Some People are unbelievable

[kalidor.livejournal.com]

I was at a client's site today trying to help them with one of their programs that pulls data down from an information services provider. Except, lately, it times out FREQUENTLY. So we call their "support" department. As for the program, a quick description, basically it sends their server a file with a bunch of queries, and then they sends the results back. It times out waiting for the results.



I tell them the issue, and the lady calls her "server" people. She says there is no problem with the server, and everything is working 100%. That we are having timeouts downloading the text files because our internet is slow. So, while she's on the phone, I do a DSL Reports speed scan, (3Mb up/down) and a ping their server ...


Pinging ftp.trackdata.com [198.6.19.20] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 198.6.19.20: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=114
Reply from 198.6.19.20: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=114
Reply from 198.6.19.20: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=114
Reply from 198.6.19.20: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=114

She says she has no idea what a ping is, what milliseconds are, or what a Megabit is, but that has nothing to do with speed, and that I need to do a trace route to ftp.trackdata.com. She then proceeded to slowly tell me how to do a traceroute ... cause as a network person, I've obviously never done that ....


Tracing route to ftp.trackdata.com [198.6.19.20]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.88.129
2 14 ms 17 ms 11 ms 10.39.96.1
3 12 ms 12 ms 10 ms srp6-1.clmboh1-rtr2.columbus.rr.com [65.24.192.235]
4 12 ms 11 ms 10 ms srp10-0.clmboh1-rtr4.columbus.rr.com [65.25.129.100]
5 11 ms 11 ms 12 ms srp5-0.rdcoh-rtr2.columbus.rr.com [65.25.129.102]
6 15 ms 24 ms 15 ms son0-1-1.mtgmoh1-rtr0.cinci.rr.com [65.25.128.225]
7 16 ms 19 ms 16 ms pop1-cin-P3-0.atdn.net [66.185.133.9]
8 18 ms 16 ms 15 ms bb2-cin-P0-0.atdn.net [66.185.133.2]
9 38 ms 32 ms 34 ms bb2-ash-P14-0.atdn.net [66.185.153.60]
10 33 ms 34 ms 33 ms pop2-ash-P1-0.atdn.net [66.185.139.211]
11 33 ms 49 ms 36 ms Level3.atdn.net [66.185.140.254]
12 34 ms 34 ms 35 ms so-1-1-0.bbr1.Washington1.Level3.net [64.159.3.61]
13 42 ms 39 ms 39 ms as-3-0.bbr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [64.159.3.253]
14 38 ms 39 ms 40 ms ge-9-0-53.hsa1.NewYork1.Level3.net [64.159.17.71]
15 41 ms 42 ms 42 ms p0-0.trackdata.bbnplanet.net [4.24.152.150]
16 49 ms 40 ms 45 ms rockwell.trackdata.com [198.6.19.20]


And then says that that is my problem, I am too many hops away. Apperantly if you are further then 6 hops away on the internet, you are not able to connect.

Ok .. so I ask if I can speak to someone in Technical support, but apperantly they don't have such a department, and I am stonewalled. Well .. then ... have a nice day.


gawd ... where do these people come from?

Comments

[linguafranca.livejournal.com]

(see icon)

[kalidor.livejournal.com]

indeed

[bottleopener.livejournal.com]

that icon owns fyi :)

Bottle

[terata.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah.. 16 hops? Hell, thats closer then my mail server... let alone almost anything on the net. :P

You wanna hear somthing bad? Try running a Citrix server that queries a DB server (Windows of some type) and then connects back to a client machine on the other side of the country. Slow? Youuuuu betcha! Specially' since that app pulls data from at least 2 government networks simultansously.

I hate my job some days...

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

Gee and here I was wondering if the queries were too large. You know from like 1900-2003. Some fat finger screw up like that.

Um, and yeah I have had server guys think that techs (not help desk mind you the pc techs) don't know how to get to a command prompt. I had the balls in the middle of the conference call with 3 vps and the director of IT to interupt and say, yes I have the command prompt already open, what router would you like me to ping? Over half had to go on mute becuase the guy said, uh command prompt, yeah you go there by going to start...

*Face palm*

They didn't know what a ping was. And this is why those jobs are going at $10 an hour in the sf bay area. Fer christs sakes!

[kalidor.livejournal.com]

Well lets just say the problems seem to go away everytime their servers go down for a few hours and come back. Occasionally they even admit to rebooting them

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

OMG, that so sounds like where I used to work.

"Um you mean we can't do a test back up in the middle of the day?? In the middle of production? Since when?"

Good lord, I feel ya

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

I'm still wondering why they can't do windows updates on our machines when we're NOT using them, instead of them rebooting in the middle of our first call of the day.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

That really frightens me. This is also why I am glad we don't run ftp servers or any of that sort of junk.

I'm helpdesk and usually can diagnose network problems and read and diagnose email NDRs at this point. Granted, I was a tech for a while, too, before they bribed me back to the helpdesk....