fit a carpet. It doesn't work very well at Ikea, but some of them might be able to advise you if you are lucky, and you're in the same situation here.

Secondly, and this is worth putting in bold, Virgin don't care. I mean, yes, they want you to be happy. They are an Internet Service Provider, and they'll do their utmost to provide you with web access (and I am aware of the distinction, though many who work for Virgin may not be). What they won't do is things like block ports, or filter specific protocols, or deny access to specific websites (Internet Watch Foundation aside). It's not that they can't, or couldn't, but that it's effort. Almost every difficulty with Virgin is caused by a solution implemented not because it was best but because it was either easiest or cheapest, and often these are mutually exclusive, but the latter will tend to win. The same is true of almost every large organisation driven by trying to service a high level of debt and shareholder demands. That extends to your experience of customer support I'm afraid. I appreciate that it's cold comfort, indeed, I don't even intend it to be a comfort to you. I'm merely explaining, not excusing.

[Horace]

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/national/broadband/get-started/support-scope.php#systems

Those are the supported operating systems. If it was me I would tell them I was using XP and translate what they wanted me to do into Linux.

[Sephiroth]

.... Because of perception-warping artifacts of management nonsense like Six Sigma and ISO9000 .....

Brilliant expressiveness. Peops should have a read of this: http://www.improvementandinnovation.com/features/interviews/we%E2%80%99ve-driven-some-quite-spectacular-improvements-interview-peter-evans-virgin-me

Here is a highlighted excerpt, with a question from the interviewer (January 2009):

Is the programme at Virgin Media a pure Six Sigma programme?

It’s a process excellence and improvement programme based very strongly at the moment on Lean. It’s a brand new programme; I started last January, and I was recruited to bring in Six Sigma. However, after I had a look, it was obvious to me that it was too early for this approach because we had processes that were fundamentally broken and we had to start somewhere low down, and Lean for me was the answer. We decided to concentrate on the framework, getting the basics right first.


So, the Director of Quality at VM thinks that VM's processes are "fundamentally broken". Reading some of the stuff here, they still are.

[xpod]

I went through a rather stubborn phase with *buntu and VM`s tech support.
I always called up with *buntu plugged in to that modem to begin with and i had plenty reasons to call during that 06 to 07 period.
I had two or three curiously willing(So curious in one case that he was apparently off to download a live cd by time the call finished) techs over that initial year or so but most wouldn`t even continue with the call if i had to mention Linux.
Eventually i accepted that it was just so much easier to keep a Windows installation(in some way shape or form) readily available.
I always found it strange that if i was paying bills etc i`d get through to a nice Scots/Welsh/English person 99% of the time but anytime my services were acting up i`d get through to Bangalore 99% of the time.
They quite often couldn`t understand my Scottish accent and i couldn`t understand their Indian accents(a lot of the time) and neither of us understood very much about anything else we were doing so it was always good for a laugh if nothing:D

[Tech_Boy]

(So curious in one case that he was apparently off to download a live cd by time the call finished)

That was probably me ;)

[Milambar]

That was probably me ;)

I don't know why, but that actually made me laugh. But now I gotta ask, how did you like Ubuntu?

[xpod]

That was probably me ;)

Is that you Amil........:shocked:
Did you get that moped fixed?

[Mezzle]

Alright, you can't ping the remote servers. I can't pretend to any great familiarity with Ubuntu, but I'll talk about that subsequent to some questions:

Can you ping the default gateway being assigned to your computer (or the router to which it is connected)? Can you ping the modem? Can you ping the loopback address?

Yes, Yes, Yes.


It's unlikely that you're being limited to port 80 alone, given the general rule I will also outline below, at least by something external. Do you connect through a router? Have you tried bypassing it?

Yes, and yes, to no avail.


Finally, in this questioning phase, can you access newsgroups? You may get some assistance from 2nd line who monitor the Virgin Media support newsgroup. While they too are limited by what is known as a "support scope", they have greater leeway to stray.

I've just tried, and apparently I have access.


So, the two things I said I would mention:

Call-centres are in in India and other places because there is a ready supply of labour that is cheap and the populace speak English (or an approximation thereof), for the same reason that there are call centres in places like Wales, Scotland, or the Midlands. They are almost all out-sourced to as a cost-saving measure. They have targets to deliver, and these almost all revolve around handling calls in a specific way. Because of perception-warping artifacts of management nonsense like Six Sigma and ISO9000 these almost all relate to physical measurements: volume of calls handled; average call length; staff hours lost to illness, indolence, training; and perhaps some arbitary box-ticking or hoop-jumping exercise that masquerades as 'quality'.

This focus on technical support as an extruded product rather than a process has a number of advantages - it makes it very easy to stamp out "solutions" for most needs. It falls apart at the edge cases, however, for the same reason that some house are furnished differently - think of your floor, for a second. Call-centres, as an industry, want to be in the industry of selling rugs, not fitting carpets. The latter takes time, skill, attention, and engenders a certain measure of waste. It is also an exact fit. Given the choice between cheap but imperfect and difficult but expensive, people and organisations will usually choose the former. Even more frustrating, however, is that "support scope" gives companies like Virgin the option of limiting the rooms they will furnish to those that are specifically proportioned rectangles. This is why you are being stymied - you are going to people who have only been asked to sell you rugs and asking them to help you fit a carpet. It doesn't work very well at Ikea, but some of them might be able to advise you if you are lucky, and you're in the same situation here.

Secondly, and this is worth putting in bold, Virgin don't care. I mean, yes, they want you to be happy. They are an Internet Service Provider, and they'll do their utmost to provide you with web access (and I am aware of the distinction, though many who work for Virgin may not be). What they won't do is things like block ports, or filter specific protocols, or deny access to specific websites (Internet Watch Foundation aside). It's not that they can't, or couldn't, but that it's effort. Almost every difficulty with Virgin is caused by a solution implemented not because it was best but because it was either easiest or cheapest, and often these are mutually exclusive, but the latter will tend to win. The same is true of almost every large organisation driven by trying to service a high level of debt and shareholder demands. That extends to your experience of customer support I'm afraid. I appreciate that it's cold comfort, indeed, I don't even intend it to be a comfort to you. I'm merely explaining, not excusing.

I've had plenty of experience with other ISPs. Normally, when this pops up, it's because someone's misonfigured a firewall somewhere along the route, or an "automated system" for "detecting anomylous traffic" has stepped in to stop this happening.

This morning, I've done some additional monitoring, and played a little with my setup. By forcing a few things on my network, I've managed to be able to get my systems pretty much fully working. However, 2 problems still exist:-

1) My server, for some reason, although I can confirm that this is fully working (by connecting via 3G dongle).
2) A dump of the network traffic shows that my server is sending the correct packets back, however, at my end, I'm recieving FIN,ACKs.

---------- Post added at 11:50 ---------- Previous post was at 11:49 ----------

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/national/broadband/get-started/support-scope.php#systems

Those are the supported operating systems. If it was me I would tell them I was using XP and translate what they wanted me to do into Linux.

Except for that you have to remember that a ping only sends 4 packets in Windows, and other such trivia.

---------- Post added at 11:54 ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 ----------

I went through a rather stubborn phase with *buntu and VM`s tech support.
I always called up with *buntu plugged in to that modem to begin with and i had plenty reasons to call during that 06 to 07 period.
I had two or three curiously willing(So curious in one case that he was apparently off to download a live cd by time the call finished) techs over that initial year or so but most wouldn`t even continue with the call if i had to mention Linux.

I'm always up front. I'll tell them I don't use Windows, but if they give me the info on their script, I'll do the equivalent, and give them the relevant data.

Last time I called, after about 5 tries, I managed to get through to someone, and this guy was understanding, and even mentioned that he had been thinking of trying out ubuntu himself.

Eventually i accepted that it was just so much easier to keep a Windows installation(in some way shape or form) readily available.

Unfortunately, that's not an option for some of us :P


I always found it strange that if i was paying bills etc i`d get through to a nice Scots/Welsh/English person 99% of the time but anytime my services were acting up i`d get through to Bangalore 99% of the time.
They quite often couldn`t understand my Scottish accent and i couldn`t understand their Indian accents(a lot of the time) and neither of us understood very much about anything else we were doing so it was always good for a laugh if nothing:D

Unfortunately, I *do* know what I'm doing (not that VM support can ever believe this - I know from my old days of tech support that if someone says this, they're more than likely a complete imbecile!). But it'd be nice if there was some way to prove you knew what you were doing, and could get through to someone who spoke geek

[graf_von_anonym]

Hmm. The fact that you can ping the default gateway would tend to suggest you're not suffering from a classic "valid IP no throughput" scenario, but that might be me being unclear.

What make/model of modem are you using? What do you get when you click on 'Connection' up at the top? You don't need to post your IP address. It might be an idea to have a little check of your power levels, but I'm not convinced they are a factor.

[Mezzle]

Sorry, not sure you mean by "Connection" at the top.

I'm using a VM branded Ambit Modem - Model # E08C013.00

Levels are as follows:-

Downstream Lock : Locked
Downstream Channel Id : 59
Downstream Frequency : 315000000 Hz
Downstream Modulation : QAM256
Downstream Symbol Rate : 6952 Ksym/sec
Downstream Interleave Depth : taps12Increment17
Downstream Receive Power Level : 4.4 dBmV
Downstream SNR : 36.8 dB

Upstream Lock : Locked
Upstream Channel ID : 1
Upstream Frequency : 37504000 Hz
Upstream Modulation : QAM16
Upstream Symbol Rate : 2560 Ksym/sec
Upstream transmit Power Level : 46.0 dBmV
Upstream Mini-Slot Size : 2

---------- Post added at 21:04 ---------- Previous post was at 20:43 ----------

Aw man. Just resolved this (to a degree).

Seems that my IP address on VM changed.

It seems that a previous owner of the IP address (back in July, according to my logs) had a habit of portscanning people, or at least trying to "hack" their way in.

This meant that a few services (my own servers included!) blacklisted the IP address.

I've now removed it from my servers, so I can get my email again! (yay) ...

Thing is some things that are outside of my control are still blocking me.

Is there any way you can force an IP change on VM?

---------- Post added at 21:11 ---------- Previous post was at 21:04 ----------

Haha. Even worse. My server would have cleaned out the old ban, if at the time it happened, I hadn't changed the config to make it null-route people instead of adding them to hosts.deny.

Still annoyed that I seem to be blocked from a couple of other things (though nothing important, I really dont need to ping google, as long as I can browse it's website)

[graf_von_anonym]

Depending on how you are viewing this webpage, there should be the word "connection" in the top half of the block near the top of this page that includes the forum path and your User CP button.

That aside, I think you have successfully diagnosed the issue - your IP address is dynamically assigned, though it can often be re-assigned to a single MAC address for periods of a year or more. That last part is key; there's no way to reassign the IP given to a specific MAC address, but changing the MAC address will often result in a new IP address being assigned - however, as with most semi-random systems there's no guarantee that changing the input will result in a different output. That said, it's your best shot.

[Mezzle]

I don't think I can change the MAC address. I've tried that before and got locked out. (I think I'm locked down to a specific MAC address)

Oh, and yeah. I didn't realise you meant of *this* page. I thought you meant on my modem :D

[xpod]

Unfortunately, I *do* know what I'm doing (not that VM support can ever believe this - I know from my old days of tech support that if someone says this, they're more than likely a complete imbecile!). But it'd be nice if there was some way to prove you knew what you were doing, and could get through to someone who spoke geek

I always prefer to acknowledge just how little i actually know.That way i`ve got an excuse when i fail to find the connection links or forget to reboot the modem;)

I don't think I can change the MAC address. I've tried that before and got locked out. (I think I'm locked down to a specific MAC address)

Oh, and yeah. I didn't realise you meant of *this* page. I thought you meant on my modem

You did reboot the modem after you changed Mac`s didn`t you?:)
I dont think VM lock anybody into specific Mac Addresses but i`m sure somebody will tell us otherwise if they do for any reason.
I know the old Set Top Boxes required a known Mac Address(one of 5) before you could get online but the Modems aint like that so you should be able to change your Computer/Routers Mac or Network card as often as you like....i know i have.

[Mezzle]

I always prefer to acknowledge just how little i actually know.That way i`ve got an excuse when i fail to find the connection links or forget to reboot the modem;)

Yes, there's a lot I don't know. But when it comes to networking, there's a lot I *DO* know


You did reboot the modem after you changed Mac`s didn`t you?:)


To be honest, I haven't tried with this one, I'm just working on what I remember from my old flat where I had the same modem/router combination.

Apparently, however, this one does allow me to change the MAC. And it also changed my IP address... yay

[Ignitionnet]

At least your servers when they blacklisted you were polite enough to respond to your SYN with a FIN, ACK instead of a straight RST :)

Glad you got it sorted.

EDIT: Apologies for the geek comment above :D

[Mezzle]

At least your servers when they blacklisted you were polite enough to respond to your SYN with a FIN, ACK instead of a straight RST :)

Glad you got it sorted.

EDIT: Apologies for the geek comment above :D

Nothing wrong with a geek comment.

Could have been worse, could have just not responded at all (which it will do to people who portscan it now - I've now got it set to null route t hem!)

[Sephiroth]

Nothing wrong with a geek comment.

...

Do be brief. I often end up translating BB's stuff into digestible English for the good people here!