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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Hmm... Maybe I am the only Utopia/MSTAR customer?! | |
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 | dsl_er
join:2006-12-02
El Segundo, CA
1 edit | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Nope, your not alone, I am also a MSTAR Utopia customer.
I haven't really had to deal their support, but concur with some of your points.
I was able to get close to the 50/50 bandwidth advertised, when it was first introduced but not recently. Although, since they did remove their bandwidth meter (would like to know why), I haven't been able to find too many speedtest that can handle more then 20mbps.
To my knowledge no MSTAR techs hang out here, the few times I've called its always been the same tech answering (Ryan). | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? It's amazing that even when I had Comcast I was able to find a local contact here who helped solve my issues. Yet I can't for Mstar and they ARE local!
The Xmission speedtest is still really good for testing your speed. However I want the Mstar internal one back too, that way I know if I can hit my 50/50 internally at least.
As for the IPTV issues, I almost want to drive to the head office and re-configure some of the settings and stations myself. They really need some help swapping there analog local network sources to the digital ones. They should be able to change the aspect ratio on the fly and save quite a bit of bandwidth in doing so! I think they should do that for all there HD channels! No more of this one SD and one HD channel when only part of the programming is in HD anyway. Plus I won't have to laugh and shake my head each time I see KBYU(11) as a small square in the middle of my TV.
I would also like to see if they have the same freezing issues I get at home so I know where it's happening and if it's the Utopia network or Mstar's servers or on the off chance there satellite feed. | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| The fact that UTOPIA customers have to use public internet outside UTOPIA to route between XMission and UTOPIA is one currently being addressed. For a complicated series of reasons, there hasn't been any provider peering on UTOPIA, and this is finally changing.
Can't help you with the other issues, I'm afraid.
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Thanks for the reply. Was getting real lonely. 
Of course Xmission is the one to respond and not Mstar.
Just so people know, if your looking at getting Utopia... Xmission without a doubt has the best customer support.
I was with Xmission clear back in the dialup days and still think they are the best local ISP in Utah!
Also, so we are clear. The only reason I did not go with Xmission at home was I wanted to see how IPTV was and Mstar is the only provider on the Utopia network providing Video. Once out of my contract (Which renewed when I changed to my 50/50 tier.) I may just dump the IPTV and switch to Xmission!
That is why I didn't even bother with anyone but Xmission when I chose them as our Work Utopia ISP!
Unlike Mstar, they have an IRC channel, forums here, support email adresses that respond, and have a working speedtest still!
Go Xmission!... however this post is still me looking for Mstar support! Is anyone out there?!? | |
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Skidus
join:2002-10-06
Salt Lake City, UT
| Now that West Valley is going along with the reissue of the bonds is there any time frame when it will go past Bangerter Hwy?
I have been waiting a while for Utopia to go past my house and for the longest time saw Utopia trucks out here working.
not anymore. | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| Skidus, part of the reorganization plan includes roll out based on interest. If you have a lot of neighbors that are also waiting, it might be a good idea to start coordinating your interests.
The means by which this will be calculated and reported are still in production. | |
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eng_mstar
join:2008-06-12
Orem, UT
| Hello somewhat pleased or not customer. I am the network engineer at MSTAR. I have read through the forum and agree with you on a lot of the issues.
Our customer service needs some serious help, the problem in there is nobody is technical enough to do basic troubleshooting.
The IPTV issues stem from iProvo, the only thing MSTAR actually owns is the CAT5 running to your STB. Utopia gets the feeds from iProvo and they own that entire part of the network. The STB's that are currently used in Utopia are CRAP, iProvo actually lets you upgrade to the new ADB HD-DVR which has fixed almost all of the problems. Utopia still hasn't yet made the decision to purchase those.
I am the only engineer there, we went from a team of 5 to 1 and its pretty stressful and hard, yet rewarding in a somewhat sadistical kind of way. Feel free to email me with any questions / concerns you may have. My main role at the moment is to keep the network running for our customers. I wish I had more time for forums, IRC, other things that I think we need as well. But I don't until things change and we hire some more engineers.
I took meter.mstarmetro.net away because customers weren't even supposed to know about it and it was broken to all hell and giving people wrong information. I hate speed tests with a passion although, Xmission's is decent.
Yes we do block port 25 inbound for SMTP for spamming of course, I have no problem unblocking it for customer's that specifically request it. The sales people have been informed of it and the correct ways of dealing with it but can't seem to be able to tell that to the customers. I apologize about that as well. | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Thank you so much for replying! I am glad to know at least one engineer exists that we can talk with!
Currently I have my mail going through my works Ironport server and have it coming back to me on a different port so I think that solution will continue to work for me.
I never use torrents and the only P2P stuff that goes on at my house is the occasional Blizzard downloader which I haven't seen any issues with lately.
Any other changes the iProvo buyout is going to bring? Have most of the changes so far for the better? | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? I'm not certain "eng_mstar" is still employed at Mstar, though I hope this information is wrong. Its always a shame to see a helpful soul get the axe:
»www.freeutopia.org/2008/07/05/ms···engineer
For whatever its worth, I don't believe the iProvo buyout was in anyway a good thing for Mstar. News reports suggest they are heavily in debt to these fiber networks, and a loss of the majority of their revenue due to the buyout has to hurt a lot. | |
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lostincyberspace
@mstarmetro.net
| I have been having problems using torrents to download Linux distributions. I used to have decent speed but now I put along at about 56 KB.
It started a couple months ago and I tried everything I knew(which is actually quite a bit) and stuff I heard from other people. Does any one else have any problems with this? | |
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| eng_mstar
join:2008-06-12
Orem, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? To anwser your question, I do have policies set inpart on the network to manage your bandwidth. Torrents for you and mostely everyone on MSTAR's network are set to 512Kb/s up and 512Kb/s down. When compared to most ISP's, for example Comcast, that's pretty good. Of course, you may have heard of iProvo getting bought out by Broadweave. Once that transition happens, which should be complete by the end of the month, I will take away all management policies on our traffic shaper. This will give Utopia and other MSTAR customers FULL access to anything with out any sort of limitation at all.
Now, I can check on your consumption if you want to send me your IP address. If you are not abusing our network, I will turn up your management on Torrents. Thank you. | |
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| | lostinbrave1
join:2008-06-17
Orem, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? If you have an official Mstar address email me at
Lee(at)logonomics(dot)net
and I will proved an IP then since I have no way of knowing if you really are who you say you are and other precautions because someone else might be a hacker. (you might have your email and I just can't find it, I haven't used this site much yet) | |
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| | | hottboiinnc
ME
join:2003-10-15
Cleveland, OH | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? what i found interesting what "you and mostly' other customers. Seems that they were/are doing the same thing Comcast was doing but nobody bitched about the. Hmmmmm interesting. | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Since my last post I have ditched my IPTV service as it was horrid and lacking many features and channels along with the video freezing issues that never went away. They also raised the rates on the video service making it cheaper to drop it and get Dish Network with even more channels and HD channels as well as tuners for two more rooms than I had before for about $25 less than I was paying with Mstar.
The real reason I am posting this is to see is anyone knows why Mstar appears to be completely down right now.
It looks like I lost my connection around 4am this morning.
Not only is my connection at home down but I can't even seem to connect to their website! »www.mstar.net/
Anyone know anything about the current network status?
I am less than one block away here at work and am on Utopia but with Xmission as my ISP so I know the Utopia network is still up and running. | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? For whatever its worth, you aren't alone. We've been taking calls from Mstar subscribers all morning who are hoping we know what's going on. We don't  | |
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| | dsl_er
join:2006-12-02
El Segundo, CA
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? I'm also suffering from today's mstar outage. All morning, their support number had a recording saying that the Utopia network was suffering an outage, it has since been changed to indicate a problem with their upstream partners.
Either way, I've been unable to get hold of a live person (no surprise, considering previous posts regarding staffing).
Very frustrating to say the least.
Hypothetically, if one wanted to switch to another ISP serving the Utopia network, what would it take? Would the current ISP need to release the customer prior to anything happening? Turnaround time etc..?
Thanks
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? said by dsl_er  :Hypothetically, if one wanted to switch to another ISP serving the Utopia network, what would it take? Would the current ISP need to release the customer prior to anything happening? Turnaround time etc..? Call the new ISP and order service. It can be hotswapped that day. We took a few dozen new subscribers during that outage yesterday.
Some UTOPIA service may be under contract, though, so of course you might need to consider any penalties from your existing provider. But the physical migration is a simple software toggle. | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT | This is horrid! It's still down!
Better be fixed before I go home from work! | |
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| dsl_er
join:2006-12-02
El Segundo, CA | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? they are making progress...
I'm getting a WAN IP from DHCP now, still can't get out to the internet. | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Just noticed the website is back up as well. Not that that helps in any way. | |
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| | dsl_er
join:2006-12-02
El Segundo, CA | My Mstar Utopia service is back online. Roughly a 12 hour outage...
If anyone finds out the real root cause, please share | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT | Re: Utopia - Mstar support forum? Mine is back too and it's time for me to head home.
I would like to know what happened too. | |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| engineerastan -
A bridging loop was originating from Utopia, Voice and Data were looped at somebody's house which caused excessive broadcasta and mac flapping. This took down MSTAR's routers, the reason it took so long to fix was a bug in the CISCO code on the router's itself. »www.freeutopia.org/bbpress/topic/mstar-down
Grabbed this quote from the "Free UTOPIA!" forums in case anyone still wanted to know what happened. | |
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