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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>Thanks for the reply Skeeve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>I agree it’s not reasonable
to expect the NOClings to be able to troubleshoot BGP issues, but they need to
be able to recognise these issues and know where/how to escalate them to
someone who can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>18 hours since we first reported
the problem and I still haven’t been able to get anyone from Primus to fix
this issue. Even AAPT would have sorted this by now. I’ve got
on to our account manager but this doesn’t seem to be helping.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>Does anyone have a clueful contact
at Primus who might be able to help tonight? It appears the problems are
configuration issues at their end so it is going to need someone who has enable
on their routers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>Cheers,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'>Alex<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span lang=EN-US style='font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";
color:windowtext'>From:</span></b><span lang=EN-US style='font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";
color:windowtext'> Skeeve Stevens [mailto:skeeve@skeeve.org] <br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, 2 November 2008 1:54 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Campbell, Alex; ausnog@ausnog.net<br>
<b>Subject:</b> RE: [AusNOG] Primus BGP support<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Their
response is certainly not reasonable…. But you will find it the case a
lot of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>I’ve
had BGP issues with several carriers on the weekends and late at night, and it
has always been a nightmare getting them to escalate to someone who has a clue
with BGP to look at the issues…. Most of the time the ‘NOC’
staff don’t even know what BGP is much less able to fix it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>It
is probably too much to expect the people answering the phones to be know BGP,
but they should understand the concepts of their network, and they should be
able to escalate the ticket to someone who actually knows what to do – or
who to call. I find that ‘hyping’ the outage in these cases
helps… tell them it is a critical outage involving some large number, or
important end customer or some such… works most of the time.
When that fails I ask for their escalation contacts and start calling account managers
mobiles and other people I can annoy who know how to else to annoy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Does
your contract talk about their SLA’s? I find that most SLA’s
are severely lacking and rarely detail their NOC’s response and actions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>If
the sales guy said that then there has been a breach of verbal contract –
but you’d have fun fighting that. Go up the line…. Not that
it helps sometimes… try talking to Soul… they’re TPG’s
bitch now and barely have any ability to get things done with their upstream
network. Last BGP issue I had with Soul took a huge effort by the Soul
people to get the TPG phone monkey to even wake up the on-call engineer –
and that took hours. Soul sales guys have been nice, but in the end,
it’s a signed deal and they don’t really care that much – but
Soul has been like that for a while…. I think they sold
theirs…… a long time ago ;-)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>With
Primus… I’d pressure them… raise it as an outage… if
you aren’t getting the right feed or something like that, then I would
consider it an outage, as these kinds of things can have cost implications as
well as cause degraded services. Demand they escalate – get as high
as you can and anyone who won’t help you, escalate again if possible and
remind them they are in breach of their support agreements… usually
works. Then talk to the sales people and get the situation fixed if you
can… otherwise, buy elsewhere and let everyone know how you were
treated. If Soul only knew how many hundreds of thousands (if not
millions) of dollars of revenue and flow on business they have lost because of
their extremely slack technical and sales support.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>…Skeeve<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>--<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Skeeve
Stevens, CEO<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>eintellego
Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><a
href="mailto:skeeve@eintellego.net">skeeve@eintellego.net</a> / <a
href="http://www.eintellego.net">www.eintellego.net</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Phone:
(+61) 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Cell
+61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>--<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>NOC,
NOC, who's there?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><b><span lang=EN-US
style='font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'>From:</span></b><span
lang=EN-US style='font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'>
ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces@lists.ausnog.net] <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Campbell, Alex<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, 1 November 2008 11:39 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> ausnog@ausnog.net<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [AusNOG] Primus BGP support<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>Hi all,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>We have recently started buying
transit from Primus in their Melbourne DC. We have come across a BGP
issue with their service and their NOC is telling us that they only do BGP
support 9am-5pm Monday-Friday. I guess they figure that BGP issues are
very friendly and usually only arise during business hours.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>This is especially frustrating
since I actually asked their business development manager during the sales
process “does Primus have a 24x7 NOC we can contact, staffed by engineers
capable of troubleshooting BGP issues etc” and he said yes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>Has anyone else had similar
experiences with Primus? Does this seem reasonable?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>Cheers,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:36.0pt'>Alex <o:p></o:p></p>
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