🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <LKorxmAWknR0EwQs@musonix.demon.co.uk>,
Paul Terry  <paul@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <199710161904.UAA08263@jes.noc.nl.demon.net> Jim Segrave
> wrote:
> 
> >And in the Netherlands, the summary given from experience with other
> >prividers using a variety of servers: 
> >
> >Q. What do I do with a Motorola 3400 modem?
> >A. Put it in front of your car and run over it.
> 
> Why? They work perfectly well on the Colt ROMP. Or do you mean you have
> now installed TNTs in the Netherlands?  :-(
> 
> Jim, I have no problem in accepting that Motorola 3400's may not meet
> the published specs that they claim to meet. If that is the case, there
> is only minor aggravation since they come with a two-year warranty (so
> the vast proportion are likely still to be under that warranty, as it is
> not that old a modem). But at the moment, the "evidence" of a couple of
> members of staff making sly digs at Motorola is not, IMO, going to carry
> much weight with Trading Standards Officers or Motorola themselves (they
> who took USR to court, IIRC).

Actually, I have no real opinion one way or another - this was a
comment from a Netherlands user based on experiences seen in this
country. I don't even know if it's a valid criticism. But you might
note it was in reply to a suggestion that only Demon or only Ascends
were problematical. I think this is not the case, based on other
newsgroups and mailing lists I read.

For what it's worth re Trading Standards etc., unless Motorola were to
make an ex-gratia offer of some form of compensation (assuming of
course there is a fault on their end), the technical difficulty of
proving non-standard compliance would make it unlikely that any
customer could get compensation. The mind boggles at the legal fees
involved simply in explaining the complaint you'd want your solicitor
to file. 
 
> OTOH, Peter Galbavy has been doing *absolutely stirling work*, not only
> reassuring Motorola users in demon.service, but carrying out one-to-one
> tests tonight on the other TNT problem ("packet loss"), for those of us
> who have two telephone lines. OK, my Motorola had to stay on line for a
> time tonight receiving no packets from Demon and running up the phone
> bill while Ascend investigated. Who cares? At least I see a member of
> Demon staff trying very hard to try to resolve one TNT problem, rather
> than just sneering at the modems customers have bought.
> 
> I wonder why it is that you find it so difficult to be pro-active in
> this way? Even if, at the end of the day, it is established that
> Motorola have got things wrong, I shall feel very much more confident
> facing them with hard stats rather than saying "x from Demon said I
> should run my car over the modem" or "y from Demon said there were not
> quite enough 'somethings' (but added he hadn't read the V.34 spec).

No, no-one at Demon suggested you run over it. I answered an
alleagtion that the Motorola problems were unique to Demon by offering
some anecdotal evidence that there might well be a more fundamental
problem here. I'm not knocking Peter's efforts, not the Ascend
engineers who are working on these problems. I can't be proactive
because 1) we haven't the lines to run tests with and 2) the Motorola
3400 seems not to have been popular here, so there isn't a base of
users to test with.

> (I really wasn't going to add to this thread after Clive's extraordinary
> rant, but I really do object to this campaign of sneer and inuendo from
> certain Demon staff who find it impossible to produce any factual
> evidence). To me it smacks only too much of trying to establish in
> customers' minds that they have bought the wrong modem ... so, if only
> they could be persuaded to realise their mistake, Demon might no longer
> have to harangue Ascend.

Rant? I see no rant here. Clive answered with an example of how
something which was not standard compliant but used to work with a
standard compliant system might not work with a different, also
standard compliant system. And he repeatedly added the caveat that it
was an example of how such a thing could happen, not an allegation
that this was the case in Motorola 3400 connection problems.

There is pretty convincing evidence that another major manufacturer
had a very serious problem with their error correcting code. Users
with very good lines wouldn't have seen it, users with noisy or
marginal lines would almost never escape it. That's not innuendo, it's
a sad fact. When the Maxes first went into service, another
manufacturer had to upgrade their customer's modems because the
firmware didn't work correctly. Some releases of TCP/IP software have
suffered from problems like memory leaks, causing connections to halt
after a few minutes. It happens. 

So, no - not a rant. What I do see is repeated assertations that 'my
modem used to work with equipment X, or it still works with equipment
Y. Therfore, if it doesn't work with equipment Z, the fault *must* lie
with equipment Z'. It might. It might not. It might lie in both
places. It may be a combination of a lot of things, from line quality,
time of day, load on the Demon's sytems, the software running on the
customer's equipment, there's a long list and almost every item has
appeared in one form or another over the time I've been with
Demon. Sadly, far too many people use somewhat flawed logic to conclude
that the problem must lie at our end and it is thus our duty to solve
it. While Demon is working with Ascend to get the problem solved, it
is not clear what the cause is or that it is related in any way to
faults in Demon's telocs or the Ascends. In fact, no-one I've talked
to who's working on this problem (and I'm in regular contact with many
of the people who are working on it) has expressed any real interest
in where the fault lies, simply in finding out if there is a solution.