Re: MCI WORLDCOM TO PAY $3.5 MILLION

["Daniel L. Golding" <dan () netrail net>]

Sean,

In my experience, most of these "ambulance chasers" find their victims
after a post has occured to a list such as this, which sales folks do
monitor. 

I think it's important to draw a distinction between:

1) NOCs that are too ill-trained to open a trouble ticked from a
non-customer. (and there are many)

2) NOCs that stall on solving non-customer problems that they should own,
then turn around and give a lead to sales. (which I honestly have never
seen).

#2 is unforgivable. #1 isn't good, but somewhat forgivable. Why? Because
it's very difficult for a NOC to operate properly when getting calls from
folks who aren't customers or peers, because as a NOC or call center
scales, it's hard to decentralize the judgement necessary to determine if
a ticket should be opened by a specific non-customer/peer caller. The
number of calls from semi-clueless customers of downstream providers far
overwhelmes the number of calls from clueful victims of blackholes,
attacks, etc. It's hard to train call center folks for this, so many
providers take the easy way out, and make blanket rules about
non-customers. I don't endorse this approach, and my employer certainly
does not subscribe to it. But it's fairly common.

- Dan Golding

On 12 Nov 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:

> On Sun, 12 November 2000, "Mark Mentovai" wrote:
> > But these problems were corrected, no?  The point I'm trying to make is that
> > these operators don't make any additional profits by doing the wrong thing
> > and then fixing it (as they did, unless someone can point to instances in
> > which brokenness wasn't fixed after it was brought to their attention) than
> > by doing the right thing from the start (verifying announcements, etc.)  
> > The way I see it, aside from the extra time and "hassle" involved in doing
> > it right, doing it wrong and doing it right are the same in the bookkeeper's
> > eyes.
>
> After blackholing one of my customer routes for 72 hours, Sprint finally
> fixed it.  The customer believing it was my problem, and the Sprint sales
> person who mysteriously showed up on the customer's doorsteep following
> the incident selling how much more reliable buying directly from Sprint
> would be, decided it would be in their interest to buy from a bigger network
> such as Sprint.
>
> So, yes, they do make more money by disrupting the operations of small ISPs.
>
> Do they do it on purpose? I don't believe they are organized enough to do
> it on purpose.  Is it in their interest to fix it?  No.