atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Spectrum nightmare

This is a vent/rant and warning. With only one small question. Has anyone ran into this issue with Spectrum or any other ISP?

I recently moved a customer with SIP trunking from one location to anther. Sounds simple enough, right? The new location was in a Spectrum neighborhood. We preregistered the new static IP spectrum gave us with the sip provider and scheduled a date for the move. We pretested the Spectrum location for the usual. We confirmed the static IP, tested bandwidth, jitter, latency...etc.Spectrum had already provided the router. On game day we installed the system and immediately noticed the port forwarding rules did not seem to be working.

After a little investigating we noticed that the public IP being displayed to the world was NOT the one in the router. We could however get in through the port forwarding when using the IP in the router. So obviously somethings wrong with Spectrum's setup. They're using a different public IP in their router than the one that their modem is displayed to the world. So consequently the SIP provider can't send traffic to one IP and get responses back from a different IP.

Spectrum was sure this is how Static IP's work and didn't really see what the problem was.

It turns out spectrum is using new router/modems. Their field techs have no access to them, they just plug them in, call their support and support configures them. They receive very little if any training. It took 2 days to convince them that business static IP's need to be the same inbound and outbound. I don't care if it works for all the kids playing Xbox. So, 5 techs on site later, 6 calls to their support and 5 modem/router configurations later. I finally got them to get their modem in bridge-mode so I could use my own router. Incidentally, I asked for a bridged modem the first hour and had a hard time explaining what I meant by "bridged modem".

So at the end of it all, a 2 hour job turned in to 5 hours the first day and 7 hours the next day working till 10 pm because I would not let them go until they deliverd a working service (they wanted to reschedule another visit the next day).
Finally on the third day I was able to reschedule the sip provider and get the customer back in service.

Every time they sent a new tech out they had to warn me that if the problem was not in their equipment they'll need to charge another $149 visit and $99 for upgraded equipment. They never really understood what the problem really was. I think the finally just ran across a configuration that I said was working.

Yikes!

I assume this is for Hosted.
We always have Spectrum put their modem in bridge mode. It needs to be part of the order.
Or it becomes a change order. Go to their Mac people and issue a change order. Done quickly if done the right way.

Great, I have a Spectrum cut this month.

I had something worse than that with XO communcations. They had pre-installed all of their equipment so on cut day there were no techs onsite, just a piece of paper with a phone number to call. We get into the cutover and nothing is going right. A couple of hours later they ask me unplug the customer equipment. I do it. They tell me that I haven't done that right. So I have to explain (in detail) what I unplugged from where. They still don't believe me. We start comparing notes about circuit ID's and company addresses, and IP addresses. Turns out they had duplicated IP addresses in their system. They were accessing equipment in Atlanta, GA. I am in St Louis, MO. There is no fix for this. They had to send to site another router. Meanwhile the customer has no internet at all. Part of the cutover caused ATT to decide to drop the DSL connection for the customer. So 10 days later when the new equipment finally arrives I go back out and actually get everything hooked up .

Bridge anything from Spectrum for business. They won't let you do anything in the model/router/wifi for business. I just went through all of this with them on a simple Business Internet/Phone setup and the moment they said I had to call them for any and every change in the modem that I wanted I just said bridge it.