[TriLUG] RR and pre-meeting subjects :

[Mike Helms]

Lisa,

Lots of people use the home level internet cable service for their home
based business, and that's cool.  The important thing that I tell people is
to ALWAYS have a backup if connectivity is that important.

We have backup connectivity here at work, and we run multiple T1's.  This
isn't just for home users.

I also didn't mean to imply that anyone who complains about RR is an idiot.
Quite the contrary - most people who called in had a legitimate problem.
More often than not, I was able to fix it on the spot (they do arm tech
support people with a lot of tools, believe it or not!), but sometimes I
wasn't, and that's life in a big corporation.

Bear in mind also that cable internet exploded far faster than anyone
anticipated.  Recall the @home woes if you don't believe me there ...
scalability becomes an enormously complicated issue when you're tlaking
about a network that serves millions of people, and i don't envy our network
engineers one bit.  They had a daunting task, and for the omst part did a
great job.

Cheers,
-- Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa C. Boyd [mailto:lcboyd at nc.rr.com]
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 10:43 AM
To: trilug at trilug.org
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] RR and pre-meeting subjects :


Ben and Mike - thanks so much for those different views :) I've been in 
tech-help desk positions before and have a few war stories myself - as 
everyone probably does.

I didn't mean to start such a discussion on RR's service - sorry! My 
initial reasoning for letting you guys know that my email was flaky this 
week was in regards to planning this meeting Saturday. This week has just 
been one big frustration for me - RR only being part of it. If you only 
knew how many things I've tried to get working this week that wouldn't - 
and then on top of that I couldn't really get help from my mail lists on 
the other problems.

Part of the frustration is not knowing what the problem is and not knowing 
what to do about it. Should I call tech support every time I have problems 
in email? (I'm seriously asking what would help in these situations.) 
Generally I do not, because I suspect I'm not the only one having a problem 
and that you guys get enough calls as it is without me adding to the 
pressure. Surely you guys are working on it. It is frustrating when it does 
have problems - which seem to be happening more frequently. Knowing that 
they are most likely idiot users who are setting up their own servers with 
security issues helps me to feel better about RR's service and the people 
working there though.

I'm admittedly one of those people who doesn't know what it takes to run an 
ISP and email servers and DNS stuff. In my simple mind I'm thinking - well 
if this idiot's server is causing problems - block it from the network. I 
understand though that by the time you find that out, it may be too late 
and your email server may be crammed with sp*m.

My difficulties with all of this stem from trying to start up a business 
from my home. I don't make enough money yet to pay for the higher service 
in which I should be paying for for my business. Now however, while I'm 
trying to build my business I need a reliable email system so I can 
communicate with potential customers and such. A vicious cycle of which I 
don't blame anyone - just sharing frustrations in hopes that some one may 
be able to help with a solution.

Ben, let us know if there's anything that we can do to help you - whether 
it be trying to reach more idiots so they don't put open mail relays on 
RR's system or to cut down on the complaining :)

Lisa B.

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