NTP syncing

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 24 September 2004 01:56, Kenneth Porter wrote:
>--On Thursday, September 23, 2004 12:04 PM -0400 Gene Heskett
>
><gene.heskett at verizon.net> wrote:
>>> Nastygrams only make support folk nasty.  In this case the
>>> details of their network will be unknown to all but a handful. 
>>> It does not hurt to ask but it is not worth a nastygram.
>>
>> When it costs me a new router for $80+tax, its worth a
>> "nastygram"...
>
>What about some mystery packets forced you to buy a new router?
>
I have to assume that it was hacked, and the password and ip address 
was changed.  That effectively locked me out from admin'ing it.  As I 
could see traffic on the dsl modems leds when the firewall was shut 
down, that was grounds enough for me to pull its power plug, pack it 
back up and hand it back to Circuit City for a refund as it was only 
2 weeks old.  Who knows what kinds of back doors may have existed in 
the seimans code...  FWIW, I had changed the password from the 
factory default, for another about 20 chars long.

>Nastygrams are a good way of getting put in the "problem customer"
> queue, where enough grief will get you dropped. Big companies with
> little competition have little incentive to spend lots in tech
> support on any one customer. You have to make friends with the
> techs to get good results.

They also maintain a private newsgroup I log into from time to time.  
The usual poor service complaints are often ignored, but the really 
squeeky wheel seems to get a techs attention for a specific local 
problem.

It took the combined screaming from several hundred of us to finally 
get corporate to admit they were running an open mail relay, and then 
another 6 months of screaming because we were all on one or another 
of the rbl lists before they finally reconfigured them.  My 
impression was that it came very close to the fileing of a class 
action suit at the time.  Unforch, when they are the only non-dialup 
game in town, you do business with them anyway.

As to whether a request for an ntp server would be given any thought, 
these guys (and gals) are so well studied on the revelant tariff that 
it probably won't happen unless the friendly candy company mandates 
it.  Its what happens when you don't have any competition, and no 
incentive to do better...

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.