Ravenwood - 10/21/04 06:45 AM
I have really come to hate Tier 1 tech support. As I stated previously, there are a few websites that I cannot seem to get to. I sent an email to my internet provider, and within 24 hours they called me to troubleshoot it. The call went something like this:
Tech Support: Sir, I understand you are having trouble with some websites.By this time I was pretty much ready to get off the phone. I knew what she was saying was bullshit. I later proved it by switching from my laptop to my desktop. Unless of course IE is broken on both computers.
Ravenwood: Yes.
TS: And you put IP addresses of the websites in your email. Where did you get those.
R: From your nameservers.
TS: Oh. From an nslookup?
R: Yes. I cannot browse to those sites, nor can I ping them.
TS: It sounds like your browser.
R: But I cannot ping them either.
TS: Well we shut down ping. You can't ping any websites.
R: I just pinged Yahoo.
TS: Well, we might not have gotten to all websites. We are still in the process of shutting down ping so there may be a few you can get to.
R: I just pinged Google.
TS: Okay sir. I think you probably have a problem with your browser. You may be able to ping some sites. Like I said we are still shutting down customers ability to use the ping command.
R: You are doing it site by site? Won't that take a while?
TS: Sir, do you have another browser you can try?
R: No. But I don't think it....
TS: Sir, you need to download another browser. I recommend you try to download and install netscape and see if you can reach the sites that way. You may also need to reinstall or update Internet Explorer.
We're shutting down the ping command? 10:1 she doesn't even know what that is, much less how.
Posted by: MMW at October 21, 2004 8:27 AMMan, you're a really bad user if you've screwed it up on both computers. You must be quite a burden to knowledgeable support employees.
Posted by: Brian J. at October 21, 2004 9:32 AMI am going to join the geek chorus of "why are you still using IE?" Firefox is the shiznit (I save my Snoopisms for real empahsis).
Posted by: N. Bourbaki at October 21, 2004 10:36 AMThe last time first tier tech support ever provided me with any information of value was in 1990, when they sent me a paper copy of the manual.
These days, I basically pull rank, look up the national sales manager, and get him to fork over the engineer who wrote it. You'd be surprised how often that sort of thing works.
Posted by: geekWithA.45 at October 21, 2004 10:41 PMI haven't had a single problem with Avant
Posted by: Da Goddess at October 21, 2004 10:47 PMI had that problem before and was also unable to get a solution from tech support. I even used a trace program to see where it was getting hung up. I contacted them and got no help. I reinstalled my OS for another reason and, low and behold, the problem went away.
Posted by: Otto at October 22, 2004 4:14 AMWell I can't reach those sites from my other PC either, nor from other browsers.
I'm due for a re-install soon, so I'm not too upset over it. I've got to put the laptop into the shop, so it will be re-imaged any way.
Posted by: Ravenwood at October 22, 2004 6:45 AMI'd say their problem is probably an issue with a transparent proxy, but since it extends to even an ICMP ping... well...
Try doing a traceroute (tracert in Windows land) -- my guess is that you'll either see it suddenly drop at some site, or witness a magical game of ping pong with a couple of routers -- probably between them and their upstream provider.
Compare that with the traceroute from something that acutally responds to a PING -- if they diverge at a point somewhere still in your ISPs network or their upstream provider it's definately an internal routing issue on there end.
I'd be curious to see the list of IPs too -- but that's because I'm an inquisitive little bugger and get a kick out of incompetent techs.
Upstream provider probably caused a BGP advertising storm of some kind and now various blocks are blacklisted. Been there, seen it happen.
Yes, I'm a geek.
Posted by: Justin Buist at October 22, 2004 6:28 PMThanks for all the suggestions.
Traceroutes for each site fail at the same point, so it appears to be a problem on one of the routers between here and there. I've notified the service provider, but it isn't their router so it may take a while to fix.
Posted by: Ravenwood at October 23, 2004 11:01 PMThat’s absolutely fabulous. I run a helpdesk tier 1 and 2. You can not believe some of the calls we get, and they are all corporate users, never a consumer. I know how frustrated I get when I try to get help. I usually start off by saying that I run a tier 2 helpdesk can I please speak to someone on my level as I have already done everything that you might be able to help me with. No offense, but lets save us both a lot of wasted time.
Posted by: JT_Hunter at October 25, 2004 4:01 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
