Cheap home CPE troubles

Mon Dec 27 21:18:00 UTC 2010

Happened a few years back to one ISP I know.

The common ADSL Modem given away free with the accounts (Dynalink DSL302G 
is the one I'm using right now, might be a few other models) had a problem 
that if authenticated failed (due to the account being locked say) and 
logins failed continuously for several minutes in a row the box would 
lock up and could only be fixed via a power cycle (NOT a restart from the 
the menu options).

So the ISP had a few little problems and the authenticated servers were 
unhappy for a few hours and 10-20% of the not-trivial customer base ended 
up in this mode. Took the helpdesk about a week to get everybody working 
again - They had to talk people though resetting the right piece of 
equipment (not rebooting their computer etc) and obviously some had 
changed their passwords or settings to try and make it work so those had 
to be fixed.

Dynalink put out a firmware fix for that bug and the ISP pushed it 
to customers after that and made sure the newer equipment didn't have it.

-- 
Simon Lyall  |  Very Busy  |  Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.