FAO : Dr Teeth

Saw your query on thinkbroadband re Be. I'm replying here as the posts
on there aren't (IMHO) indicative of real experience and everyone who
complains on the Be forums seems to get banned (I did for wondering
why youtube routing had been stuffed for 14 weeks).

Support in Sofia are technically quite good. However that means
NOTHING as support management in London (Brett & Louise - I think?)
wouldn't know their arse from their elbow with a guide sellotaped to
their hand. In short it means that if there is a problem then time is
the most likely cure for it - if you see what I mean. Be appear to
have a policy of absolutely NOT escalating any problems to Openreach
now so if something goes wrong after provisioning then you are SoL.
The best you can say is that the number is an 0808 number.

I've been with Be for 6 months now. I've had more downtime in 6 months
than BT's IPStream service inflicted on me in 6 years.

Routing is bloody awful - an example for you :

Tracing route to newswww.bbc.net.uk [212.58.240.41]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 21 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.168.10.2
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 21 ms 19 ms 19 ms 195.50.112.237
6 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms ae-0-52.bbr2.London1.Level3.net
[4.68.116.34]
7 85 ms 85 ms 85 ms ae-0-0.bbr2.NewYork1.Level3.net
[64.159.1.42]
8 93 ms 105 ms 92 ms vlan79.csw2.NewYork1.Level3.net
[4.68.16.126]
9 88 ms 90 ms 89 ms ge-10-0-52.hsa1.NewYork1.Level3.net
[4.68.97.42]

10 88 ms 123 ms 88 ms BBC-TECHNOLO.hsa1.Level3.net
[209.246.126.6]
11 88 ms 88 ms 88 ms newswww1.thny.bbc.co.uk
[212.58.240.41]

Yes that's right I get routed to NEW YORK for the BBC news site. And a
whole host of others. As a result of that I have to hunt down proxies
to view UK content like "A Modern History Of Britain" (Andrew Marr's
recent series).

There is simply nobody in Be who understands routing issues like that
mainly due to the fact that Be have ZERO control over what O2 are
doing to the network and hence the only people who are left at Be of
"luvvies" (ie sod all use to anyone).

Avoid Be like the plague. The raw speed is there on some routes but O2
run the show now so you'd be best to wait until they show their hand I
reckon.

Me - well if IPstream here wasn't buggered sideways I'd be off back to
8Mbps (from 22Mbps). Yes REALLY. There is no hint of a clue residing
in Be these days.

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:09:19 +0100, Mr Adams <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Avoid Be like the plague. The raw speed is there on some routes but O2
>run the show now so you'd be best to wait until they show their hand I
>reckon.

As has been pointed out (elsewhere) I should state that this is in my
opinion. Nuff said really but (also) in my opinion phoning Be's
support line and expecting some sort of resolution is like expecting
chocolate not to melt when you put it in the sun :-D

When it works its fine(ish). When it doesn't then pray to a random
deity before phoning support as that will work better. Don't buy if
you are a FPS gamer - Level3 is involved.

Sometimes (forced usenet route) then you just sit back in awe and
watch more than a floppy/second (old hands measurement) going onto the
machine with no noticeable increase in latency. It is a LOT less than
it used to be and I think Be only have 40k customers as of this month?
(I'd have to check the invoice number)

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:09:19 +0100, Mr Adams <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:


>Routing is bloody awful - an example for you :
>
>Tracing route to newswww.bbc.net.uk [212.58.240.41]

Out of interest are you using Be's specified name servers or a third
party service, such as OpenDNS?

The reason I ask is that OpenDNS will resolve BBC sites to the BBC's
New York cluster (makes sense since OpenDNS is American). My ISP's
nameservers resolve newswww.bbc.net.uk to 212.58.226.8, which is UK
based.

--
Address munged but valid - remove mungbeans.

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:54:09 +0100, Muxton
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Out of interest are you using Be's specified name servers or a third
>party service, such as OpenDNS?
>
>The reason I ask is that OpenDNS will resolve BBC sites to the BBC's
>New York cluster (makes sense since OpenDNS is American). My ISP's
>nameservers resolve newswww.bbc.net.uk to 212.58.226.8, which is UK
>based.

I haven't changed name servers on the router from those listed in the
setup letter so I assume that it is still using Be's DNS (which is
bloody slow a LOT of the time). Bizarrely I can get part one of the
aforementioned TV series to play but all parts after that just say
that the content is only available in the UK.

I think its Level3 that's the problem but it matters not at all as Be
have no intention of fixing it - in fact they don't understand that
there IS a problem. I _think_ the last person I spoke to in Sofia got
the gist of the problem but how is one to tell as they can do very
very little anyway.

Thank god for open proxies.

I was just thinking how wonderful life was, when Mr Adams
<(E-Mail Removed)> opened his gob and said:

>aw your query on thinkbroadband re Be. I'm replying here as the posts
>on there aren't (IMHO) indicative of real experience and everyone who
>complains on the Be forums seems to get banned (I did for wondering
>why youtube routing had been stuffed for 14 weeks).

Thanks for your input. Helped me to make up my mind.

--
Cheers,

Guy

** Stress - the condition brought about by having to
** resist the temptation to beat the living daylights
** out of someone who richly deserves it.