Qwest Support

Fri Apr 5 16:13:36 UTC 2002

You totally missed the point.  Had this been a real emergency, he would be 
unable to get resolution since Qwest was unable to dredge up a clue within 
their customer support machine.

Greg U

At 05:24 PM 4/4/2002, you wrote:

>I suppose. Except it's not even certain you were having a problem of any
>kind at all.
>
>Qwest's presence or absence from public IX's really has nothing to do with
>your routes being announced. In fact, Qwest privately peers with all the
>other large networks. While there are many peering sessions at the public
>NAPs, most traffic is carried over private network interconnects, at least
>domestically. Certain peering points in Europe (Linx), tend to run the other
>way.
>
>In fact, if Qwest were publically peering with other networks, it might be a
>reason why your routes through UUNet were being prefered - private peer
>originated routes are almost always assigned higher local preferences in
>carrier networks, then public peer originated routes.
>
>I'm not sure your annoyance with Qwest has any basis in their lack of
>performance, as far as IP routing. BGP decision rules and other networks'
>routing policies will govern which paths are used for your routes. Here is
>an example...
>
>- Network X peers with UUNet in 8 locations. Network X also peers with
>Qwest, lets say in 6 locations. For whatever reason, network X chooses
>UUNet's routes to you over, Qwest's. This could be due to local routing
>policy, dictating that 701 routes get a higher local pref. Or AS path
>lengths could be the same, and the decision could be falling to something
>like router ID. Whatever.
>
>- In general, all the UUNet peering will get treated the same by Network X's
>routing policy. This won't always be the case, but let's say that none of
>the peering links are congested, etc. So, a certain number of paths are
>carried throughout Network X via iBGP. If UUNet's routes "won" at all those
>peering points, you will not see any paths through Qwest on a single carrier
>route server like Nitrous.
>
>- Route-views, and the like are different animals. They get ebgp multihop
>views from many providers, so you will tend to see paths from many different
>vantage points, and are more likely to see paths from both your upstreams.
>
>ISPs get a heavy volume of calls every day. While Qwest may not have the
>greatest customer service, it's not like you were actually down or had a
>qwest originated routing issue. If that were the case, my sympathy would be
>greater.
>
>- Daniel Golding
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu]On Behalf Of
>Andy Dills
>Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 5:43 PM
>To: nanog at merit.edu
>Subject: Qwest Support
>
>
>
>
>Wow, Qwest support is indeed terrible.
>
>Turned up the DS3 today...the connectivity seems fine. I decided to check
>a couple of routeservers (nitrous); all had my much-prepended UUnet
>announcement, but NONE had my Qwest announcement. Not a huge deal, but
>curious to me.  Is Qwest just not at the public peering points? When I
>checked route-views.oregan-ix.net, I felt better, but yet annoyed. Even
>with the prepends, most networks were announcing UUnet's path.
>
>So I decided to call them and ask...man what a mistake. The guy is like,
>"Ok, hold on, let me get somebody from our IP noc." 10 minutes goes by,
>and he comes back with "Couldn't get anybody in the IP noc, let me try to
>get somebody in your install group" (being that I turned up the DS3
>today). Comes back another 10 minutes later with "Well, I left a message
>for them, but there isn't much I can do. Nobody seems to be answering
>their phone. If somebody doesn't call you back within 30 minutes, here's
>a number to call..."
>
>So what if my routes were actually hosed? I'd just be screwed because they
>can't get anybody at the IP noc?
>
>I wait. Nobody calls back within 30 minutes. I call the number he gave me.
>Busy. You gotta be kidding me.
>
>So I call the main number again, talk to somebody different. She has me
>hold, and then brings some guy on the line "who can help me". I start to
>talk about route servers, and he's immediately like "Woah, this is a BGP
>problem...I can't help you. Let me try to get somebody from the IP noc."
>
>So, I wait on hold for about 15 minutes, only to be given dial tone.
>
>Please tell me it isn't always THIS bad?
>
>Andy
>
>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Andy Dills                              301-682-9972
>Xecunet, LLC                            www.xecu.net
>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access