[MERGED] Pipex - A Reliable Alternative? - Page 3

scrotnig · 27-06-2004, 15:06

I am of the opinion that pretty much all 'big' companies these days are short termists, looking at how much money tyhey can save by dropping standards and pretending they haven't.

been quiet for a week has it? Right, sack some staff. What if it gets busier again next week? That's next week, not interested.

That seems to be how it all works. The network/infrastructure/buildings are all fine now, so lets save some money and fire the people that maintain them. What happens if they need repairing in the future? Oh, that's the future, never mind about that, I want to make some money NOW!

All big companies are the same in the UK, which is why virtually everything we make or sell is a load of crap. The attitude is always 'do it as badly as you can get away with', not 'do it as well as you can'.

scrotnig · 27-06-2004, 15:06

PS if anyone thinks Pipex is bad, try Tiscali for a good hearty laugh.

**Paul** · 27-06-2004, 15:26

oh dear - how the mighty pipex have fallen .....

Just goes to show that ntl are not as bad as some make out, nor pipex as good as some would have us believe.

Russ · 27-06-2004, 15:31

For those who've suffered at the hands of ntl, YES they ARE as bad as people make out. There are some who've had no problem at all, there are others who've had a terrible time with them, it's all subjective. As for Pipex...time will tell.

ntl customer · 27-06-2004, 17:28

Luckily I've not been affected by the connection outages. My connection has stayed on since yesterday when I changed filters because it kept dropping nearly every week although it hasn't affected my connection terribly as these have been whilst I have been out or asleep.

Email has been down for most of the morning but came back up at around 1pm. I've always found their email to be much more reliable than ntl's - after all I'd accept the occasional outage of a few hours every few months or so, but nothing like ntl's.

What I'm a little concerned about though is that the failure of one piece of equipment can cause so much havoc and nearly everything to go awry. No email, no company website, no connectivity for customers.

Don't they have any spare gear that will kick in if the gear currently in use fails?

Ignition · 28-06-2004, 08:41

Moved to where?

Can't seem to find it

probably just Monday morning effect.

Anyway to save anyone else duplicating, I've arranged an engineer to visit MetaWraith and hopefully sort his cable out, so that none of the most helpful bods here do it again

Russ · 28-06-2004, 08:47

Taken from Pipex's server status page regarding yesterday's problems...

Quote:

During the morning and early afternoon of Sunday 27 June 2004 many PIPEX customers were either unable to connect to the network, or if connected, unable to access some PIPEX servers, including email and Web.

Network connection and server connections would not have been possible, though many customers who were already connected to the network were unaffected.

A full engineering team was deployed to site and service was restored just after 2pm.

This issue was caused by the failure of a key network router, but in such a way that backup capacity was not brought online as a result of the failure. This issue has not occurred before during the 2 1/2 years that the router has been in service and so the affected hardware was changed out as a precaution, and a full investigation will be carried out by the supplier to try to determine what went wrong.

Please note that due to the nature of the outage some connections may have been "default accepted" within the BT network and so may require your PC/router to be disconnected and reconnected (or in some cases, powered off and on again) before normal access is restored.

We sincerely apologise for this interruption to service and any inconvenience it may have caused.

skyblueheroes · 28-06-2004, 09:24

Never had a major problem with Pipex. People talk about their customer service, but as I have had no probs, I have not even had to contact them.

zoombini · 28-06-2004, 09:54

Hardware problems are inevetable, they happen just when you dont want them to & they happen to all ISP's.

It happens... It certainly did with NTL.

skyblueheroes · 28-06-2004, 09:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by zoombini

Hardware problems are inevetable, they happen just when you dont want them to & they happen to all ISP's.

It happens... It certainly did with NTL.

Did ?

More like...........does, will, part of deal !!!

Ignition · 28-06-2004, 10:05

Yup, happens a fair bit, as you'd expect considering the massive size of the network.
Most of these issues aren't noticed by customers, or are confined to a relatively small set of them though, which is nice

Russ · 28-06-2004, 10:18

Not so nice for those affected.....

MetaWraith · 28-06-2004, 10:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

Anyway to save anyone else duplicating, I've arranged an engineer to visit MetaWraith and hopefully sort his cable out, so that none of the most helpful bods here do it again

Thanks for that JAN,
I wonder if my flap count is a record ?
As I said in PM, somebody left a message on my answerphone early sunday evening to say hat somebody would call monday to arrange a date/time for the engineer visit. Haven't heard yet tho.

Ignition · 28-06-2004, 10:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Russ D

Not so nice for those affected.....

Find me anyone with a carrier class sized network that doesn't have issues. Considering the size of network the availability of the main network components is excellent IMHO.
Local issues do happen, but again considering the thousands of miles of cable, amps, nodes and taps that can't be given redundant capacity most of the time it works very well....
If it can be redundant it is though - after uBR there's multiple levels of it. Not too shabby.