diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Utopia - Mstar support forum?
I was just wondering if anyone here knows if any Mstar support or technicians hang out on these boards.
For that matter even a Utopia board would be nice so I could ask about setting up internal routes between Mstar and Xmission because I have Xmission at work and Mstar at home and both are on the Utopia network yet a traceroute shows that both directions the route goes 14-15 hops and leaves then re-enters the Utopia network. There is no need for that 
The reason I am wondering is because I have many issues that could easily be worked out if I could just talk to the right person (if you know what I mean! )
Here are just a few things I need to vent about and share as it seems no one at Mstar listens. (or cares!)
1. Mstar has removed there support@mstarmetro.net support address and the only way to submit emails if via their web form. This was done without notifying customers.
2. Mstar has also removed the Speed Test »meter.mstarmetro.net/ Of course; this was done without notifying customers.
3. Mstar never responds via email even if you specify that they do! I actually called them on the phone yesterday and they said that they show there where responses noted on my account yet I never saw them. Apparently they can’t even send emails to their own customers and have it work.
4. (And now for an older issue) Mstar never has a straight answer! Last year out of the blue I stopped receiving email on my home/lab email server. I found the problem was Mstar was blocking port 25 INBOUND. I spent over a week on the phone with them trying to get this resolved while they kept swearing on there lives that they do not do any port blocking. Yet a week later I got an call out of the blue from some "customer support" staff member who didn't even know exactly what he was telling me but needless to say they apparently found out they were blocking port 25 INBOUND "to keep spammers off the network." I tried to point out that blocking inbound would only help spammers as they would not have to worry about NDR's and that there block doesn't stop one bit of spam from going out... I was never able to get the right person on the phone that could understand or care about what I was trying to say so I just gave up! Eventually I got a manager or something who said they could give me an unfiltered static IP address for free as they had informed me wrong about the blocking and had done so without notifying their customers. I never heard back and again after many calls and never being able to get the right person on the phone I just gave up. I ended up setting up a relay to send my mail to me on port 29 rather than 25.
5. Still can’t hit my 50/50 no matter how hard I try. Also see #2. I use a Cisco ASA5505 at home so there should be no throughput issues.
6. Yes I can go on but I don't want to continue until I know this is the proper place. I have many things Mstar customers (& future customers) may want to know and not just about the internet service but their IPTV service as well.
I hope this is the proper place to vent and possibly find help here at BBR as I did not see an Mstar specific forum. I am hoping this Fiber Optic forum is the place unless someone knows otherwise!
And again if there are any Utopia/Mstar engineers and/or technicians who frequent these forums I would love to be able to chat with someone who understand there network more than I do |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT | Hmm... Maybe I am the only Utopia/MSTAR customer?! |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| reply to diehardspeed
The fact that UTOPIA customers have to use public internet outside UTOPIA to route between XMission and UTOPIA is one currently being addressed. For a complicated series of reasons, there hasn't been any provider peering on UTOPIA, and this is finally changing.
Can't help you with the other issues, I'm afraid.
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| Thanks for the reply. Was getting real lonely.
Of course Xmission is the one to respond and not Mstar.
Just so people know, if your looking at getting Utopia... Xmission without a doubt has the best customer support.
I was with Xmission clear back in the dialup days and still think they are the best local ISP in Utah!
Also, so we are clear. The only reason I did not go with Xmission at home was I wanted to see how IPTV was and Mstar is the only provider on the Utopia network providing Video. Once out of my contract (Which renewed when I changed to my 50/50 tier.) I may just dump the IPTV and switch to Xmission!
That is why I didn't even bother with anyone but Xmission when I chose them as our Work Utopia ISP!
Unlike Mstar, they have an IRC channel, forums here, support email adresses that respond, and have a working speedtest still!
Go Xmission!... however this post is still me looking for Mstar support! Is anyone out there?!? |
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Skidus
join:2002-10-06
Salt Lake City, UT
| reply to diehardspeed
Now that West Valley is going along with the reissue of the bonds is there any time frame when it will go past Bangerter Hwy?
I have been waiting a while for Utopia to go past my house and for the longest time saw Utopia trucks out here working.
not anymore. |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| reply to diehardspeed
Skidus, part of the reorganization plan includes roll out based on interest. If you have a lot of neighbors that are also waiting, it might be a good idea to start coordinating your interests.
The means by which this will be calculated and reported are still in production. |
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dsl_er
join:2006-12-02
El Segundo, CA
edit:
May 14th, @04:21PM
| reply to diehardspeed
Nope, your not alone, I am also a MSTAR Utopia customer.
I haven't really had to deal their support, but concur with some of your points.
I was able to get close to the 50/50 bandwidth advertised, when it was first introduced but not recently. Although, since they did remove their bandwidth meter (would like to know why), I haven't been able to find too many speedtest that can handle more then 20mbps.
To my knowledge no MSTAR techs hang out here, the few times I've called its always been the same tech answering (Ryan). |
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diehardspeed
Premium
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT
| It's amazing that even when I had Comcast I was able to find a local contact here who helped solve my issues. Yet I can't for Mstar and they ARE local!
The Xmission speedtest is still really good for testing your speed. However I want the Mstar internal one back too, that way I know if I can hit my 50/50 internally at least.
As for the IPTV issues, I almost want to drive to the head office and re-configure some of the settings and stations myself. They really need some help swapping there analog local network sources to the digital ones. They should be able to change the aspect ratio on the fly and save quite a bit of bandwidth in doing so! I think they should do that for all there HD channels! No more of this one SD and one HD channel when only part of the programming is in HD anyway. Plus I won't have to laugh and shake my head each time I see KBYU(11) as a small square in the middle of my TV.
I would also like to see if they have the same freezing issues I get at home so I know where it's happening and if it's the Utopia network or Mstar's servers or on the off chance there satellite feed. |
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eng_mstar
join:2008-06-12
Orem, UT
| reply to diehardspeed
Hello somewhat pleased or not customer. I am the network engineer at MSTAR. I have read through the forum and agree with you on a lot of the issues.
Our customer service needs some serious help, the problem in there is nobody is technical enough to do basic troubleshooting.
The IPTV issues stem from iProvo, the only thing MSTAR actually owns is the CAT5 running to your STB. Utopia gets the feeds from iProvo and they own that entire part of the network. The STB's that are currently used in Utopia are CRAP, iProvo actually lets you upgrade to the new ADB HD-DVR which has fixed almost all of the problems. Utopia still hasn't yet made the decision to purchase those.
I am the only engineer there, we went from a team of 5 to 1 and its pretty stressful and hard, yet rewarding in a somewhat sadistical kind of way. Feel free to email me with any questions / concerns you may have. My main role at the moment is to keep the network running for our customers. I wish I had more time for forums, IRC, other things that I think we need as well. But I don't until things change and we hire some more engineers.
I took meter.mstarmetro.net away because customers weren't even supposed to know about it and it was broken to all hell and giving people wrong information. I hate speed tests with a passion although, Xmission's is decent.
Yes we do block port 25 inbound for SMTP for spamming of course, I have no problem unblocking it for customer's that specifically request it. The sales people have been informed of it and the correct ways of dealing with it but can't seem to be able to tell that to the customers. I apologize about that as well. |
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lostincyberspace
@mstarmetro.net
| reply to diehardspeed
I have been having problems using torrents to download Linux distributions. I used to have decent speed but now I put along at about 56 KB.
It started a couple months ago and I tried everything I knew(which is actually quite a bit) and stuff I heard from other people. Does any one else have any problems with this? |
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eng_mstar
join:2008-06-12
Orem, UT
| To anwser your question, I do have policies set inpart on the network to manage your bandwidth. Torrents for you and mostely everyone on MSTAR's network are set to 512Kb/s up and 512Kb/s down. When compared to most ISP's, for example Comcast, that's pretty good. Of course, you may have heard of iProvo getting bought out by Broadweave. Once that transition happens, which should be complete by the end of the month, I will take away all management policies on our traffic shaper. This will give Utopia and other MSTAR customers FULL access to anything with out any sort of limitation at all.
Now, I can check on your consumption if you want to send me your IP address. If you are not abusing our network, I will turn up your management on Torrents. Thank you. |
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lostinbrave
join:2008-06-17
Orem, UT
| If you have an official Mstar address email me at
Lee(at)logonomics(dot)net
and I will proved an IP then since I have no way of knowing if you really are who you say you are and other precautions because someone else might be a hacker. (you might have your email and I just can't find it, I haven't used this site much yet) |
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