Help me understand connection to internet: Infrastructure and ISP

[shimi]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Several times I have been caught in the situation in which the
> Infrastructure (Hot in this particular case) and the ISP (012 in this
> particular case) blame each other for the customer not having internet
> access. I need to understand this.
>
> After two weeks of my mother-in-law not having internet access, during
> which 012 blamed Hot and Hot blamed 012, I get there to take care of
> the issue. At Hot they tell me that since the modem lights are fine (4
> lit, one flashing) the problem must be with 012. At 012 they tell me
> that because she connects without a Dialer (as all Linux customers do)
> they cannot trace the problem any further than a superficial check
> which checks out OK. 012 "sees" the modem, so they say the problem
> must be with Hot.
>
> Apparently, the ability to trace problems is the reason that Windows
> users must use a Dialer. Furthermore, at 012 they inform me that it is
> Hot, not 012, that is providing the internet outside because there is
> no dialer. They say that they gave Hot "permission" to connect me
> directly to the internet this way. So if Hot can provide connections
> out, then why do we need ISPs at all? I notice that no other nation in
> Europe has this Infrastructure/ISP dichotomy.
>
> Furthermore, the next time that there is a problem how can I check if
> the issue is with the infrastructure or with the ISP?
>
>
If you don't have Internet access at all, and OTHER 012 dialer-less users
do, then I would say the problem lies within Hot. As you were correctly
told, in dialer-less (also dubbed "MPLS-mode"), Hot simply assigns you an IP
address from an 012's IP range that gets exported to them, and they are the
one actually connecting you to the Internet.

If you have Internet, but it's slow, etc, then this can be a problem in
either one of them (usually something between you and the CMTS...) - or
congestion / routing issue within the ISP.

So it really depends on what do you mean when you say "not having Internet
access". Surely, if she didn't have access _at all_, that didn't happen to
all 012 MPLS users (or the media would be all over this and you would know).

The modem having the lights on is meaningless. Hot can say whatever they
want. Recently I had some serious trouble with them, due to frequencies
filter that they've placed on my cable, to stop me from receiving their
analog broadcasts, after I disconnected from their TV service (in favor of
Hot, which is why it is so ridiculous that they did...). During those
troubles, their modem completely lost the ability to catch signal from the
network, and the lights were still all on, as if all is good. A power cycle
of the modem revealed that it cannot get back to that state :)

Anyways... 012 really can't do anything if it's not a global problem that
they have. They indeed have 0 control over a single user in that mode of
connection. Either all the users in your network pool has a problem, or none
of them has, as far as 012 is concerned. This assertion is of course correct
to all connections at MPLS-mode, not only via 012.

HTH,

-- Shimi
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