VISP internet service through Sodetel gateways !?

[IA64]

Saturday April 4 2009, VISP encountered an outage in their internet service that lasted for 3 complete days. They were not able to answer questions just promising that will fix the problems and finish the hassle as fast as they can.

--->

We are sorry
Posted By: Denys Fedoryshchenko On: 07 Apr 2009 4:26 PM

Details
We are sorry to not post any news, but we are working hard to restore fully operational internet connection. After this hassle finish, we will let you know all details and etc...

-------------------------------------------------------

Now that they have announced that systems were restored and they are almost done, I noticed that the ping reply that used to be 150-250ms maximum and 80-90ms at night is now 500-900ms !? what happened to the best ISP in Lebanon ? What is going on ?!

Now out of curiosity, I performed some traceroute commands and surprisingly I get this :

Tracing route to www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.com [87.248.113.14]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 4 ms 16 ms 172.16.*.1
2 20 ms 3 ms 1 ms rev-*-*.globalproof.net [194.146.*.*]
3 1 ms 1 ms 2 ms 10.48.45.1
4 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms 10.77.79.1
5 9 ms 17 ms 23 ms 192.168.30.1
6 5 ms 3 ms 9 ms 10.150.160.2
7 9 ms 6 ms 7 ms 192.168.20.71
8 20 ms 6 ms 12 ms 192.168.20.2
9 11 ms 6 ms 8 ms 10.22.24.1
10 203 ms 230 ms 179 ms 10.152.152.1
11 212 ms 223 ms 234 ms 192.168.125.26
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 261 ms 321 ms 207 ms 89.108.129.1 -->Sodetel gateway ?!
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 556 ms 550 ms 451 ms so-5-3-0.edge1.London1.Level3.net [212.113.12.1]

16 528 ms 541 ms 548 ms ae-33-51.ebr1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.65]
17 569 ms 572 ms 511 ms ae-5-5.car1.Dublin1.Level3.net [4.69.136.89]
18 563 ms * 554 ms 213.242.106.30
19 541 ms * 556 ms gi-1-5.bas-b1.ird.yahoo.com [87.248.101.23]
20 561 ms 576 ms 537 ms f1.us.www.vip.ird.yahoo.com [87.248.113.14]

Are we, VISP customers passing through 2 ISPs before reaching the target website ? Is there any link between VISP internet outage and the government fight against internet piracy or it was just a coincidence ?

Any comment or explanation is appreciated .

[Red Phoenix]

they are not gonna answer here if they didnt not answer us directly.

they even turned off their online support.

talking to their local providers, the answer is "they are upgrading"

if this is an upgrade, then i dont know what a downgrade with them is like.

this has been going on since last saturday and the service now is still quite horrible.

miserable lags and one day some ports are working the other day not.

download, browsing, gaming, chatting, emails, work is affected.

they seem to have switched their providers for now, but i don't care.

5 days of random outage is enough.

i dont even care if they are under DoS. These people are incompetent.

this seems like their servers broke, i dont care.

they have a prob, we are paying the price for it, and they are turning a blind eye.

they are incompetent in IT and unprofessional in dealing with their customers.

ppl stay away from visp, i'm looking to switch to dsl now, i don't care anymore, their service has been on a downhill slope since 6 month ago and they don't care about fixing it. just giving very very empty promises.

i did not find my money on a tree.

[IA64]

Thats true. I believe that the problem behind all this is that they are not authorised to provide internet service for end users. They have their own links and route. In the past, It was TSS-ADANA from turkey. Now its Insat-de in germany ( proxy server ) and via satellites which is illegal imo. Actually the outage started saturday at 12:00PM exactly which makes me believe that it was intentional and that some bans by the law were applied. Afterall I doubt that VISP is an official internet service provider. They tend to distribute their bandwidth to resellers and limited amount of trusted people. In the past, I used to have a 2mbps with 1GB quota each day for like 60,000LL .. All accounts in beirut were set to 2048000 down/256000 up ( customer.visp.net.lb ) .. now they can barely provide us with a 256kbps ( double speed after 1:00 AM?? LOL ) for the same amount of money.. Maybe I should stick with my connection at work in europe.. Imagine working on a 100mpbs abroad with 20ms latency then trying a 256 with 800ms latency.

I called VISP today and they said.. We finished upgrading the system.. ( duhh? ) and the ping response seems to be like :

Pinging Google [74.125.43.99] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=573ms TTL=237
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=576ms TTL=237
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=574ms TTL=237
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=576ms TTL=237
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=591ms TTL=237
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=556ms TTL=237
Request timed out.
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=572ms TTL=237
Reply from 74.125.43.99: bytes=32 time=569ms TTL=237
Request timed out.


Funny isnt it ?

After some researches and tests... I found that Ogero connection is the best so far. Cyberia dsl also is quite good.

[IA64]

Just out of the blue , I found this interesting pdf :

http://www.tra.gov.lb/Library/Files/...4_2008_ISP.pdf

الجمهورية اللبنانية
الهيئة المنظمة للاتصالات
ترخيص مؤقت
لتقديم خدمات نقل المعلومات، وخدمات الانترنت،
وبعض خدمات اتصالات أخرى
دون استعمال ترددات للاسلكية
في الجمهورية اللبنانية
صادر عن الهيئة المنظمة للاتصالات في لبنان
2002/ عملاً بقانون الاتصالات رقم 431
بتاريخ 5 نيسان 2008

---> hmmm another coincidence !? A year is over and their license expired ?!

[Führer]

Welcome to the IDM-like pings...

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by IA64

Just out of the blue , I found this interesting pdf :

http://www.tra.gov.lb/Library/Files/...4_2008_ISP.pdf

الجمهورية اللبنانية
الهيئة المنظمة للاتصالات
ترخيص مؤقت
لتقديم خدمات نقل المعلومات، وخدمات الانترنت،
وبعض خدمات اتصالات أخرى
دون استعمال ترددات للاسلكية
في الجمهورية اللبنانية
صادر عن الهيئة المنظمة للاتصالات في لبنان
2002/ عملاً بقانون الاتصالات رقم 431
بتاريخ 5 نيسان 2008 ---> hmmm another coincidence !? A year is over and their license expired ?!

haha, a good catch there !

so visp is 'trying' to find some way to distribute internet again..

it seems they finished 'the upgrade' by linking us to a link in zimbabwey..

i wait a minute, i'm sorry, zimbabwey has a better internet connection than this hehe

[nuclearcat]

Originally Posted by IA64

Thats true. I believe that the problem behind all this is that they are not authorised to provide internet service for end users. They have their own links and route. In the past, It was TSS-ADANA from turkey. Now its Insat-de in germany ( proxy server ) and via satellites which is illegal imo.

I'm VISP employee. Satellites is legal(but you need separate license for dish, we have it), and for ISP's is legal even to do VSAT with up to 1Watt power.

Actually the outage started saturday at 12:00PM exactly which makes me believe that it was intentional and that some bans by the law were applied.

Outage is happened because government closed one of companies we are working with, lebanese company.

Afterall I doubt that VISP is an official internet service provider. They tend to distribute their bandwidth to resellers and limited amount of trusted people.

We are open to anybody who want to become reseller, and we have also direct distribution. Similar thing have Terranet and IDM, just much smaller scale.

In the past, I used to have a 2mbps with 1GB quota each day for like 60,000LL .. All accounts in beirut were set to 2048000 down/256000 up ( customer.visp.net.lb ) .. now they can barely provide us with a 256kbps ( double speed after 1:00 AM?? LOL ) for the same amount of money..

Accounts 2048000/256000 probably is from Sub-ISP, who manage bandwidth his own way. All VISP official accounts stated on official website.

Maybe I should stick with my connection at work in europe.. Imagine working on a 100mpbs abroad with 20ms latency then trying a 256 with 800ms latency.

Welcome to stone age. Government closing and pushing anybody they dont likes, without providing alternatives.
Funny isnt it ?

[IA64]

Thank your for the clarification. Actually I do not want to sound pessimistic but when the government gets in charge of something, things become really messed up. I can conlude that we will not get back our normal internet service until a deal would be possible which I highly doubt it could happen.

[nuclearcat]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

they are not gonna answer here if they didnt not answer us directly.

U are wrong. Seems u got used to "legacy" ISP's.

they even turned off their online support.

Support too busy to talk online, they are working on rebuilding support system to new realities, answering calls and organising information to give in short form for system administrators.

talking to their local providers, the answer is "they are upgrading"

Thats true. But more correct "restoring capacity".

they seem to have switched their providers for now, but i don't care.

5 days of random outage is enough.

i dont even care if they are under DoS. These people are incompetent.

We didnt switch providers for 2 years, till new minister didn't start his "fights".

this seems like their servers broke, i dont care.

Servers is fine.

they have a prob, we are paying the price for it, and they are turning a blind eye.

We know that. We, and i'm especially paying by my health fixing all that **** at night. Thanks to sweet government , which do things and dont give a **** how it hurt people.

they are incompetent in IT and unprofessional in dealing with their customers.

Who is competent? We need to kiss knees and cry on your shoulder? Or give you million dollar damages (while we are loosing also money, and not because our own fault) We are doing our best to restore service. What you want to happen?

ppl stay away from visp, i'm looking to switch to dsl now, i don't care anymore, their service has been on a downhill slope since 6 month ago and they don't care about fixing it. just giving very very empty promises.

i did not find my money on a tree.

People have their own brain, and most of them not panicking.

[nuclearcat]

Regarding license:
Till you see ISP at
TRA - Telecommunications Regulatory Authority
Ministry Of Telecommunications

Be sure - ISP is legal. As soon as his license revoked - government will remove him from list.