Sonic.net: good customer service
If you've ever had your DSL go south, you know that it's a painful world of trouble tickets, repeated queries whether the information provided was helpful in resolving your issue, threats of 8-am-to-4-pm technician windows, unsupported OSes, and Muzak. Or if you're a sonic.net customer, you can actually click on their website's "live chat" link and have an experience like this:
miket : How can I determine whether packet loss in my DSL line is a problem with my equipment or Sonic's?
** You are now speaking with John F, Technical Support. **
John F : Hi there, normally the best way to determine where packets are getting lost is through a traceroute
miket : OK, I've done that, and when I try to traceroute www.yahoo.com for example, I get asterisks (which I suppose indicate dropped packets) at sjo.equinix.net, and even some at servers in the yahoo.com domain
miket : Much of the time the traceroute completes normally
miket : but the asterisks are not regularly concentrated around a single hop
miket : so I get the feeling that it's something else
miket : There I just did it again and the packet is dropped at 5 0.ge-0-1-0.gw4.200p-sf.sonic.net (64.142.0.198) 14.488 ms * 14.239 m
John F : that's no good
miket : Yeah and this time it was at 2 a.b.c.d.dsl.static.sonic.net (a.b.c.d) 12.501 ms 11.936 ms *
miket : ... which is closer to my end
John F : That would tend to support the idea that these packets are actually getting dropped between your computer and us, and that the other hops that are dropping just happen to be dropped packets
John F : or rather, that they weren't necessarily dropped at the far end, but on the near end
miket : My connection has been rock-solid for a year, and really nothing has changed that I know of
miket : I can't rule out that a squirrel peed on my phone box or something like that, but for what it's worth my voice line doesn't sound static-y or anything like that
John F : what's the IP of your connection, so I can try to ping it from here?
miket : It's xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.com
miket : Let me dig that, just a sec
miket : www.xxx.yyy.zzz
John F : that looks like a sonic.net IP
John F : eyp
John F : *yep
John F : ah, and it also looks like it isn't set to respond to ICMP traffic
miket : I can change that..... hold on
miket : Sorry, X over DSL is slow
John F : fair enough
John F : I'm sending 100 ATM pings right now
John F :
miket : OK it should be working now.
John F : Ok, this may be unrelated
John F : but when you were configuring your system, I was getting 94-95% returns on ATM
John F : right after you told me it should be working for ICMP, I got 100% returns on ATM
John F : of course, your X connection shouldn't prevent ATM traffic from going through, but the coincidence struck me as odd
miket : It's possible the router was rebooting or something goofy like that -- it's a Linksys WRT54G
John F : But I'm not pingin g the router, I'm pinging the DSL modem (with the ATM pings)
miket : Or is ATM at a lower level that that?
miket : I see
John F : ATM is lower-level
miket : The original problem is sporadic but frequent
miket : So maybe you were seeing it for a few seconds
John F : and I dropping ATM packets left and right now
miket : Traceroute failed entirely -- couldn't even resolve www.yahoo.com
miket : So is this implicating the modem?
miket : Or worse, the line between you and the modem?
John F : I'm thinking it's not your router at all
John F : I just simultaneously sent out ICMP and ATM pings, and when the ICMP was failing, so was the ATM
John F : it's looking pretty solid right now
John F : there's another hiccup...
miket : Yup, I saw it too
miket : during traceroute
miket : there
miket : now
John F : yeah, that isn't your router, it isn't your computer
John F : it's your modem, the line, the DSLAM, or us
miket : OK, so here's what I'll do:
miket : I'll check my wiring up to the demarc box and convince myself that nothing happened
miket : Maybe I can hook the modem straight up to it with new wiring and I can ask someone at Sonic to repeat these tests
miket : If the problem goes away then I'll fix it
John F : that would be one good approach. I'm loading your line stats
miket : Otherwise I suppose you need to do something?
John F : well, the physical numbers look great
miket : Yeah I get 350KB down on a good day with great latency
John F : So I'm guessing it's not the physical copper line that's at fault here.
John F : Yeah, you're noise margin and attenuation are both better than my line at home
miket : I see. But no other Sonic customers in my neighborhood are reporting problems?
John F : Not that I see
miket : If the copper is good, then that suggests the problem is farther from me (if I'm understanding you correctly, and I don't really know squat about DSL)
John F : I think that an alternate modem (if you happen to have one handy) would be a great test to narrow down the possibilities
miket : OK. I do have one from a horrible Speakeasy experience
miket : I'll give that a try tonight when I get home
John F : Excellent. We want you to have no packet loss at all, so any progress on this is good!
miket : Great. Are you a regular here if I join the chatroom again later in the week?
John F : I should be on for the rest of the week. I'll leave notes in your "xxxx" account record so if you get somebody else they can pick up where I left off, though.To summarize: this is good. It's much better than 20 minutes on hold. Even though my internet connection is still spotty, I feel that my ISP listened to my problem, and that I'm closer to solving it.
Yikes, what world have I just been in? I'm quite good at languages, but I think I would have been more at home trying to figure out the Cyrillic alphabet than what you wrote. My estimation of your brilliance continues to grow, mi hijo. con carino, mom
Give John F a raise! And maybe make miket a 'sonic.net designated model customer'?