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Road Runner Doesn't Do XP
PerlStalker writes: "Internet News has an article up that mentions, among other things, that Road Runner (owned primarily by AOL/TW) will not support XP. From the article: 'Road Runner, the second-largest cable Internet service provider (ISP) in the nation with more than 1.4 million subscribers, does not support the controversial new operating system (OS) for its customers and will not support its use on the cable network.'" Note that this doesn't stop customers from connecting to Road Runner from XP systems, but until their staff is trained specifically, Road Runner won't help them with technical problems arising from that combination.
So what's the big deal? Us Linux users have been there for quite some time, and we're still alive. :)
AOL, you couldn't have done it to a nicer monopoly!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Road Runner doesn't "Support" Linux either, but that hasn't stopped me.
Frankly, I am tired of hearing what operating systems are supported by Internet service providers. I am going to install DSL on a Linux box tomorrow night -- knowing that others have this working in the area, and was told by technical support with Southwestern Bell that this is impossible. Impossible! They did not say they wouldn't be able to support me -- they simply lied and said it would not work. How many folks with Macs or Windows XP are being told that they will not be able to use services? I am fairly sure if you pop in the CD you got from your ISP with Netscape 4.05 or IE 3.0 everything will work just fine on XP.
Click here or here.
I have no clue why this is news. It took months and months for my ISP (SWBell) to "support" Windows 2000, a long time after it was released. Their client software wouldn't work on Win2k, and even though the maker had released a new version of the software, their staff wasn't trained on it. So oddly, if you could find the newer software by tracking down the manufacturer (who gave it away free), it would work fine.
This is really no big deal. Lots of companies won't support XP yet. Even Symantec's pcAnywhere doesn't support XP yet. It's like this with every new operating system, and the way it will probably always be.
What's your damage, Heather?
I ran in to the same problem just recently. Not only does RR not support Win XP, but the reps have been told to effectivly 'hang up' on anyone using Linux.
/etc/hosts file contains all the possible combinations of host names they might assign me. Each one points back to 127.0.0.1 so that I can start Gnome and XFS.
They recently misconfigured their DHCP server here in KC, MO. It took me six hours of arguing to finally get to someone who understand what DHCP was and that it had nothing to do with which client was connecting. They temporarilly fixed the problem, but this last weekend, they went back to the old way forcing me to patch around the probelm without help from RR.
My
They told me it was my problem for choosing an alternative opperating system, not theirs.
...but my local roadrunner said that they'll do their best to help. They say that if you follow NT instruction, it works fine, and they already have a large userbase of XP users without any problems.
Linux, on the other hand, isn't supported, and most of their techies have no idea how to help out. Not that its tough (standard DHCP connetion), but the average user would be better off with XP than Linux right now (sorry if that sounds trollish, but I don't think this article is "news". Anything that can hurt MS in the least is being published now-a-days).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
When I used to work in the "real" world, this would happen all the time. Brand new OSes are almost never supported directly. They'll eventually support it.
By the way, there's an awesome driver called RASPPPOE which allows you to use PPPOE on Win2k/XP/etc. as if it were a regular network interface. No clutter, no dialing manager, nothing. I highly recommend it, and it probably works with rr on XP.
Non-Official support is mainly a way so that if they can't help you, it's not their fault. It dosen't mean they _wont_ help. (save for the time you get the ass-much tech support guy on the other side who keeps insisting that you need to reinstall your TCP/IP stack because thats what his computer tells him you need to do, but thats another rant)
-paul
... that Microsoft was an investor in Road Runner, but the "Company Profile" on Road Runner's Web site says they're "owned and operated by Time Warner Cable" with no mention of other investors. Did Microsoft cash out?
It amazes me that anyone would connect a home computer to the network without a firewall. RoadRunner works fine talking to a firewall and once behind that, you can put anything you want.
What's surprising is not that RoadRunner staff won't interface to XP, but that they won't do installations with a firewall in place. Every time they want to debug something, they ask me to disconnect my firewall and attach my machine directly to the net. Of course, I don't. Fortunately, in my experience, the main thing that goes wrong with RoadRunner is that it "gets confused" and usually just "unplugging your cable modem for twenty minutes" has fixed me every time. Sigh.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
sort of reminds me of a story of a guy that ran Linux and needed general TCP/IP info to connect to the internet. So he calls up his ISP to get the info and they refuse to give it to him because he uses Linux. Anyway, no serious ISP would go any (long) length of time not supporting XP.
This journalist spoke with two people at AOL/TW, and he got differing opinions. AOL/TW knows that they will need to support XP in order to keep (and expand) their customer base. I highly doubt that they've sat around for the last 6 months and said, "We're going to publicly say that we won't support XP... That'll stop Microsoft's evil scheme to stay #1 on the Internet!" They just haven't finalized the support docs for their staff yet. Big deal, XP has been out for less than a week. If you go out and upgrade over night, you should expect that some things won't be supported yet.
My opinion is that this journalist just wanted to try and stir up more competition between AOL and MS. This article doesn't say that Roadrunner won't work on XP, it just says that they can't help if an end user has a problem. I've spoken with ISP techs that can't help me out with Windows 2000! Try to get Linux support from 90% of ISPs out there! No chance. This article is not worth the read.
Supported == Known to Work
Not Supported != Does not Work
This is a boring sig
XP? When you say "XP", what are you referring to? Word XP? Excel XP? Office XP
I think he means the "Athlon XP". Road-Runner only supports Intel chips from now on.
:)
Might as well say Windows 2000, its networking is the same. Why put fuel on the fire and tell them your running an unsupported product.
I dont tell the phone monkeys im running linux, I say yup, running windows, whats the IPs/settings.
In fact, I have to lie about what browser im running, what OS im running etc... No monoploy, Uh-huh...
Hrm.. This is a good point. The initial theory I was going with was that if they didn't support it, no one planning to use their service would buy it. Thus making an effective dent, maybe. But, as I think about this more, it will probably go the other direction.
On top of that, RoadRunner has no straight forward reason to 'Battle' Microsoft. The fact that AOL/TW owns them, _SHOULDN'T_ matter. We all know how well that works out =P. But really, what would AOL/TW be battling.. MSN Services? That probably wouldn't do them any good. Especially when their current customers that upgrade to XP would require support, not get it and possibly leave.
To end my ranting here... Upon re-consideration of the idea, I agree with you.
Can all fish swim?
I'm a longtime roadrunner subscriber, and i can tell you from experience that RR is not very quick to support anything that isn't windows9x or MacOS 8+. They've been nothing but a pain in the ass every time i've contacted them for support, especially with Linux questions.
However, somewhat to roadrunner's advantage, XP seems to integrate pretty flawlessly with the service. I did an install a few days ago that went about as smoothly as anyone could possibly hope for. Definitely a feather in XP's cap, but maybe a stroke of good luck for the RR support people.
Here in NYC they are advertising a broadband service from Optimum Online. On the posters in the subway they are specifically mentioning that it is "AOL compatible".
Here's a mail message that came from Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com) on the LKML less than a week ago, which I thought was interesting:
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
It's very typical for companies to not support a new or different OS when it comes out. It's got nothing to do with ill feelings and everything to do with training. Most support desks will not put a lot of effort into training their reps on a new OS until it's proven there is a demand for the support. I used to work for a helpdesk that wouldn't support Win98 when it came out, even though it was very similar to 95. It was just a matter of liability and training.
If XP takes off and becomes commonplace, they'll end up supporting it. It just takes time. I've seen companies that swore they'd never support Linux turn around a couple years later and start supporting it. The rule is if supporting it makes a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction, they'll do it.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
this raises the notion that in the future, we could see some serious corporate warfare... If, perhaps AOL/TW were to decide to actually *block* XP users - some brutal choices would be made pretty quickly... and I doubt that RoadRunner has enough leverage to scare people away from XP. Instead, people would just find another ISP.
Now, OTOH, M$ has enough muscle and monopoly power to prevent XP users from using RoadRunner without detrimental effects to their userbase.
This would be the true test of the strength of their monopolies. Viciously attack another monopoly, and see who retreats.
- passion
Hm. I don't think it'd be much of a hindrance. I run 9x, have @home, but never once have I called Tech Support for something wrong on my end... is it really that hard to set up a cable modem? I'm kinda in the same boat, I use a router, and @home doesn't support it, but this isn't rocket science...
I used to work for a cable company, and I was a cable modem tech support rep. (We all have part-time jobs while in college.) We didn't support Windows 2000 when it first came out either. In fact, I don't think they still don't support Windows 2000.
Cable carriers are relatively new to the idea of computer support. It will be a while before they realize that they actually have to train their staff when new OSes come out. The carrier I worked for provided absolutely no technical training at all. What you walked in the door with, is what you got. So they obviously tried to hire only people who could already perform the job, and then gave them basic training on the customer database and trouble-ticket software. Oh, I almost forgot, they gave us a piece of paper that outlined the steps required to identify a modem that needed a truck roll. It was pretty basic. Unplug modem, wait 30 seconds, plug back in, wait 1 minute, check light patterns, etc.
The point is they haven't had to train staff on supporting new OSes yet. They've been lucky thus far, as Windows 2000 can be brushed off as a 'business OS that residential service providers shouldn't have to support', but XP is a different animal. It is a home user OS. They're going to have to train their personel. I'm just curious to see how long they try to get by with what they have before they cave and fund the training.
I called Rogers in Canada (Ontario) for help with a connection problem from a machine with Windows XP on it, and even though the problem had nothing to do with Windows XP, they refused to help me because I was using an unsupported operating system.
Funny thing is, I called back a few days later, and the guy helped me. I mentioned the earlier call and he told me that they weren't going to support XP, but then Future Shop (a big PC retail chain in Canada) started shipping PCs bundled with the Rogers service and Windows XP.. and they had to start supporting it.
He said they got a few sheets of paper with some screenshots and that was it - limited support, but still, better than being told to go away.
Funny thing is, XP's TCP/IP support is fairly well set up to help the tech support guys - if you go into the properties for the network connection there's a tab that's got a summary of all the connection's settings and a "Repair" button that resets the interface and renews the DHCP lease..
- Steve
There isn't some horrible conspiracy - it's just that they have to test XP and make sure support's ready to guide people through it (as was mentioned in the newspost, but I don't think immediately gathered).
It may have a lot of similarities to Windows 2000, but strictly speaking the GUI is pretty different. I work tech support, and we sometimes have problems even getting people to the Run command - imagine what it will be like when you have to check if someone's using the XP or classic Start menu (so certain icons are in one place but not the other), whether they're using the simplified control panel or not... you get the idea.
There's also the problem of the code base - it's not going to be the same as for a 2000 user (and certainly not a 9x user). At work we've had people come in and complain of a mysterious slowdown, and then mention "oh, this happened just after I installed XP." They don't know if your hardware drivers might be poor for 2000/XP, whether it's something in the TCP/IP stack, or even just the drain on the OS from all the eye candy.
From what I've heard they may well have full-on support in about 30 days (this may change), but I don't think anyone here should accuse them of malice in that regard (now, the quality of support in a particular tier is a different matter...)
I happen to work for Time Warner doing Road Runner tech support. Right now, we've only had preliminary training on XP, so the people who don't have experience with 2000 and/or XP wouldn't be of much help to you. Others (like me) will give you as much support as possible.
Another factor affecting our users is the USB driver situation. As of yet, Toshiba still hasn't finalized their XP drivers for their cable modems, so our users are having problems getting their USB connections setup (the Win2K drivers are for the most part compatible with XP, so it's not a huge issue). With 3COM, they don't even produce their cable modems anymore, so I'm not to optimistic about an XP driver being released. Basically, if a customer calls me wanting to get Road Runner installed and has XP, I tell them to get a network card (which is a good idea anyway).
I mean, technically we don't "support" networking. That doesn't mean you can't network your computers. All it means is that we don't do it for you and we can't help you troubleshoot them. However, if somebody calls in with a networking problem, I'm more than happy to help them to best of my ability (that's just me, other coworkers of mine will end the conversation with, "We don't support networks"). I'm the same way when it comes to older computers that don't meet the requirements to run the automated installation, Linux, etc. If I can help you, I will.
All in all, we support XP, it's just that you won't get the same level of support that you do with Windows 9x.
- chuckx | Charles K. Lee II -
- chuckx at cold-sun.com -
- http://www.cold-sun.com -
PcAnywhere is gonna disappear soon when everyone is running XP... same with Winzip, considering .zip is built into the windows shell now. :)
.zip has been built into the shell since Windows Me, and Winzip has continued to thrive since that PoS was released. Also, Winzip does many things the Me shell extension, and I would assume the XP shell extension don't. ie - Breaking apart to multiple files, extensive options with directories, encryptiong/password protection, creating self extracting .exes, etc etc etc.
Au contraire,
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
I've been on RR for a year-and-a-half now, and they've never supported any of my operating systems (Linux and Win2K). Of course, the only tech support I've asked for involved a dead line, and that has nothing to do with my OS.
RR support is designed for people slightly more savvy than your average AOL user; they expect questions about setting up DHCP, or changing the browser's homepage. Frankly, anyone running Win2K, XP, or Linux should be smart enough not to need hand-holding by RR's staff.
All about me
Since they say the wont help you with a problem if you are running XP, I have to ask...what happens if its THEIR problem.
/renew?"
When I moved into my house last year, I got road runner installed. When the install tech set it up, everything worked fine right off the bat, but he said (since I used the self install option) I would still need to call their tech support and register the serial # and Mac Address of the modem and/or my NIC (cant remember which).
That night I call up their tech support give them the info, they "put it into the computer", and say thank you very much. Everything is fine and dandy.
A day and a half later, suddendly my connection stops working. The modem has a block synch light (so its not the physical cabling), but I cant get any DHCP info (so I have no IP...not quite gonna work very well on the net). After playing around with my system I was sure it wasnt me, so I called them up. I got some tech support idiot who insists its my machine. I tell him everything has been fine and I double checked and I'm positive its their problem, but he doesnt believe me.
him: "Can you do an ipconfig
me: "I already did that, but sure...nope dont work"
him: "can you unplug the modem fo 60 seconds?"
me: "Already did that for 5 minutes, but Ill do it again....nope dont work?
After going through a bunch of this type of crap, changing settings, disabling internet connection sharing (which he ASSURED me was the reason I wasnt getting a connection, even though it had worked for more than a day), he finally wants me to uninstall and reinstall my TCPIP driver/NIC drivers.
him: "You are gonna need your windows CD for this. do you have it handy?"
me: "Well, I have it, but I just moved into my house 2 weeks ago and its buried somewhere in a box."
him: "Well can you go look for it?"
me: "Look, Im really pretty sure this problem is on your end"
him: "can you please look for it...Ill wait"
so off I go looking. 5 minutes later I have the CD, go through a bunch of crap with him. finally
me: "nope, dont work"
him: "well, now Im gonna need you to..."
at this point, Ive been talking to this idiot for 45 minutes, continually telling him the problem is on their end. Finally, I reach my limit and YELL at the guy that its their problem.
him: "please hold......(2 minutes later)....ok, Im gonna transfer you to another tech now and he will be able to help you:
When I get this new tech, I tell him the problem and why I think its on their end. So he pulls up my info
tech2: "I dont have any info on your NIC or modem"
me: "I called it in 2 days ago and they entered it"
tech2: "well its not there. Can I have it again please?"
me: "ok here it is....."
tech2: "hmmm, thats funny. your modem is still registered at the previous address."
I basicly spend an hour on the phone trying to convince them its their problem, and I was right. When their tech said he took/entered my info a few days back, he lied. After getting tech 2, I had service restored and was off the phone in 5 minutes. However, what if I had an unsupported OS. What would have happened? It was their fault, but they would have been unable to diagnose the problem and assumed it was my fault.
As a Road Runner user, I can verify the fact that they pretty much don't support anything. No home networks is a big one. The only thing about them is that they have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy about home networks. If you call for support they will make you hook the cable modem directly to one PC for trouble shooting.
Their service has been pretty good, but this is unsurprising, and somewhat suspect "news".
While it's not as slick as terminal services, the Windows community has had Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing for quite a while now and it's a very slick product and already had mostly replaced pcAnywhere. I don't like seeing Microsoft putting companies out of business, but at the same time pcAnywhere was quite the POS : It's kernel level drivers guaranteed you fairly frequent BSODs, and there were brutal flaws in its scripting language that amazingly remained through many revisions of the product. Overall it just seemed like a "the least product we can deliver and make money" kinda deal.
Every time I read a story that relates to technology and politics, one discussion thread always floats to the top: "We need to educate the public!"
My suggestion is that the Slashdot community organize and form their own local community access TV shows. A web site should be started that:
1. Gives tips on how to start your CATV show.
2. Tries to form a consistent show format.
3. Discusses show story ideas.
4. Offers on-air graphics for download.
The purpose of this show would be to educate the public about technology and the law. Teach the people how to install an open source OS! Have a call-in section of the show. Discuss the impact of the DMCA and the SSSCA. Discuss the impact of monopolies and intellectual property restrictions. Broadcast clear and direct means of contacting your local politicians. You get the idea...
If a show that looked consistent enough from city to city were to take hold, it could be a significant force in shaping public opinion.
"War makes me sad." - Me
Yes, this is not a new thing on ISP.
My ISP, Bellsouth , did the same when Windows2000 was born. So it was funny to see the rp-pppoe.tar.gz on the "drivers CD" and the note on their site about not supporting Windows 2000.
Actualy, it makes the most sense for a serious company: Do not support a new product unless you have people trained in that product.
It should't be so "unusual". Actualy, the article would have been more shocking like this:
"YouNameIt ISP supports Windows XP even before October, 1st."
"We do not need no stinkin trainin', said Joe Sixpack, CEO of YouNameIt ISP. "
"Any bozo with a hand able to point-and-click should do fine with any Windows version. And if anything happens, well, the Client Agreement made the user to surrender any right to protest against us. Heck, in the Alient Agreement even states that we take no responsability even if the user cannot never connect to internet!"
It would be somewhat surprising if AOL had trained their entire support staff to support XP within days of the launch.
What is more surprising is that so many slashdotters are jumping with glee because AOL is giving Microsoft the shaft, if AOL does not want to support Microsoft it is a dead certainty that it won't be supporting Linux. Say goodbye to the Internet and hello to pop-up ads.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I've done ISP support, so I can understand where they are comming from. For the ISP to support it they need at least one copy of the OS and for each person in their tech support center to spend time on it. It's hard to support at first, though most techs will at least try (at least the better ones will.)
I also see a lot of people saying how ISPs don't support *nix. There's good reason for that. There's a lot more involved in getting a *nix box set up to do dial-up than there is with other OS's. Time is money. The tech needs to get the call over as quickly as possible, and preferably in one call. That's incredibly difficult with *nix. You also have the problem of different kernel versions and modules that need to be in place, different software packages and versions, and a user (and tech) who actually can find all the files and know what needs to go in them. Mac and Win* are fairly simple, there is at least a similar interface between the various versions. That is nowhere near true with *nix. We handled *nix calls by saying "I can't help you, but here's the information you need. If you don't know where the info goes, check the HOWTO's."
Not only is configuration a problem with *nix, but so is troubleshooting. Having a user run around their system, checking files (in different places for different distro's and configuration setups) for things, having them go root for some things, that's beyond what most tech support people are able or willing to do. Do you want to lead someone on a chase through their system as root, changing various files, checking their kernel config, software config, and various other options, all over the phone?
Mac is easy, once you know how to do it. But, again, the techs need access to a Mac. In our call center we had one that we could use. Most of the tech's, though, couldn't answer Mac questions. When all they know and use is Windows, it's hard to teach them all the troubleshooting for another OS. There were a few of us who knew Mac's networking inside and out, and we were the ones who always took the calls.
Also, look at training costs involved. It's quick and easy to train someone to troubleshoot/config Windows. But teaching people *nix so that they can troubleshoot those problems is expensive and time consuming. Because of this, it becomes policy within a company not to support certain things. Mac, Win3.1 (yes, it is still in use), *nix, etc. are just too much for a company to try to handle. They stick with what is easy and is on a majority of the desktops. That's simply good business sense. Train other people to do more when you can, but you can never support everything and shouldn't try, either.
As I saw pointed out by someone else, it will be supported, but in a few months. We didn't support Win2k at first, but eventually we did. That involved me making a troubleshooting manual for it and distributing it. That kind of thing takes time, so it will happen, but it could be a few months.
"All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."
- Alexandar Woolcot
BTW: For those who care I used the cygnus split GNU utility to split it and that worked great, and on the other end it was a simply copy parta+partb+partc dest (with a binary flag). Cheers.
There is also no support from Qwest when you have the internal Intel PRO/DSL 2100 Modem. That is because there are no XP drivers. But the Windows 2000 drivers work just fine ...
Your mistake: you are thinking rationally.
Most users *don't* think rationally.
I worked in the ISP business.. i know...
In the world of cable modems there are generally 3 types of "techs"
...big companies trying to save $$ often hire out some of the Telephone support to call centers, these callcenters don't always send their personnell for training, but just give them scripts to follow "if problem=a try b..."
1. the Customer Service/Tech Support person
2. the Cable T.V./Internet installer tech
3. the Computer/Network tech
If you get one of the first 2 you are most likely to have trouble getting beyond a script or simple proceedures that they have learned. These techs do not understand how computer systems and networks work, they only know how to do certain tasks that solve most problems. #3 is the guy who will be able to solve almost any problem.... the drawback is in order to get to #3 you usually have to go through one or both of the first 2, and there is good reason for that, techs of type 3 are in short supply and VERY busy.
...this is why as a cable company grows the tech support, if not taken care of properly goes to shit. in the early days the computer tech takes care of or oversees everything to do with computers, but eventually parts of that job get doled out to the installers and CSRs.
This is the same kind of hassle I had to go through at the ISP where I was putting my time in on the Tech Support trenches when Win98 came out.
Poor driver support, poor working knowledge of the OS, and poor availability of the OS (The ISP wouldn't buy us copies. Those of use who had it had pirate versions), led to a pretty overall piss-poor level of customer support for Win98 users for several months.
Unlike RR, however, our ISP never said, 'We can't really offer support on this until our staff is fully trained'.
Good move on RR's part.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Their stated goal is to release a new OS every 18 months. That's the life expectancy of a laptop, but desktops tend to persist in a corporate environment for up to 5 years before they're phased out. It's a simple matter of fact that most companies are unwilling to throw out a $2000 PC until it's completely obsolete and falling apart to boot. Upgrading that PC's OS when the memory and hard disk requirements have doubled and tripled is untenable, and most people won't do it.
You make it sound like trying to make some money is an evil thing
Sucking your customer's blood with tyrranical license requirements and forced upgrades is an evil thing. It makes your customers go elsewhere, normally. Unless you have nowhere to go, which is what Microsoft is trying to achieve with their monopoly.
What profit-minded company doesn't release products based on its business model?
The business model is the problem. It assumes a level of financial outlay that no one is willing to support (remember, MS was the cheap OS alternative to mainframes, *nix, and Novell), and a level of continual disruption to the IT environment that no one is willing to undergo. My company is just next year going to get going on Windows 2000, and we're only now throwing out our incredibly large windows 95 install base. It's a huge messy and unpleasant undertaking. Microsoft has indicated that future releases will be licensed by subscription, and upgrades (every 18 months) will be mandatory. This is a business model calculated to violently piss off customers and drive them away in huge herds. Already Windows XP looks to be the most annoying, patronizing, let-me-do-that-for-you OS since the original Mac, and MS doesn't seem to be disposed to accomodating their customers anymore. They have competely lost their touch. You can't get phone support for their product without paying a pile of money, and even then their support is bar none the worst I have ever encountered.
The parent post was about adopting to others' needs. Microsoft has adopted to the attitude that they are driving and what the customer wants doesn't matter for shit. They will pay for that philosophy with massive lost sales and unpopularity.
By this time I'd already debugged the problem, both from inside and outside and knew exactly which of their routers was misconfigured
Eventually I bit my lip and borrowed a windows box - went thru voicemail hell, then had to be handheld through "are you sure you typed in you IP address correctly" "but I tell you your router needs it's tables fixed" proccess at least 3-4 times before we got to "I'll refer you to my 2nd tier support - they'll call you on monday" (they didn't - in the end I was down 6 days, up a day down 4 more days before they fixed the problem - I did the telephone hell thing 7 times before stuff came back)
Anyway one thing I realised - the people you call at the phone company when your line goes down know NOTHING about networking
It's pretty sad when your only usefull options for net connection consist of "the phone company" and "the cable company" - remember when you used to have a local ISP - and you could talk to someone who actually knows what they are doing
This is very similar to @Home's policy.
When Win2000 first came out and I had a problem (which wasn't on my end anyway) they said, "Windows 2000? We don't support that."
Until they have their staff trained, their official position is "We don't support it." You can use it of course, but they won't help you troubleshoot your connection with it.
Needless to say, they don't support Linux.
SO what's the big deal?
"Our staff is not trained on XP yet, so we can't offer support yet".
Fair enough
*sigh*. I love it when people write conspiracy theories when it's really just a standard Dynamic DNS client that is poking around on the network.
Once again, this is a cool idea that Microsoft has implemented if your corporation uses nothing but Microsoft servers. (Note: this is the same dynamic DNS that is used by many websites to give you your own domain name, so you don't have to have a Microsoft server to support it. However, most regular DNS servers do not have this option enabled.) The dynamic DNS option is enabled by default, however, in Windows 2000, and it causes a waste of network services (to the point of becoming a DOS attack on a company's DNS servers) when those DNS servers do not support it. Here is more information (that I wrote when researching it for my company):
Windows 2000 supports something called Dynamic DNS (DDNS), which lets clients automatically update their own A records. This means that a DNS server supporting Dynamic DNS would be almost completely self-maintained, as whenever the computer connects or disconnects from the network, it adds/removes its own records. It basically completely eliminates the need for static IPs (except for things like web servers and such that touch the outside world.)
Unfortunately, Microsoft, in its blind Microsoft-only world, made Dynamic DNS registration turned on by default on all Windows 2000 clients, even in companies without a dynamic DNS server. This creates a lot of unnecessary traffic on the network as every time the computer connects or disconnects, it sends a little message to the DNS server. I've even been told (without proof) that it sends a request to every DNS server on its list, possibly upgrading the request all the way to the root server if it doesn't get its way with the first server on its list.
This had a lot of UNIX admins frightened about job security (my take: if you're sitting there all day updating DNS records, you better find some new job skills anyway) and it has evolved into a fascinating topic of research for me. Some pretty good takes on it can be found here:
(Yale: Making UNIX DNS servers and Windows 2000 play nice)
(eWeek article from 1999 discussing Windows 2000 DDNS and the impact it has on UNIX DNS servers)
This is really interesting because it's one small facet of the many ways Microsoft is subtly pushing UNIX around. ("Hey! We have this cool thing implemented in Windows now! Fire your UNIX sysadmins and throw away your UNIX servers, because our servers are so much easier to maintain!")
Of course, survival probability and bang/buck was on Cable's side, so I picked up the self install kit from a Time Warner office down the street (I remember the sales girl wistfully mentioning to me that she didn't have cable herself; that she didn't even own a TV; that she reads mostly. I still haven't figured out what kind of signal she was sending me...but I smelled geek! And not a bad looking one either.)
I was multibooting Win98/Linux at the time, but pretended that I was running Linux only in order to impress her and get some raw network info so I didn't have to install Time Warner's lame win32 client software in the case of network weirdness.
Well, she wasn't impressed by linux (she's from the book-geek-only tribe I guess) and couldn't give me any additional info, so I went home (to my other woman :), killed my static DSL IP, and let DHCP do the rest without having to install any craptacular, bloated, windows-only, hand-holding gatekeeper-ware.
What does this lame short story have to do XP? Not much, other than the fact that an ISP "supporting and OS" should be as easy as DHCP (1, 2, 3. Get it?); which it was for me, and which it should be for most others.
I guess the only remaining issues are things like mail and news servers that don't usually auto-configure themselves... and client hijack-ware that isn't ready to rewire WinXP configs.
IMO, ISP's shouldn't have to _actively_ support any OS. ISP's should only be there to bitch at when your connection dies for ~5 minutes every ~30...like mine is now!!
Power to the Peaceful
in order to make sure that your connection is working they must be able to ping your computer. They make you take it down so that they can make sure that there is a connection to your modem and then to your computer (there are two seperate IPs, a local for the modem and a general one for the computer).
It's just part of the system. If you don't take it down that's fine for the most part but it isn't going to make a big difference if you do for just a moment while they run the test.
Only the fact that this relates to XP keeps it from being completely irrelevant (and it's still not relevant). Also Road Runner is being very irresponsible in publishing their opinion about an OS they've admitted to barely touching.
Still think this is news? OK.. Then does Road Runner support BeOS, *BSD, etc? I very much doubt it. But can customers still use those OS'es in using their service? I very much think so. All it takes is a DHCP client and the network card they give you (to which you're typically tied to the MAC address and usually can not swap out; at least in my case that's true). But did Road Runner come forward with a bold announcement about not supporting those? Nope.
As usual, the early adopters will respond with a quiet sigh of tolerance and do whatever the hell they feel like doing anyway.
Good grief...
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I had a guy tell me that on my Linux box!!!! No crap. I called up, and told the guy I was running Linux, and just needed him to put my MAC addy in the system.
Why, dear god, can't someone stop these minimum wage screen readers from trying to re-invent the wheel??
Me: Hi, I just got a new machine and I need you to put my MAC address in the system so I can connect to the network.
Weasel: What seems to be the problem??
Me: I can't get an IP because the new Mac address isn't in your system.
Weasel: Are you running Windows??
Me: Die Infidel!!!
Generally by the time I'm at the "Tier 3 tech", I've already scanned their network (Class B) Twice! And he goes... "Oh, you need your Mac addy entered into the system?? No problem..."
I don't believe that ISP's need to support home computers. It should be like the phone, we get it to the house, after that it's your baby.
Get a good firewall/router and spoof everything. And then run your own warez site. Rave on cats!
Hammy
http://nothing4sale.org - Corporations are just better organized thieves.
why don't they just ship a few thousand AK-47's and ammunition to Microsoft's headquarters.
This is just the sort of thing that Microsoft can use to say: "look, DOJ, look at AOL's anticompetitive practice - they're not supporting XP on purpose to hurt our revenues, and since they have Market Power (TM), they can leverage that against Microsoft, so Microsoft is *not* a Monopoly, and you must drop the case against us!"
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't all secretly in cahoots. This is just terrible news for consumers no matter how you look at it.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
try a command line ipconfig /all
:)
works wonders
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yo! How about Road Runner paying their employees more than $5.50/hr! Then they might be motivated enough to learn the XP OS themselves so that when Xmas hits and all those new XP boxes get sold, a customer can actually use Road Runner instead of possibly looking at alternatives (dsl?).
Sheesh, you're only as good as your customer support.
Now, there may be some hidden agenda behind not officially supporting XP, but why bother? Just let the calls trickle in, work it normally...let the call engineer learn as he goes - assuming you don't have monkies at the support center, you'll be ok, and you may pick up a couple of extra customers to boot!!
No wonder these people are bankrupt.
The only 'We support this ...' statements you need from ISPs are:
...
We support TCP/IP.
We support DHCP.
We support POP3/IMAP.
We support
Get it ? The rest is in the upper layers and is totally tranparent to what an ISP must provide. If you people have problems with XP and your ISP, it's M$ you should rely on not the ISP.
Road Runner is probably stating this to prevent flood of calls to their offices... ( Yes i believe that they will get tons of calls because of XP. )
Obviously you cant read, coz the article says they wont SUPPORT XP, not that it doesnt run....
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
If you call up the call centre with Windows XP you don't really know if your going to get support or not.
...to best of my ability...
There are different levels of ability in the call centre, you might even get someone who might just flat out and say "We don't support XP, good bye."
Perhaps because they are not technically inclined, or perhaps because they don;'t want to waist the time.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Why is this news on Slashdot? It's not unusual for a help desk, whether it's Internet based or any other, to support an OS soon after release.
/. ? it's definately not newsworthy. I've also noticed that most of those articles and duplicate articles are posted by timothy. Is this a trend? Hmmmmm
I would say it would be more unusual for a help desk to actually support an OS within even a couple of months of release.
A help desk I used to work for only started to officially support Win2000 6 months ago (which is what, 2 years after release?). They didn't start supporting NT until 98 or so.
Again, I ask, why is this story even on
What's the next news headline? CmdrTaco eats at KFC?
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Road Runner doesn't care for ACME-distributed products, either. And I'd wager that coyotes aren't all that popular as well.
Consider these facts:
- Everybody, including RR, knew that Windows XP was going to launch this week. It wasn't like this was a surprise to anyone.
- The Beta and RC versions of Windows XP have been available for months. Certainly they could have been testing it out and developing support scripts for it.
- There are going to be a lot of people moving to Windows XP. With new PC shipping with it pre-installed, and with the big XP marketing push, they are probably going to be flooded with questions about XP support. I imagine that they will scare a lot of non-tech users away from using their service with blanket statements like "we don't support XP". The non-tech uses are going to be driven to some other ISP.
- As others have pointed out, offering XP support is probably not that difficult. It's probably a matter of figuring out what icons to click and what buttons to push. Certainly some bright tech should be able to write up a support document in a couple hours (if that).
I can at least understand dragging their heels on Windows 2000 support to some extent. After all, the average home user isn't going to get a PC with it pre-installed. However, given that XP is supposed to be the consumer Windows operating system, not offering support for it seems like dumb from a PR standpoint.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
Look out for Microsofts response: Windows XP no longer support Road Runner, or any AOL/TW products.
Moral of the story - tech support is worthless so it really doesn't matter what they say they'll support.
So much of it really is these days. When I did tech support, I was quite disgusted at the slow shift from 'Let's take the time on each call necessary to make sure our customers are happy' to 'Let's get those call times down so that our customers don't have to wait on hold for more than 2 minutes!'
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
From the Yale document on DDNS:
Active Directory DNS entries are made in four special "zones" that go along with each active directory domain. These zones have the names _msdcs, _tcp, _udp and _sites. If you have fully dynamic name service, these zones are created for you. For example, if you have an Active Directory domain named "mydomain.com", there are zones created with the names "_msdcs.mydomain.com", "_tcp.mydomain.com", "_udp.mydomain.com", and "_sties.mydomain.com" as part of the Active Directory installation process to hold your domain's information.
You mean to tell me, that all this time, I could have been sending all those stupid Win2K machines that hammer my nameserver with SRV requests, over to Microsoft's DNS servers for some quality hammer time?
OH JOY!
Edith Keeler Must Die
But, ignoring the obvious there, why wouldn't it have any business on a consumer's PC? What makes XP special versus Windows 98 or ME?
...you must be new to the whole tech support thing...
:)
heh, that's funny...
Depending on what "tier" you work for, I might work on the floor above you.
Atleast you guys support Windows 2000. Netzero's official take on the matter is that the software works on the operating system, but we can only offer limited support.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Over 50% of AOL's support calls are for Microsoft problems. This costs AOL a fortune and saves Microsoft a fortune. Any sane company would do whatever they can to avoid paying for Microsoft's lousy tech support..
I'm a subcontractor for a company called TCS in central Ohio. We have a contract with Insight Communications, the local carrier for RoadRunner. This week alone, I've probably installed at least 10-15 XP systems. I've heard no word of this official "non-support" of XP. Shrug?
And Qwest (being sued) has known about xp for a long time too. 260,000 customers of theirs have the "intel series" of modems, which also do not work with WIN XP as of yet. Intel, being the lazy fucks that they are, haven't written the drivers for the 2200 / 3200 yet. I don't blame them, a 2100 goes on ebay for a whopping five bucks, but manufacturers that dont write drivers for old hardware really, really piss me off.
Ironically, the intel 3200 does not work (period, it's not unsupported, it simply doesn't work) with VIA chipsets, but thats a conspiracy theory for another day.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Now another reason for them not to support.
Had a blast with Qwest recently. They seemed to have problems with their local mail server (pop.phnx.qwest.net). Got on the phone with tech support.
"I'm getting funny messages from your mail server"
Oh, do you have another mail program you can try without funny messages.
"Sure. I have Eudora. And I'm still getting funny messages"
We don't support Eudora. Goodbye.
Stupid Internet.
The Internet is generally stupid
It's not even that, they just aren't ready to provide suer support to XP users. Nothing strange about that; I can't deliver XP support to my end users myself, yet.
Imagine the work these huge support teams have to do when a new OS comes out. If it was a trivial task to re-train, then I expect you'd get a lot fewer exchange like:
"what version of Windows are you running?"
"Linux"
"Eh?"
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
As I post this, I'm still ticked off about the "tech" that installed dsl yesterday at one of my client's locations. All this dude had to do was run a wire from the demarc to the telephone closet, plug in his router, and run the setup script via his laptop, and prove that we had a valid connection to the net.
He was so incompetent that he knicked the wires when he terminated his line, and had to cut then ends off several times before he got a reliable connection. He didn't know how to open a dos prompt, nor how to stop a ping -t. He would close out the dosbox, then hit start --> run then type his ping command again in the field, and hit ok. He also didn't know how to close his router interface program --- he would kick (there's a great tech-support term, meaning "hard reboot") his laptop, because he couldn't kill his app, nor shut down his win2k laptop.
He was on the phone to the real tech sitting in the CO for about an hour total, asking for them to check the line repeatedly, when all the problems he was having were of his own making. When he finally got one of our boxes on the net, he was ready to leave, and I had to stop him and make him give me the IPs, gateway, etc. info.
I even tried to talk to him a bit, to *gently* give him a little advice, and he got in my face and said to let him "do his job". Luser.
Ok, so I wait until he leaves (he was there for 3 hours), and called the tech support number I made him give me (he still had not told me how to make my server appear on the net --- all we could do is browse from the workstations), and also the number I copied off the side of his van, and both calls netted me promises of return calls by techs, which of course never happened. I don't have a support web site or email address, either. What a ripoff.
The dsl account was "free", a loss leader for some long distance company. 160k sdsl --- almost worthless, actually. And I had big plans of getting my client off domain hosting... *sigh*.
Scary, indeed.
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