I'm not going to name them, as they have been honest the whole time with the problem. The only BS part is the time it'll take to fix the issue.
Being a core router that's the problem I can sort of understand the time needed to fix, but 4 mths for a fix is a little too long in my book.
Well, my current ISP STILL has not fixed the problem, and the core router upgrade has been pushed back AGAIN. (It was scheduled for April, and now scheduled for 3rd Jul - like they are going to do a core router upgrade that will take 50% of their customers offline for an hour or so, 3 days into the new financial year). While I have nothing but respect for the customer service people who work there, the people that look after the infrastructure seem to be lacking any form of competency. (The reason for the most recent push back is an issue with QoS rules that they can't figure out and are waiting on Cisco to call them back).
The 2 reasons why I stuck with them for so long was I have a personal friend who works for them (and can get insider information on what was really going on), and being so close to the end of semester at Uni, didn't want to change over leading up to or during exam period as I wanted to ensure I had Internet access from home. But enough is enough.
The issue (which I don't think I completely explained) was that any of their customers that are Telstra DSLAM infrastructure and not their own DSLAMs, would suffer periods of high ping times during the day, which would often result in packet loss and connection timeouts for all Internet traffic. While the period would only last 2-3 minutes, it could happen 10-50 times a day, and was worse for any traffic that was peered through PIPE. They identified the problem back in late Feb, and since they a router upgrade due in early Apr, the router upgrade would resolve the issue. (The old hardware was being pushed to it's limits - the only solution was to upgrade the router).
Another issue I was having, (and still having) is that their SPAM filter was filtering out legitimate emails, and you can't disable the SPAM filtering on the email accounts. They won't even acknowledge there is a fault, despite multiple instances of actual proof (including MTA logs showing delivery to their email servers).
The ISP - On The Net. (
http://www.onthenet.com.au).
I've just cancelled my service with them, and (this is still a shock for me) will be moving to Bigpond. (Telstra operate all the infrastructure in my area, and for ADSL2 they beat all other providers on pricing - they offer ADSL2 service cheaper than others are offering ADSL 1.5Mb in the same area for the same download limits). And Telstra just gave me a free modem/router, and $110 credit for switching to them. Pretty nice welcome package.
(No fixed term contract was part of the deal - I can leave at any time). :rambo:
