Cool Ideas Fibre ISP – Feedback Thread 2

[TheRoDent]

uhm that’s exactly my point. I have been there. We EXPECT you to mitigate. If your offices can be so slick so can your NOC.

Edit:
Time to start putting your money where your attitude is TheRoDent, better have your a game on when the next round comes.

I called your office today and cancelled and the support person could not even transfer the call to accounts. She literally could not used the phone. That is who was taking your calls on a Monday like today.

tells me everything about your slick pad In Rosebank. Substance over form. That’s what people want.

We operated out of fairly small offices in Parktown North for years, right next to Uber South Africa, and we grew out of the space. We moved to new offices, and we tried to make it a friendly and serviceable space for our staff, and to cater for the additional Cool people we required. This cost some money, but it's certainly not a garage, and it's certainly not SASOL's head office style lavish either.

As for the support issue, please PM me details of who you spoke to, and I will take it up with the relevant team. We can always improve and we know this.

And, if you still feel like it come have a beer any day after work, if you're so inclined.

 

[TheRoDent]

tl; dr: when you're failing to honour the commercial end of the contract an explanation of the failure is only part of the communication. the other part is remediation, and re-commitment to the terms. think about it: you'd hold me to precisely that standard if i stopped paying you, which is my end of the contract. there would be no forum debate about how hard it was for me that month, and how my accounts were drained by sim-swap bandits, and why that should entitle me to leeway.

Sure, I get this. We don't want our customers to feel like they're "fighting a Goliath" and that we've become a lumbering beast.

However, force majeure does happen. If we were the only party attacked, or the only party affected during these kind of incidents however, I could understand that people would question our abilities.

Sadly/and/or/happilly this is not the case.

I certainly don't wish for DDOS attacks, and I certainly don't wish them upon the other companies in our industry. But if you read the undercurrent it's clear to see that "us" is definately not an isolated case.

I have personally never seen something like that, and whomever says what, the scale of the attacks in Gbps is real, and not "fudged" numbers.

Still no excuse. We can and will do better.

 

[daelm]

Still no excuse. We can and will do better.

and if this had been accompanied by metrics and commitments, i'd still be a customer.

 

[stormiezzz]

Amen! I fully agree. Ouens need to take note that things can and will go wrong from time to time. If your car breaks down, it's hardly worth it to phone the manufacturer and take a dump all over them. You have to have it repaired and hopefully you have alternative arrangements for transport. If not, don't blame the manufacturer unless your car is under warranty, and no ISP can warrant 100% up time. Bottom line.......buy a scooter.

Uh, no, at most, Openswerve as your FNO, failing that, LTE for backup.

Simply put, and ignoring the sarcasm , if your internet at home is mission-critical then you have to have redundancy else you're being negligent. You can't squeal about your ISP if you haven't done your bit as well - and putting mission-critical internet service eggs into one basket is not doing your bit.

 

[TheRoDent]

Walking distance from our Jhb office. Do you have coffee?

Also, the SMS over the weekend and the DDOS Attack Update email was awesome. Much improved comms since the last round of issues.

You're more than welcome to pop in... We do have pretty decent coffee. Simply ask for Roelf at reception, and quote '<your-name> Shibboleet' is here to see Roelf", "Please message him".

If I'm available will be happy to chat whilst you enjoy a coffee and I enjoy a beer. Best times are between 4.30 and 6pm.

 

[GotToLuveIT]

Bye

Exactly bye.

No pleasing some people that want to be constant victims. It is a internet connection, get some perspective or seek professional help if you can't control you separation anxiety / internet addiction.

They say no coms - SMS notifications were sent.
They say nothing was done after last attack - DDOS Attack Update Mon 25 Nov 2019 22:25, details are these to see.
They say other ISPs are better, because magic - Attack was targeted, other ISPs have not faced the same scale and targeted attack (yet)
They say CISP folded under DDOS - All I see is CISP taking one more step forward with every lesson learnt and the network getter more resilient after each attack.

If it was up to the "They" Orville and Wilbur would have been told to go back to their bicycle shed.
Why does this sound so familiar after all the hot air, aired this weekend; you tell me.

"In 1906 skeptics in the European aviation community had converted the press to an anti-Wright brothers stance. European newspapers, especially those in France, were openly derisive, calling them bluffeurs (bluffers). Ernest Archdeacon, founder of the Aéro-Club de France, was publicly scornful of the brothers' claims in spite of published reports .."

 

[GotToLuveIT]

and if this had been accompanied by metrics and commitments, i'd still be a customer.

ROLF

 

[pstation]

How small is cisp? Are they working from this guy Paul’s garage. That’s actually a genuine question. Everyone here is talking as if there are two Noc guys employed Running this ISP.

Used to live down the street from their Rosebank office and it definitely isn't a garage heh. Stopped in once to grab a router.

 

[TheRoDent]

Used to live down the street from their Rosebank office and it definitely isn't a garage heh. Stopped in once to grab a router.

It was a bit of an upgrade..... https://mybroadband.co.za/news/business-telecoms/248761-cool-ideas-epic-new-offices-in-rosebank.html

 

[daelm]

ROLF

if you say so.

 

[image132]

@TheRoDent So is the official peak traffic from the attack 500gbs?

 

[GotToLuveIT]

so, no.

You need a new watch or a calendar,

(exits lurking)

i actually agree with this. there are two conversations going on, separating signal from noise. one is a technical conversation that - correctly - talks about (a) the nature and extent of these attacks and (b) the complexity of mitigation; the other is a business conversation that focusses on professionalism and the degree to which a company that sells a product bears responsibility for its delivery.

i pretty much accept the reality of what's described in the technical discussion, but, as a customer, i'm directly concerned about the business relationship that defines my interaction with them. when i cut through the noise with CI, their recent history makes me concerned that they're not able to deliver me the product that i pay for. and i find it strange that when they can't, i am asked to excuse it on the grounds that it's hard to do so. i'm sympathetic to the fact that it's hard, but i still bought a product, and it still fails.

(i've seen a lot of this weird dynamic in past discussions about Tesla, where the inability of the organization to meet targets or to deliver on contractually promised features is addressed by making customers believe that they're not actually customers, they're beta-testers, part of a greater drive towards some sci-fi future. personally, i don't buy it.)

But yet magically, you are quite happy to fly with airliners, where the "Professional service" literally fall out of the sky when something goes wrong...

 

[TheRoDent]

@TheRoDent So is the official peak traffic from the attack 500gbs?

Yes. I wrote that copy as well as the previous one.. 500Gbps and some change.

If you read between the lines, Hurricane Electric electronically disconnected us (killed our BGP session) due to the amount of traffic.

They're back in the transit mix now, but not for long.

 

[thehuman]

Yes. I wrote that copy. 500Gbps and some change.

If you read between the lines, Hurricane Electric electronically disconnected us (killed our BGP session) due to the amount of traffic.

They're back in the transit mix now, but not for long.

So HE just pulled the plug when it got too hot

 

[TheRoDent]

So HE just pulled the plug when it got too hot

Pretty much.

 

[image132]

Yes. I wrote that copy as well as the previous one.. 500Gbps and some change.

If you read between the lines, Hurricane Electric electronically disconnected us (killed our BGP session) due to the amount of traffic.

They're back in the transit mix now, but not for long.

Wow.

Congrats then for dealing with, as far as I know, the biggest ddos attack in SA's history.

 

[j4ck455]

Anyone that has not grasped the scale of this 500Gbps attack, that has not realised that CISP staff put in a monumental mitigation effort, and is still bitching and moaning in this thread, has missed the fact that CISP has worked a good few miracles this last weekend.

Really well done CISP, as a customer I commend you for your efforts and weathering the DDoS storms
(I wish I really did have three thumbs)

@TheRoDent if CISP was allocating IPv6 DHCP addresses instead of only IPv4, would IPv6 help reduce the effects of DDoS attacks?

 

[thehuman]

Pretty much.

If you guys only had HE as a upstream provider, would that mean cisp international traffic would have been cut off completely?

If true those who want to move away make sure your new isp doesn't use HE exclusively.

 

[naeem]

on a more optimistic note, any Cisp Black Friday deals? Speed Upgrade promotions perhaps?

 

[pstation]

So HE just pulled the plug when it got too hot

Prolexic/Akamai also dropped a site they were protecting when they were hit with a DDoS of similar size and they're in the business of providing DDoS protection.

Krebs Website Offline After Akamai Withdraws DDoS Protection

Website of security researcher and blogger Brian Krebs offline after huge DDoS attack

www.infosecurity-magazine.com