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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Thumbs Up for BskyB - Thumbs Down to TalkTalk (yet again)

It looks as if BSkyB have been busy bees upgrading the Easynet backbone network as well as fitting out lots of BT Exchanges. They have been installing the biggest current beast in the jungle, the Cisco CRS-1 Router, in their network. They now have a IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network with a core ring capacity of a huge 1Terabit (Tbps), and is scalable to 4Tbps when needed. They installed 50 racks of equipment in 31 different locations in just 4 weeks.

Mind you, the Easynet security leaves something to be desired as someone has currently hacked the PR section of their website posting an offensive message to Israel and the USA.

On the other side of technical competence (ie zero) it looks as if the comedians at TalkTalk have also been busy unbundling my line at the BT exchange – the reason I know is that the voice quality has noticeably deteriorated and even worse is that my current (notso) broadband speed is “Downstream 443KB and Upstream 217KB with a limit on the upstream of 2MB.” On a traceroute, I only see Opal/TalkTalk IP addresses and the BT addresses are nowhere to be seen - ie I'm 100% on TalkTalk kit. I am getting really, really angry: especially with the prospect of spending tomorrow evening waiting on their pathetic call centre.

On another related point Mickey Mouse could have configured the TalkTalk DNS servers to provide a better service than the TalkTalk engineers. Unbelievably for such a basic and well known service, the DNS servers are up and down more often than a yoyo. Also, currently they are intercepting incorrect url requests and serving up adverts via a company called 404direct.com. I seem to remember in the distant past another ISP getting in trouble for intercepting url's and serving up adverts. It is a good job that I know the addresses of a few other non-useless DNS servers.