response 143 of 405:

Apr 26 17:41 UTC 2004

  You'd be surprised, really..  Someone does some work on the next
  line over at the demarc point for the building and messes up,
  or runs jumpers on the frame at the CO but messes up which pins
  and gets a split pair, or any of a dozen other things and suddenly
  you can have all kinds of problems..  Sometimes just plugging an
  extra phone or answering machine onto the line is enough to cause
  a capacitance issue that can complicate borderline DSL.

  Other possibilities include an equipment upgrade on the DSLAM side
  that doesn't like the Grex modem (for whatever reason) or, well,
  basically a whole long list of things.

  On the other hand, the modem is what I'd be looking at first.

  If I can ask Kip, do the modem LEDs indicate that it's losing link
  to the DSLAM?  And does it re-link after power cycling, but not
  do so automatically (without needing to be "kicked" as you put it)?

response 145 of 405:

Apr 26 18:57 UTC 2004

if its a DSL service issue, grex should be entitled to a discount on its next
ISP bill to account for the down time

response 147 of 405:

Apr 26 19:38 UTC 2004

  Obviously Grex doesn't have a randomly assigned IP address, but does the
  DSL provider give a DHCP lease for the address they have assigned or is it
  a permanent static?  Could this be a lease expiration issue?

  Is there a way to get through directly to a reasonably competent tech at
  the DSL provider?  It would be instructive, next time there's an outage,
  to have them try (a) sending an ATM "ping" packet to the modem, (b) sending
  an IP ping or traceroute to the Grex static IP.  With the connection
  currently working, the end of my traceroute to Grex looks like:

  > 18  rback0.flnt.mi.voyager.net (216.93.15.210)  
  > 19  cyberspacecomm.flnt.mi.voyager.net (216.93.107.238)  
  > 20  grex.cyberspace.org (216.93.104.34)  

  Based on the name, I'm presuming that hop 18 is a Redback used by Voyager
  to terminate the ATM connection from the modem and convert to IP.  I could
  be making a bad assumption, however, because then I'm not sure what the
  function would be of hop 19, cyberspacecomm.flnt.mi.voyager.net, unless
  that's a router that belongs to Grex and not Voyager.net.  I suppose it's
  also possible it's the modem, depending on how they configure things (at my
  ISP, we configure the DSL modems to just do bridging but there are all sorts
  of ways you might choose to set things up.)

  Anyway, it'd be worth getting some more information about what's going on
  with the modem when things freeze like this, but of course I understand
  that (a) getting things back up and running immediately makes the most
  people happy in the short term, and (b) you're doing this on your own
  volunteer time and might not necessarily have a whole lot of such time
  to devote to the troubleshooting.

response 149 of 405:

Apr 26 23:28 UTC 2004

        If you can't get into Grex, you can always go to
http://www.grex.org and read the phone number on the page.

(wink wink, nudge nudge)

response 153 of 405:

Apr 27 02:53 UTC 2004

        for some reason grex is exaggeratedly
        fast right now.

response 157 of 405:

Apr 28 13:25 UTC 2004

A couple of times hwen I've logged in lately, I've gotten the message:

Logged out by the system.

However, I don't get logged out - the system continues as normal.

response 159 of 405:

Apr 29 16:42 UTC 2004

Also, sometimes when I start up bbs it says htat there is one new (response)
item even though the one it comes up with is one I've already read.

response 165 of 405:

Apr 29 20:11 UTC 2004

Fair enough.

response 167 of 405:

Apr 30 14:53 UTC 2004

Re #164: Thanks Joe!