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darwincollin
join:2005-07-02
Carrollton, TX

darwincollin

Member

lots of chaos/drama changing from dsl to uverse

I am sure that you all had the sales talk about how uverse has double the bandwidth thanks to it being new technology and fiber.
Well, I had 2 dsl lines (ecommerce business) so it perked my ears.

Ok, so lets switch dsl line #2 to uverse. (dsl#1 major usage, dsl#2 misc usage).
I was told a person would call the schedule the install and answer my outstanding questions. (like about latency differences)

First, I never received a call to schedule the install. Instead, I received a robot call informing me that installer was on his way. I was able to change/delay the install date by a few days.

Up to the day of the install, I was expecting to see a truck running fiber to the commercial building. Nope... I saw only an at&t tech with a new uverse box in his hand. Friday morning install.

I asked about fiber, and he said that the fiber connection is about 3900 ft away. He disconnected the 2wire box dsl#2, plugged in the new toy, made some calls and he was done. Oops, somehow the static option was forgotton on the order.

Ok, so, place a quick call, and then 3 calls later, the static block is received/added to the box. Amusing is that I am adding the ip block to uverse box via phone instruction from at&t tech, while an at&t tech is just arriving onsite to do the same thing.

(I started to wonder about their work order system and communication)

Printed all the fun static packet filters/application settings from the old 2wire dsl box, so that I can apply it to the new uverse connection.
Oops, this new uverse box does not have packet filters/etc support for static addresses? My previous generation dsl box did. Why no perimeter security?
Hmm, well, lets research this more.

Monday night, dsl#1 line goes dead. (note, that the uverse install on the dsl#2 line was the previous friday)

Tuesday morning, call at&t to figure out what is going. I am told that a disconnect order was implemented on the dsl#1 line since uverse was installed. And, a call back from at&t confirmed that they can not stop the processing of the disconnect... she would have to wait till the next day, to see if she can reconnect that dsl since at&t is discontinung dsl in my area. She said no promises on being able to reconnect.
However, she said that she will call me the first thing the next day, since she understands that I am dead in the water due to the dsl being down, no working uverse solution yet, and my operations boss is furious since she has idle employees for an unknown amount of time. (btw, I never did hear from her again)

Ok, my servers/smtp/web on my old static ip are dead, my workstations are dead, they have no internet. Devices on the internet can not find me. Employees can not do their work. (remember, this is ecommerce)
So for the rest of tuesday, I was macgyver with patch cords and duck tape. I was also calling uverse tech so that we could get the uverse usable. He did identify and order a newer rg box that should fix issues. By end of day, I was able to get barely operational.

At&t scheduled the tech to arrive late afternoon/evening, so that he could implement the new model box that would fix the static/firewall and an outstand routing issues. Oops, this at&t tech did not even bring a box, since the box is not compatible with this uverse wiring. He did bring sympathy.

Hopefully, by this weekend, with the install of a 3rd party router, physical wire changes, and more configuration changes... I will have everything back to pre-uverse level of functionality.

I warn you... if uverse comes knocking at your door, please be extra carefull about the accuracy of the uverse order, and that the disconnection of the old services is on the right timeline.

mackey
Premium Member
join:2007-08-20

mackey

Premium Member

I'm sorry to hear about that. Can't say I'm surprised though; once companies get the size of AT&T/VZ it's pretty much expected that the right hand will have no clue what the left's doing.

Problems like this is why I NEVER, EVER call in. I always do everything online so I can triple check that everything is EXACTLY as I want it before hitting "Submit." When you deal with a rep you're hoping they understand what you want (nothing's lost in translation) and enter it correctly and don't pad anything to make their sales look better. When I switched us to Uverse at work I added it to one of the phone lines which didn't currently have DSL on it, and only canceled the DSL circuit later once I got everything set up the way I wanted it.

I for one LOVE the new gateway (NVG-510) as with static IP block it gets the fsck out of the way and hands the entire block off to my router completely unmolested. The old DSL router/gateway enforced a horrible "1 MAC = 1 IP" limit and thus I couldn't use a router with multiple IPs. IMO it's not a good idea anyway to use a cheap residential grade all-in-one router/gateway if you need any real firewalling or have a complex setup with servers and such.

/M

rolande
Certifiable
MVM,
join:2002-05-24
Dallas, TX
ARRIS BGW210-700
Cisco Meraki MR42

rolande to darwincollin

MVM,

to darwincollin
I think you learned the lesson that you never order a new install and disconnect at the same time. Always order the new service in addition to what you have. Migrate everything over, after you have confirmed everything meets your operational requirements. Then, after that is done, you submit the order to disconnect the original service. That is a fundamental best practice of circuit ordering for any business who relies on these services to conduct business, in addition to redundancy and diversity/high availability.

Msradell
Premium Member
join:2008-12-25
Louisville, KY

Msradell

Premium Member

said by rolande:

I think you learned the lesson that you never order a new install and disconnect at the same time. Always order the new service in addition to what you have. Migrate everything over, after you have confirmed everything meets your operational requirements. Then, after that is done, you submit the order to disconnect the original service. That is a fundamental best practice of circuit ordering for any business who relies on these services to conduct business, in addition to redundancy and diversity/high availability.

That Was Part of His Problem, he only planned on converting line #2 over to U-verse and planned on keeping line #1 as DSL. Even though it was not what he had ordered, AT&T just disconnected line #1!

rolande
Certifiable
MVM,
join:2002-05-24
Dallas, TX
ARRIS BGW210-700
Cisco Meraki MR42

rolande

MVM,

said by Msradell:

That Was Part of His Problem, he only planned on converting line #2 over to U-verse and planned on keeping line #1 as DSL. Even though it was not what he had ordered, AT&T just disconnected line #1!

Which is why you never NEVER put a service swap order which is equivalent to a disconnect plus a new service order in at the same time. Too much chance for error, especially on the consumer product side of the house.

brookeKrige
join:2012-11-05
San Jose, CA

brookeKrige

Member

Can a consumer request to keep DSL and merely add parallel uverse?

Sounds like only thing that would have saved him: if original 2 DSL lines were each on (apparently) unrelated accounts.
cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
Westell 6100
Cisco PIX 501

cramer to rolande

Premium Member

to rolande
He ordered an *upgrade* for dsl#2. Problem is, the completely moronic systems at AT&T deleted *BOTH* dsl lines in the process. The problem here is that they touched a legacy configuration the AT&T system does not allow (2 dsl lines to the same address.) By upgrading either line, both dsl lines will be deleted; once disconnected, they will not, ever, be reconnected.

Frequent readers of DSLR should already know the dangers here.
darwincollin
join:2005-07-02
Carrollton, TX

darwincollin to rolande

Member

to rolande
said by rolande:

said by Msradell:

That Was Part of His Problem, he only planned on converting line #2 over to U-verse and planned on keeping line #1 as DSL. Even though it was not what he had ordered, AT&T just disconnected line #1!

Which is why you never NEVER put a service swap order which is equivalent to a disconnect plus a new service order in at the same time. Too much chance for error, especially on the consumer product side of the house.

Since the Uverse was going to be on a new account, and the dsl disconnect was going to be on dsl#2 only, I thought I was safe. lol, foolish me. I did make the point to ask everyone multiple times, if there is something else that I am forgeting or need to watch out for.
One of the techs did mention the port 25 block and did put in an order to remove that. So, he saved saved me a phone call to at&t for that issue.
darwincollin

darwincollin to mackey

Member

to mackey
said by mackey:

I for one LOVE the new gateway (NVG-510) as with static IP block it gets the fsck out of the way and hands the entire block off to my router completely unmolested. The old DSL router/gateway enforced a horrible "1 MAC = 1 IP" limit and thus I couldn't use a router with multiple IPs. IMO it's not a good idea anyway to use a cheap residential grade all-in-one router/gateway if you need any real firewalling or have a complex setup with servers and such.

I think I heard of that 1 MAC = 1 IP limitation, but I didn't have anything that had multiple ips on a nic. so, dodged that bullet

I have ipaq and other odd/old ducks as required by distributors so I always relied on the DSL box as a perimeter defense. My old DSL box was able to handle both the dynamic and statics behind the umbrella/perimeter with minimal fuss.

Originally, I thought I could use the nvg510's cascaded router option to handle the statics but I found odd packet issues on the dynamic ips accessing resources on static ips. So I will now shop for a wireless router to handle every device.

I do wish that there was a real technical manual for the nvg510, but I guess it won't matter since I will soon have most services turned off.
darwincollin

darwincollin

Member

I had more fun with uverse technical support since I was having problems with 'cascaded router' option. First call, the tech said that he was not familar with cascaded router configuration, so gave me the phone# for support 360. Once I figured out that the ph# was for paid support, I went back to the original uverse technical support ph#. (I needed help with the nvg settings, and not my own servers and the new '3rd party' router)

Ok, so I get now a brand new tech, which I get to describe my environment and settings.

Wow... this last tech not only knew about the 'cascaded router' configurations, but also identified where I had made a mistake. (note: I changed the first 3 octs of the ip address for privacy reasons). He was also able to explain why techs visited without the boxes that phone tech's ordered for me.

On the 'Public Subnet' section, I had:
Public Subnet Enable: On
Public IPv4 Address: 12.29.25.190
Public Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.248
DHCPv4 Start Address: 12.29.25.185
DHCPv4 End Address: 12.29.25.189
Primary DHCP Pool: Private

So, when I turned off above, and set up the Cascaded Router:
Cascaded Router Enable: On
Cascaded Router Address: 198.17.17.37 (ip address of the cisco wan port)
Network Address: 12.29.25.190
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.255 (.248 would not work)

He found, and this is what I should have typed:
Cascaded Router Enable: On
Cascaded Router Address: 198.17.17.37
Network Address: 12.29.25.184 ( not gateway ip)
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.248 ( )

Oh snap. Everything was now working as planned.

That is all I really needed. Just the magic settings. In hindsight, I should have figured it out, but I was confused by the verbage.

Ok, to sum it up. I have a NVG box (with wifi, dhcp) enabled. On the 3rd party router (cisco), I have physically connected a network cable between the cisco wan port, and the nvg lan port). On cisco, I configure its wan's settings for the static ip 198.17.17.37, and then it's lan settings for my static ip block. The external (which are using the 12.29.25.x block) devices are connected (cable) to the cisco lan ports. (internal devices are connected to the nvg lan ports)

May not be perfect, but, it did get me a perimeter defence around the devices that are using the external static ip block.

Anyways... I am happy now. Bummer, that it took so many calls from uverse tech.