Business Class DSL has been going down constantly. HELP!

I don't even know if anyone can possibly give me any advice. I
guess at any rate, I need to rant.

I consult for a 50 user company. About 3 weeks ago, our "AT&T
Business Class DSL Service" started dropping out on us all the time.
The setup we have is their DSL router (A Small, looks like it's for
home use Netopia brand) with no NAT and no DHCP simply performing the
PPoE authentication and a Sonicwall firewall behind it doing the NAT
to our 5 Public IP's (only 3 are used). The first visit by the tech
had him tell us the router was bad and that our internal wiring was
bad also. He managed to get the internet back up. He left and things
were fine...until the next morning. Down again. Same tech comes
out. This time, he also finds some line problems outside of our
building. He takes care of those, and in the meantime we drop a new
cat 6 cable to tie up the phone lines to the panels inside the
building. Everything looks nice.....for a day.

We are losing Sync AGAIN. The guy comes out again and tells us
that the power in our building is bad and is destroying our DSL
routers. He found something wrong with the line in a different spot
and fixed it. We also hooked the DSL router up to a "Power
Conditioner" on a dedicated power circuit to control voltage
variation. It was good. For one day. Then it went down. A new tech
comes out and we get on the phone with some boss of the region. They
decide to change out the S2 pair and do a "port swap". I'm not into
telco so I have no clue. The next day I come in and the internet is
of course, down. The Cable modem is reporting way different line
speeds. They swapped the wrong port. They messed up with our phone
number. The swapped the right port and it worked. For 3 days. This
time it wasn't dropping sync...just dropping packets. The internet
worked but was horribly slow. A tech came out and put an older, 3 Amp
version of the Netopia Router on. The internet worked....for about 4
days! We are out of the woods!

Today, it dropped. I did some looking into it and found "Wrong
Password" errors. They had randomly changed our password. I got it
changed back and everything was ok for 3 hours. We lost the
connection completely after that. I went out and rebooted the
router. Connection was restored but we are dropping 15% of our
packets. Tech is coming out tomorrow. It's possible that the users
will lynch one or both of us.

It is an AT&T Yahoo DSL 3000/512 line. I called Time Warner to
see about business class Road Runner but they cannot bring it to the
industrial park we are in without major construction. They are not an
option. I was quoted $589 a month for a T1. We are paying $120 for
the DSL line. I brought this possibility up to the president but he
wants to know why after using this DSL service for a few years does it
not work. Why pay $589/month when our $120/month solution was working
fine. I don't know what to tell him. I don't know what to do. Any
advice?

Andy

Untill the next day. DSL is losing sync again. Another tech comes
out and tries a 2wire router. We couldn't get it configured
properly. He puts yet another Netopia on and fixes the lines in two
locations around the way.

"Andy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
> Untill the next day. DSL is losing sync again. Another tech comes
> out and tries a 2wire router. We couldn't get it configured
> properly. He puts yet another Netopia on and fixes the lines in two
> locations around the way.

Get rid of the PPPoE!!!
Them calling it a "Business Class" DSL while still using PPPoE is both an
oxymoron and a joke.

PPPoE is a Dialup Emulation used for Home Users so that the ISP can have more
customers than IP#s,...since not everyone would be "on" at the same time. There
is no other excuse they can have for using PPPoE other than they don't want to
replace all their "Home User" DSL equipment that they are using on what they
call the "Business Class" line.

If they won't give you a non-PPPoE setup (which I even have at *home* myself)
then get a different provider.

If it is PPPoE,...then it isn't a "Business Class",...don't let them BS you.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft, or
anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

On Apr 4, 9:33 am, "Phillip Windell" <philwind...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Andy" <andy.lisow...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
>
> > Untill the next day. DSL is losing sync again. Another tech comes
> > out and tries a 2wire router. We couldn't get it configured
> > properly. He puts yet another Netopia on and fixes the lines in two
> > locations around the way.
>
> Get rid of the PPPoE!!!
> Them calling it a "Business Class" DSL while still using PPPoE is both an
> oxymoron and a joke.
>
> PPPoE is a Dialup Emulation used for Home Users so that the ISP can have more
> customers than IP#s,...since not everyone would be "on" at the same time. There
> is no other excuse they can have for using PPPoE other than they don't want to
> replace all their "Home User" DSL equipment that they are using on what they
> call the "Business Class" line.
>
> If they won't give you a non-PPPoE setup (which I even have at *home* myself)
> then get a different provider.
>
> If it is PPPoE,...then it isn't a "Business Class",...don't let them BS you.
>
> --
> Phillip Windellwww.wandtv.com
>
> The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft, or
> anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
> -----------------------------------------------------

Thanks for the input. My little session of craziness wore off because
things have been better around here, but I am interested in your
comment. The one thing that I know about the DSL in the area is
this....they have what they call "Sticky" IP Addresses and not
"Static" IP Addresses, thus the reason for the PPPoE. Sound
reasonable or are they leaving out some necessary information?

Andy

"Andy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...
> Thanks for the input. My little session of craziness wore off because
> things have been better around here, but I am interested in your
> comment. The one thing that I know about the DSL in the area is
> this....they have what they call "Sticky" IP Addresses and not
> "Static" IP Addresses, thus the reason for the PPPoE. Sound
> reasonable or are they leaving out some necessary information?

I almost mentioned that in the last post, then deleted it back out before
posting. The "Sticky IP" is another example of marketing inventing terms
needlessly for things that already exist by well known names because they think
it will help sell more products to people (home user market) who don't know any
better and think they are getting something new and different. Sorry, I guess I
have a very negative view of marketing :-),...it is the bain of the IT
industry,...at least for the people who care what words mean and how things
really work.

PPPoE is a form of "dialup" technology and the address is given out by just
"good old fashion" DHCP. It just dials an IP# instead of a phone number.
Similar to VPN but without the encapsulation and encrytion (the Tunneling
effect). It follows the exact same pattern of operation as the old Modem Dialup
methods.

The Stinky IP is just "techno-slang" that is nothing more than a Reservation in
DHCP. So it is still DHCP,...it is still Dynamically Assigned,...it is just
that you get dymanically assigned the same number every time. It probably will
not improve anything, although it is better than nothing.

The problem isn't the different -vs- same number every time that is the problem
(that isn't the PPPoE part of it). The PPPoE part of it is the "dialup" element
of it. It has a habit of timing out, "hanging up" the connection,...and then
not redialing and reconnecting on demand like it should.

The home user NAT Firewalls (Marketing incorrectly calls "routers") tend to
handle PPPoE fairly well since they were built with all the home user
technologies in mind and thier small firmware based OSs are just optimized for
this type of stuff. You could put one of those between the ISA and the DSL Line
if you don't mind the fact that you would have an additional subnet between the
LAN and the Internet,...actually this would create a Back-to-back DMZ.

These are of course my own views of this situation as my tagline says. No one
is obligated to listen to or to agree with me :-)

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft, or
anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------
Understanding the ISA 2004 Access Rule Processing
http://www.isaserver.org/articles/IS...cessRules.html

Troubleshooting Client Authentication on Access Rules in ISA Server 2004
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...7/ts_rules.doc

Microsoft Internet Security & Acceleration Server: Partners
http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/partners/default.asp

Microsoft ISA Server Partners: Partner Hardware Solutions
http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/e...epartners.mspx
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