Website for ISP issues

I

IntelOwnz

Gawd
Joined
Oct 29, 2006
Messages
710
Is there any time of centralized website that shows most US ISP's and any potential issues they're having.

ex. if my company sees a pattern of Comcast customers having issues with their dns, is there a place we can port to, or check to see if others are having that issue?
 
That's kind of a broad question. What do you mean by "potential issue"? Most ISP's are rather guarded about these sorts of issues to begin with because they don't want negative publicity. Also, for the larger networks they might not even bother posting about smaller local issues. That being said, there's a few sources of this type of information available:

Websites such as http://www.internetpulse.net/ that track general internet peering health.
Most major ISP's provide their customers access to portals that provide this type of information and/or they send out notices when there are major issues on their networks.

You mention your company uses Comcast which I've had to deal with...unfortunately I've never noticed that they provide this type of information anywhere. Most of the time I just thank my lucky stars that they're able to even fix problems in a timely fashion...I wouldn't dare dream that they'd keep me informed about it.
 
I was looking for something broad, something where, lets say we see our customers (who use ISP's all over the US) start to have issues resolving hostnames, would there be a site where we could see if other XXXX users are having that issue.

I know these companies are not too transparent, so I was looking for something user based mostly
 
Probably the only way to do this, is by having the ISPs support phone numbers on hand. I know Comcast will automatically report issues in the area based on the phone number you give it.
 
Just a note...you mentioned clients having "resolving" issues. I've not had problems with Comcasts DNS servers with my clients, although I usually run active directory at most clients so there's a local DNS server on their LAN. However...even on smaller client networks that I have without local servers to run DNS for them, I setup OpenDNS servers on the WAN interface (or DHCP properties..depends on make/model) of the router.

Aside from high reliability and redundancy, OpenDNS servers filter out "bad stuff" like known malware distribution sites, and can offer some content filtering for free as an option. So your clients benefit from more reliable DNS as well as an added layer of protection from malware.

Sidenote..on clients with active directory local, I still always use OpenDNS for forwarders.

Also, how to you setup their edge devices? Using the SMC gateways with your own routers behind them? What's the setup here?

I have a lot of clients across many different ISPs around New England..I gotta say I find Comcasts business packages to be the most reliable, and top notch support compared to other large ISPs.
 
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I agree with YeOlde especially on the OpenDNS recommendation, it's a free content/malware/phishing filter.
 
Couldn't you just create a list of client's DNS servers and ping/tracert/etc. whichever one you think may be having problems?
 
We use a single port router, basically a Analog Telephone Adapter

How it works is there is an update server in the device, say upgrade.google.com
Be default when they ship out there is no preferred DNS, it usually picks up whatever the router on the network is using and just uses the router to forward the requests

A lot of times we run into cases where upgrade.google.com isn't being resolved, so we use either OpenDNS, AT&T DNS, or Level 3 (4.2.2.1), depending on the tech working on the call.

But sometimes, and rarely, but sometimes we have devices that were just working yesterday, and all of a sudden stop, we remote to the client and look at the firmware, we delete all their user info, let it reboot and hit upgrade.google.com again, except it doesn't... so we input an alternative DNS server as mentioned earlier, and bang it upgrades...
And we see the patterns when multiple people call from Dallas, TX all with Verizon DSL having the same issue - maybe 4-5 customers in a few hours.

It would be nice to have a site that says "Verizon DSL DNS in TX is down" and we'd automatically know what the issue is.
 
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