Re:Old TV caused village broadband outages for 18 months
by donalhunt on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @07:18AM
(#24553180)
I can guarantee that the customer reports came in as "my broadband isn't working again this morning...". And that's for the customers who called in.
Unless you had 50+% of the village calling up every morning for a week, it would not have been identified as a cluster event (and I suspect many ops orgs don't have the means to identify clusters anyway).
But why did it take 18 months to realize that? You've got an issue that occurs consistently and is preventing customers from getting the service they're paying for (and are presumably in contracts so they can't even cancel without a major fight).
> They're too busy(!) to look for 10 customers' problem
So we're in agreement that this is unacceptable and resolving this problem has been grossly mismanaged and someone should be held accountable?
> doesn't monitor SNR levels because they're transient and doesn't provide meaningful data
This seems weird to me. You've got a nationwide network designed to run on old, poor quality wiring (the article doesn't specify whether it's DSL or coax, but it would apply to both). Wiring issues should be expected and automated processes in place to monitor it and quickly detect issues like this one.
> Not everyone use the standard equipment provided by the ISP
Can't this be collected at the DSLAM or CMTS level? Or in case of DSL, even at the PPP level? (Andrews & Arnold - a small DSL ISP in the UK - measures packet loss at that level and while it's not true SNR, it would be enough for these purposes as localized packet loss would pretty much always mean bad SNR or failing equipment)