D'oh!

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Somedays, it's not just the customers who are clueless!

I just got this bulk email from my ISP's sales/support team.

Dear XXX XXXX,

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve security we have reset a
number of FTP and eXtend passwords that have been classed as insecure.
This could be because the password is too simple or because the password
has not been changed for an extended period. Attached to this email is a
file list showing all domain names which have had their password
changed. The new password is shown next to the domain name.

Anyone else see the slight problem with this?

I'm willing to bet that right about now, there's one of us tech's at my ISP either;
a] wondering why everyone is suddenly logging in all at once [their servers are being hammered!]
b] verbally beating the snot out of the whichever of the sales team sent this email out.

Needless to say, I just changed all my passwords.

Road warrior access

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

I am staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

They use GuestWifi for their wireless access in the hotel.

I connect, associate, and get an IP address... and nothing works.. WTF?

DHCP assigned IP which looks valid, but netmask is 255.255.255.255... so I can talk to.. myself. Yayyy..

ifconfig wlan0 netmask 255.255.255.0

Still can't get anywhere.. oh, right.. need a route for that...

route add -net 196.168.4.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 wlan0

I can now get to the DNS server, which was propagated correctly via DHCP.. But, with no gateway, I get no world. Now, normal "hotspot style" gives you the same response for any query, but this isn't happening here - I get the real IP's, just can't get there... Well, let's take a guess, shall we?

route add default gw 192.168.4.1

Hmm, no luck.. maybe go to that machine in web browser? Yep. Aha! Agree to terms of service.. I can now get to the world.

Conclusion:
(1) DHCP is broken.
(2) DNS is broken for hotspot use.
(3) The DNS/DHCP/Hotspot controller firewalls your traffic until you agree to the TOS...

The hotel will be getting a letter advising them to change their subcontractor because these guys suck, with an attachment which they can forward on to GuestWifi.

Now, supposedly this works on Windows, but I have no idea how. Does Windows ignore subnet masks of 255.255.255.255 when served up by DHCP servers? However, even if they do, how does the DNS get to the hotspot access page work?

(Oh, and I did call their techsupport to do it the "proper way", but they couldn't help me with !Windows... so then I just figured it out myself).

A rose by any other name?

[ofstarstuff.livejournal.com]

Call center operator, working on $ISP tech support.

I believe many (if not all) of you have experienced instances in which customers mangle the names of their equipment - and we struggle to find out what they mean. At $ISP, we have it especially hard: since we and our customers are Portuguese, pronouncing and understanding English-based words can be quite the ordeal.

I've heard all possible variations of 'Speedtouch', 'Sagem F@st', 'Thomson', 'Router', 'Broadband', 'Dial-Up' and 'Wireless'.

But I think the one that takes the cake took place today. I just managed to keep a straight face when a customer turned 'Ethernet' into 'Entertainment'.

Bwaahaa ma'am. I sure do not want to know why you think your router should entertain you.