ISP outage cost me about 200 hours

**Richard Cranium** · April 6th, 2002, 12:15 AM

My ISP dropped out sometime yesterday, upon my return home this morning at 7:00 am I find all the blue pills flashing the yellow exclamation point.

Attempts to dial up failed.

Got up at 3:30 pm, still out of order.

So I called BellSouth my ISP

The guy quizzes me and upon my assertation of running 14 boxes he flips out.

He don't know how I'm running 14 machines on ONE dial-up connection.

I told him I daisy-chained the phone cord from one to the other and the phone I'm using NOW is on the LAST computer.

Also I informed him about the Auto-Dialer,, he asked about what happens if more than one attempts to dial, I told him about the re-dial feature and I'd set it to 15 minutes.

He's still in astonishment when I bluntly ask him about the local BellSouth T3 Line Office and were they having problems.

Stammering he admits that particular office IS out of service.

Dumazz, there is only ONE dial-up number for my town, he should have looked to see if the switching circuit was in service, instead I had to do his job for him and ask the right questions.

Finally it comes back about 5:00, I need to LEAVE home at 5:15 to get to work on time and get some food.

Rushing through them all, I shut down all the ud dialers and restart them one at a time, 3 machines needed a re-boot to get going again.

WHEW, that was tough.

edit;
I also told the guy the machines only stayed on-line for 2-3 minutes and also only dialed up once or so per day each.

**surreal** · April 6th, 2002, 12:31 AM

Near disaster averted by "our" Doc

**hirschY** · April 6th, 2002, 12:32 AM

dont you just hate it when tech support is worthless?
I know phone systems, lans, and Pc's inside and out, and I hate calling for any problems, cause they wont send me to the right people that know what I am talking about.
Just like my phones splice case hanging on the line, open with wire hanging out, and I called 5 times to explain to them that its causing my phone to act up when it rains

Glad you got it working...
My suggestion, network them all, and dial out on one, but if what you got works, dont break it

**AzKidd69** · April 6th, 2002, 12:36 AM

doc..
sorry to hear about your bad luck again...

I hate to say it but you seem to have some of the worst luck @ times.. power outages.. ISP going on the fritz etc etc....

**Richard Cranium** · April 6th, 2002, 12:42 AM

I've never had a ISP go down like this, power outages are a very common thing here.

We are hit by the Gulf Stream from the Pacific as well as the high winds/rains that come from the Gulf of Mexico.

I need to set up a "power source" to address the outage issues, also downloading the UD, err, thingy to hold this info until I decide to download it would help.

However, I'm waaay to busy to alter what's in service right now.

There are 6 more units waiting for Monitors/KVM Switches so I can run UD on them too.

Looks like the whole deal is "Basement-Bound" as the temps are starting to rise

**MDS** · April 6th, 2002, 12:43 AM

Well at least you can say you have 14 cows that needed milkin' I only have 3 and I have UD mon on all three with 7 slots filled just in case.

**NeoStarO1** · April 6th, 2002, 12:50 AM

14 machines daisy chained only dial up for 2 or 3 mintues and switches? I wasn't sure what you was talking about till I looked at what forum I was in and realized its the DC Forum.

So doc I am really curious, did you daisy chain them this way so your points can upload to where ever you upload your points or something?

I read this forum from time to time. I think the way you problem solved this is very intersting.

NeoStar

**Richard Cranium** · April 6th, 2002, 12:58 AM

This is what most of my herd consists of;

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...d=GXAPII233-1B

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...=GX1PII350-11B

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=L466CX-1B

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...d=GX1PII400-6B

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...d=IBM300PL-24B

plus assorted calico Cats made from junk, old E-Machine cases gutted out to take full size p/s's, old compaqs etc

Not to forget my $285 Dell 900mhz, $450 Dell 800, $500 Dell 1.5g

**Richard Cranium** · April 6th, 2002, 01:01 AM

Neo, I used regular ol phone cord and went from one machine to the next, that way when the UD Work Unit finishes it can auto-dial and report it and grab a new WU

This don't seem to affect the dial-up connection speed of the last few computers in the chain.

**NeoStarO1** · April 6th, 2002, 01:26 AM

Hi Doc,

Thanks for ansering my question, That is very intersting and creative to set it up like that. I have read about how some don't have a connection to it and they transfer the stuff via floppy or something er other like that, I like your idea better. Quite creative if I may say.

looks like you got a quite a nice collections of UD machines.

NeoStar

**Richard Cranium** · April 6th, 2002, 01:31 AM

Thanks, I prolly average $225 in each of the low end machines, less on many of them, if you noticed the linkage to Computer Geeks.

I don't build 1.0ghz machines to crunch UD, the cost is close to $400 including a legal copy of Winderz as I don't like the Feds busting in my doors at 3:00 am