[TriLUG] OT: Time Warner Biz Class Mayhem

[Chris Merrill]

I suggest finding out who your BC account rep is. Let them know if you
are not happy with your service.  We've rarely had any problems, but
when we do, a call to the account rep has always resolved the problem
quickly.

We have a UBEE 3611 in bridge mode with a static IP connected directly
to our firewall. We use our own wireless router.  I can't recall having
trouble with it.

We've had TWC/BC for nearly 10 years in our office and rarely have
had cause to complain.

Chris



On 2/25/2014 8:22 AM, Scott Chilcote wrote:
> Hello LUGers,
> 
> <tl;dr warning \>
> 
> Some of you may recall that I was searching for an alternative ISP last
> month, because my company requested that I obtain separately billed
> internet service and static IP for my home office.  TWCBC won that
> decision, and they completed the installation in late January.
> 
> Starting up with their service has not been as trouble free as I'd
> hoped, but I will focus on a problem that affects the Ubee
> modem-firewall-router that they installed.
> 
> In the three weeks or so it has been running, it has somehow changed its
> own settings on two occasions. 
> 
> As the TWC installer made clear when it was provided, I am not permitted
> access to this device.  I can look at its status page on the network,
> but they do not provide an account and password.  I need to call TWCBC
> to make any configuration changes.
> 
> As with previous ISPs, I performed a search on the Ubee's model number
> and found that it has two levels of accounts.  These are user and
> admin.  I also found that the basic user level account is easy to find
> online, and TWC does not generally seem to care if people access it.  I
> tried it and was able to log into the device and look through its
> settings.  It was working well, so I went along with TWCBC's restriction
> and left it alone.
> 
> Fast forward two weeks, and one Thursday evening we noticed that our
> wifi devices were no longer able to reach websites.  At first it seemed
> like a problem with Time Warner's nameservers.  But after some
> investigation I found that the Ubee's DHCP service was not providing
> nameserver addresses anymore.  I tried manually adding a nameserver IP
> into my laptop's config, and it fixed the problem.  But the next time it
> connected to wifi it was deleted again.
> 
> I tried looking at the Ubee device's configuration to see what had
> happened, and discovered that the user account was locked out.   So I
> called TWCBC's technical support.  It took several calls over a day and
> a half to get this addressed*.  What they wound up doing was resetting
> the device to its factory settings and restoring the original configuration.
> 
> I won't belabor the details, but this didn't restore everything.  For
> one, it disabled PPTP passthrough, which kept me from being able to use
> my company's VPN until well into the next afternoon.  It also didn't
> restore the user account access, which meant that I had no visibility
> into the device's settings.  I understand why they want to do this, but
> it makes helping a less than perfectly knowledgeable level 2 support rep
> figure out why it isn't working a lot more difficult.
> 
> I wound up "fixing" the whole problem by asking them to put the Ubee
> device in bridged mode, and turn off its radio.  Then I went to Intrex
> and bought the TP-Link box with the most antennas and biggest numbers,
> and set it down next to Ubee.  Within 20 minutes I had wifi and VPN
> working, and made plans to flash it with one one of the WRT firmwares in
> the near future.
> 
> But Ubee wasn't done yet.  Less than a day later our wifi failed again. 
> Android devices were complaining about unreliable connections.  I tried
> the Android wifi analyzer app, and found that a strong new wifi signal
> had appeared right on top of the one from our new TP-Link box.  Its SSID
> had the same model number as the TWC Ubee appliance.  I went down and
> had a look, and sure enough the Ubee's blue WLAN light was shining. 
> WTF?  It was definitely shut off the day before.
> 
> So it was back on the phone to TWCBC support to get it turned off
> again.  While I was talking to TWCBC's rep I asked about how their
> device got reconfigured.  Twice.  He didn't know.  Does Time Warner send
> out periodic updates?  "No."  I asked if it could be defective.  This
> seemed fairly possible since it was well used when installed.  It has
> dings and scratches, and smells a bit like burning silicon.  But he said
> "NO!" before I finished asking, making me wonder if this happens much. 
> According to him, the main possibility is user tampering.  My wife and
> our cats deny this.  Neither of our neighbors seem capable of cracking WPA2.
> 
> So why does their Ubee device have a mind of its own?  It passes its
> self tests.  I can run these online from my time warner account.  My
> only guesses are that either they do update it periodically and are
> lying about it, or that script kiddies have figured out how to access
> its WAN side config interface and are having their way. 
> 
> Does anyone have any insight to lend?
> 
> Thanks for any clues,
> 
>   Scott C.
> 
> ________________
> * Part of my curse with TWC is that we had residential service for five
> years with them, up until 2009.  I made the mistake of giving them our
> home phone number when I signed up for business class last month.  For
> unknown reasons their customer service voicemail system only recognizes
> our old residential service, so when I call them I get tossed back and
> forth between business class customer service and residential tech
> support.  I have complained about this every time I call, and every time
> they say "It's fixed now!"  And the next time I call, it's time for
> another round!
> 


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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
chris at webperformance.com                |  http://webperformance.com
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