Re: ISPs as content-police or method-police

[Steve Sobol <sjsobol () NorthShoreTechnologies net>]

> I also found that it was -much- more possible to talk to someone with a clue
> if I posed as someone on the global Internet, trying to use services which
> were operationally impacting me (such as DNS and rDNS).  When trying to get
> something done at any NOC, -don't- say "I'm a customer of yours" at any point
> in time, else you get transferred to the tech support lines and nothing
> -ever- gets done.

With @Home, the fact that you were a customer might not have been an issue.
I'm not an @Home customer. Several months ago I had to deal with what turned
out to be a horribly misconfigured Win2K box, but seemed (from looking at the
logs on the DNS server that was getting pounded) to be a DoS attack of some
sort.

I called @Home's main corporate phone number in Redwood City. (A mistake, yes.
I should have checked Jared's NOC list.)

Three times I explained what was going on, and used the phrase "denial of
service". Each time I got routed to tech support.

The fourth time, I called, screamed bloody murder at the receptionist,
and insisted to be transferred to someone in Security, and made a couple
thinly-
veiled legal threats, and that worked.

Of course, @Home is also the company that junk-faxed me, violating
US federal law, and then when I called and asked to be transferred to their
legal department, got told they were going to find someone who could help me
and had someone from *Marketing* call me. So they may just be clueless.

Point being, @Home may or may not be typical of big ISPs/NSPs.

-- 
Steve Sobol, BOFH, President    888.480.4NET 866.DSL.EXPRESS 216.619.2NET
North Shore Technologies Corporation   http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net
JustTheNet/JustTheNet EXPRESS DSL (ISP Services) http://JustThe.net
mailto:sjsobol () NorthShoreTechnologies net   Proud resident of Cleveland, Ohio