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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.
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?
...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!
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...
Based on my experience with Road Runner, the best time to call for support is late at night (around 2 or 3am). I don't know if I've just been lucky, but there are no hold times and the techs seem to enjoy what they're doing.
As I stated in another response, I've gotten support for both Linux and OpenBSD by calling late at night. I had a guy walk me through setting up networking on the OpenBSD box... I had never tackled it before.
I called during the previous day to see if they could help. The guy kept asking me which version of Windows I was using.
"OpenBSD."
"No sir, like I said, I don't need to know what applications are installed, I just need to know what version of Windows is on your computer. Is it 98?"
"No, I'm running OpenBSD"
"Sir, click on the start button and tell me what it says to the left of the menu."
Geez.
load "linux",8,1
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
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 -
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
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
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!")