WAN Vendor Experiences?

[deanwebb]

Currently, my experience is with BT. Our primary WAN link is dropping about 40%+ of its packets, and we didn't switch over to the secondary link. We had to call *them* to tell them of our service degradation, even though we have some pretty high-level support we're paying for that's supposed to alert us of issues.

I'm actually getting better Internet on the guest wireless network than on the corporate one. Lolz.

Current opinion of BT: 

My WAN manager, however, feels more like:


What are your WAN vendor experiences like?

[Reggle]

I had such a story with Interoute. Redundant links, one link goes down, I call them, they kill the other link. Twice. Telling them not to touch anything and call us first: same thing.
I have to admit that after a few angry escalations they did became more cooperative.

I've heard stories about other local (Central European) WAN providers that aren't much better. One of them kept blaming me for misconfiguring BGP on my side, insisting their side was fine. You know, the typical e-mail with managers in cc. Next came my reply with evidence of an ICMP type 3 code 13 - Administratively Prohobited. Me: "Could it be an ACL on your side?"

After some silence and a sudden BGP-5-ADJCHANGE syslog: "We found an ACL..."

[routerdork]

Put in a ticket with AT&T to have the BGP AS changed on a circuit that wasn't being utilized yet. Come in the next day to find that they changed it on the active circuit and now the site is down. 

[NetworkGroover]

Put in a ticket with AT&T to have the BGP AS changed on a circuit that wasn't being utilized yet. Come in the next day to find that they changed it on the active circuit and now the site is down. 

Good lord....... ouch.

[NetworkGroover]

I had such a story with Interoute. Redundant links, one link goes down, I call them, they kill the other link. Twice. Telling them not to touch anything and call us first: same thing.
I have to admit that after a few angry escalations they did became more cooperative.

I've heard stories about other local (Central European) WAN providers that aren't much better. One of them kept blaming me for misconfiguring BGP on my side, insisting their side was fine. You know, the typical e-mail with managers in cc. Next came my reply with evidence of an ICMP type 3 code 13 - Administratively Prohobited. Me: "Could it be an ACL on your side?"

After some silence and a sudden BGP-5-ADJCHANGE syslog: "We found an ACL..."

We need an "owned" emoticon.