A number of your fellow Funhouse denizens have banded together to present the Unofficial Ameritech DSL Status Page(s) wherein you can see at a glance if anyone else in your area is having connectivity problems or not. It's based on the Line Monitor service available here at Broadband Reports, and is located at This Page.
Sprintlink maintains the Sprintlink Looking Glass, which is a small collection of traceroute and ping tools. The neat thing about this one is that you can do a trace between any two points on their network, or from any of their POPs to you.
Another handy site is http://www.fifi.org/services/ and especially http://www.fifi.org/services/traceroute which will allow you to trace from them (in California) to you (or anywhere else for that matter). This information is useful in troubleshooting routing problems, or just finding out which AIMS Redback you are on.
sh ip bgp x.x.x.x tells you the AS-Paths that this router has learned the route. sh ip bgp flap x.x.x.x tells you the flap statistics on a network (Or just sh ip bgp flap for all networks) etc..etc..
Then, enter the area code and prefix for which you wish to get the local calling area. For example, if your number is (765) 482-xxxx, your area code is 765 and your prefix is 482.
Through the above site, you can find local calling areas for calls made from SBC landlines only. However, it will find all area code/prefix combos that are local calls, even those to non-SBC operated numbers, including pagers and cellular phones.
For those areas with calling zones ("bands"), the site will show only Band A (really local) area code/prefix combinations by default. You'll have to click "Show All Prefixes" to see Bands B and C. For a large city, such as Chicago, that's several thousand combos, so be prepared to wait a few seconds for the list to appear on your screen.
This info was copied from a forum post by armyrebel4 : 1-700-555-4141 Dial this number from the line you want to check and it will tell you your interstate Long Distance carrier. To check your local toll provider, dial 1, followed by either your area code, or the area code of the nearest large city, followed by 700-4141. 12-3-03
This is a little more complicated than finding your SBCIS redback, but generally far more important when it comes to tracing down traffic issues. The methods differ depending on the hardware/software that's negotiating your PPPoE session. Some modems or software won't give you the answer, but all of the recent, and some of the older devices will, if you know where to look, and what to look for. It will look like a bunch of digits, followed by a dash, followed by an abbreviated city name and some numbers and letters that follow. 62031090089539-milwwi7001w or 9A018120100122-chcgilhq14w are examples.
Siemens Speedstream 4100/5100b
1. Click on »192.168.0.1/techreadout.htm 2. Scroll to Line item 292, PPP Access Concentrator 3. The entry there contains your ASI Redback information.
Siemens Efficient Speedstream 5861 and 5930
Via a browser: Point your browser to »192.168.254.254/tools/diag.html (replace 192.168.254.254 with your gateway's LAN address if you've changed the default) and select PPPoE session from the diagnostics window. Click Execute. The result for Access Concentrator will contain your ASI Redback.
Any 2Wire Product Click on Clicking on »homeportal and then on the "pppoe0" link that you'll see about fifth from the bottom in the nested list. The line that starts with PPPoE current AC: will contain your ASI Redback.
More to come on Linux, BSD, Cayman 3220H, 3546 and 3346 products.
Contributions to this entry by lev , Mtneeer, DyerUser , ArgMeMatey , and trader22 .