Covad / covad.net → Re: Sync, No IP and No Surf Covad+IP in SMYRGAMA

Absolutely. That would be very helpful. I'm sure that whatever it would cost them to put the data online would be more than paid for by reduction in tech support call volume and an increase in customer good will.

I think I just got hard confirmation of my theory. Authentication dropped about 1:15AM and is still down. I talked to SunsetNet's tech support, who don't know anything about any maintenance, but say that's what it looks like from their end. We'll see if it comes up in the morning.

Well... I guess my maintenance window was less problematic. It just came back up. I was in the middle of a remote session, so I can finish that and get to sleep.

The maintenance window is from 1 am - 5am local time.

Yes, I understand the concept of the maintenance window .

Getting back to what Doctor Olds said earlier, it might be nice if there were announcements of exactly when and where the maintenance work that might cause downtime would be performed, and who might be affected, during a given maintenance window [hence my remark about a remote session].

It's interesting to note that my ISP didn't have this information either. If it's the responsibility of the partner ISP to post maintenance outage notices, how can they post information they weren't given in the first place? This is why Covad should do this and not the partner ISPs.

Covad delivers a first-rate product. I'm just suggesting a way to make it an even better product.

Keep in mind, there are many players involved.

ISP
Covad
ILEC's
Carriers
etc.

There are many times, and I will stress many, that an outage will happen during the maintenance window, that the ISP, or Covad is unaware of, because it is at the carriers level, and if they don't inform Covad, Covad can't inform the ISP.

In Doctor Olds case, he had sync, but no IP, so, without any more info then that, I know he had a good connection to the DSLAM (he had sync), but no IP, which means, 1 of 2 things, either there was a outage between the DSLAM (Transport circuit), and the ISP's Radius server, or the ISP's Radius server, and Covad's RADIUS server.

It could have been a server, or more then likely, a transport circuit down in between (DS3, fiber, etc).

And in some cases there is emergency maintenance that the carriers do, and don't have time to notify Covad and others.

So in short, if you are down from 1am - 5am local time, just assume it is maintenance, and if not back up by 5am, call in for support.

EDIT: One additional point that I would stress, it isn't Covad's job to support end users, except for covad.net users. So they have no reason to post a public maintenance page for other ISP's users. This is what the ISP's do, or don't do. I will state as a partnered ISP, we have access to see all current, and scheduled maintenance for the entire network. So unless Covad wasn't notified, all partnered ISP's can see what Covad is or isn't doing, as far as outages, and maintenance.

Covad is having an issue with their DS3 loop carrier (Verizon). The loop between the DocOlds' CO and the source of the DS3 signal is bad. There will be a hot-cut (loop change) tonight to resolve the issue.