Diary of a New Aimnet Subscriber and an Idea
Ken Gaugler
>Well I'm in my second week as an Aimnet subscriber. I'm not impressed
>yet.
[snip- problem descriptions deleted for space]
I am not real impressed after my first few days with them, either.
Their support staff doesn't return phone calls or emails to
sup...@aimnet.com, which really pisses me off. That is why I feel
justified in slamming them a bit here.
Try using a telnet session to them; it takes about a minute for the
server to catch up with one line of typing, which makes it really
irritating to use.
The DNS lookup failures are particularly interesting. I, too, had a
few failures looking up www.aimnet.com!! I think it was because
nslookup timed out, their servers are so slow.
>If there's anybody out there looking to provide a great service to the
>Internet community, I've got an idea for you:
>Get an account with every ISP you can find. At regular intervals try
>to log into each, check mail, read news, check web pages, check the
>number of entries in passwd files, check disk usage %s on /usr
>volumes, then compile stats on problems, busy signals, etc. Put it all
>together in a monthly newsletter (real paper even) and sell it in area
>bookstores, computer stores, coffee shops, and anywhere else you can
>think of. I, for one, would pay somebody $10 or so right this second
>for a current copy.
>Whadya think?
Good idea. As an aside, when I lived up the peninsula I used QuakeNet
(www.quake.net) and they were superb. In about 18 months of service
I _never_ got a busy signal, and their machines and feeds are really
fast. If you live in the San Mateo/San Francisco area, give them a
try!
-Ken
---
Ken Gaugler URL:http://www.quake.net/~keng
The life of a Repo Man is ALWAYS INTENSE
hutt...@aimnet.com
GREAT IDEA!!!! But I'm so busy trying to stay connected, I
haven't got time for anything else.
Ken Sheppardson
Well I'm in my second week as an Aimnet subscriber. I'm not impressed
yet.
Tonight once again I'm unable to call into their Belmon POP. (Only the
second time, which puts this problem relatively low on my list.) It
keeps rejecting my login, so I'm in through SF again. No answer on the
first call, but I'm in on the second. What's wrong with Belmont I
wonder. No explanation in aimnet.announce or any other aimnet group.
It seems the support staff doesn't read (or at least doesn't post to)
their own groups.
It's been five or ten times now that I've seen the "Server does not
have a DNS entry" message from Netscape when I try to access
http://www.aimnet.com. Strange that their own name server doesn't have
an entry for their web server. Ah...there it goes. In general I seem
to be batting 30% or so in hitting outside sites on the first try.
What's wrong with the DNS server, I wonder.
It only takes 45-60 seconds for my home page to come up when I try
http://www.aimnet.com/~kens, although it comes up pretty much
instantaneously when I try users.aimnet.com. Why so long to redirect?
Many problems. I'd suggest people stay away at this point. Of course I
don't know if this is typical in the bay area or not. I've certainly
had more problems than I did with my previous provider: Msen, in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. (msen.com - of course they had their share of
problems too...this certainly isn't an ad for them)
Patrick Greenwell
: The DNS lookup failures are particularly interesting. I, too, had a
: few failures looking up www.aimnet.com!! I think it was because
: nslookup timed out, their servers are so slow.
This is a bug in Netscape. Alter the netscape.ini file and set Use Async
DNS = no.
Patrick
MarkH
>Well I'm in my second week as an Aimnet subscriber. I'm not impressed
>yet.
>Tonight once again I'm unable to call into their Belmon POP. (Only the
>second time, which puts this problem relatively low on my list.) It
>keeps rejecting my login, so I'm in through SF again. No answer on the
>first call, but I'm in on the second. What's wrong with Belmont I
>wonder. No explanation in aimnet.announce or any other aimnet group.
>It seems the support staff doesn't read (or at least doesn't post to)
>their own groups.
I had the same problem. Belmont was down for several hours yesterday
evening. Modem answers, but no login. And, of course... no
announcement of the problem (I occasionally telnet to aimnet from a
different ISP, just to see if any useful information has been posted
to the motd - but why would Aimnet want to inform their customers of
anything), no answer at customer support, no explanation, just gets
"fixed" by magic.
As near as I can tell, the "support staff" is one person, obviously
worked to death. Perhaps he already quit?
>Many problems. I'd suggest people stay away at this point. Of course I
>don't know if this is typical in the bay area or not. I've certainly
>had more problems than I did with my previous provider: Msen, in Ann
>Arbor, Michigan. (msen.com - of course they had their share of
>problems too...this certainly isn't an ad for them)
>If there's anybody out there looking to provide a great service to the
>Internet community, I've got an idea for you:
>Get an account with every ISP you can find. At regular intervals try
>to log into each, check mail, read news, check web pages, check the
>number of entries in passwd files, check disk usage %s on /usr
>volumes, then compile stats on problems, busy signals, etc. Put it all
>together in a monthly newsletter (real paper even) and sell it in area
>bookstores, computer stores, coffee shops, and anywhere else you can
>think of. I, for one, would pay somebody $10 or so right this second
>for a current copy.
>Whadya think?
I think that there would be no market for this. For one thing, it
would be out of date instantaneously. For another, at the rate that
most ISPs are growing, they will ALL have problems like this. If you
provide terrible service, and your business only doubles instead of
triples, what incentive is there to provide good service.
I actually think that the real fix (somewhere in the future) will be
to charge people for usage - for time, bytes moved, disk space,
etc.... Until then, the incentive is to collect a monthly fee, and
spend as little of it as possible. When ISPs make MORE MONEY for GOOD
SERVICE, then they will provide good service. Premium providers will
provide premium service for premium prices.
Most customers seem mostly interested in cheap service.
MH
===========================================
================================================
Koji Yamaguchi
: : The DNS lookup failures are particularly interesting. I, too, had a
Nope, not unless Lynx has the same bug.
--
*****************************************************************************
Koji Yamaguchi ko...@netcom.com
*****************************************************************************