Category: TM/TMNET

UniFi Phone Call Forwarding

If you’re here to look for the way to forward the phone that comes to UniFi to another phone number, I apologize. I don’t know how. I tried asking TM call center but they told me to call UniFi support for UniFi phone.

For the record every time I try *61*XXXXXXXXXX# the automated voice response is “harap maaf, anda tidak mempunyai akses ke nombor ini”. I think it’s related to a protection so that users can’t simply forward to any number. Protection is good only if there are procedures to follow to make a feature useful. Not in this case.

I created a ticket in the My Support section in myUniFi only to be closed by X1012121 – it’s not even a real name. The ticket was closed without any explanation whatsoever. Nada. Nothing. Nil.

So what they put in their Microsoft SharePoint website Phone (Voice Features) page doesn’t work. At least for me. If you can see any instructions on adding custom phone numbers to the forward list, do let me know. I might need new spectacles.

As a matter of fact, I created a ticket a week earlier about something else and although I specifically asked to be emailed, they called. Maybe the text on their system is too small to read especially the “Preferred communication” field. I don’t know. The annoying thing was that the person kept calling and calling and calling when the call was not picked up.

When the call is not picked up, please call later.

If you’re not going to fully support your value added services, you might as well not offer them at all. I am fully satisfied with the Internet service, but since there are “FREE” added service I thought I might utilize it. Now that I know they don’t work, I’m unhappy.

One thing that really bothers me is that I think they don’t really have an SLA with customers, and KPI to fulfill. Closing tickets without any reason is unacceptable by any standard, not even in inter organization support services.

I will never understand why TM work like this… and I know this post will not mean anything to them. I am just disappointed. Having some exposure on how they do stuff, I think they can do better and generate more profit than now but the mentality is just beyond me.

Malaysia boleh?

TM UniFi Downtime: Exercise Your Rights

If you are a UniFi subscriber, and live in the Puchong (plus Damansara reported by achmatibrahim via Twitter) area you might have already been aware of the downtime since yesterday afternoon (8 December 2010). At the moment I am writing this post, it has been more than 12 hours. TM is not actively informing users about this downtime and all we get is this from their Twitter account:

tmcorp-unify-down

I have just called the UniFi Center a few minutes ago and the guy who picked up the call was a sales guy. He tried to contact the technical department but he failed. At least that’s what he said. So he promised to call back with a ticket number. I think he will not call me until the whole thing is over. I will just lodge a report with MCMC.

At first, he told me that TM is aware of the downtime and it’s because of server upgrade. That’s a lame and insulting excuse. There is no announcement on the UniFi website.

Please people, if you are one of the affected subscriber please do your part by calling 1 300 88 1222 and insist on a ticket number for the downtime.

Even if it’s one day, for VIP5 package subscriber that’s already RM149/30 = RM4.97 and if every single person as mentioned in the tweet above makes a claim for rebate, that’s already costing TM the amount of RM9,940 in rebates. Don’t take it from TM that “it’s OK to be down if so many people are affected”. We pay for this service.

Don’t ask for a rebate when calling the UniFi Center but ask for a formal report to be done. With the ticket number, go to MCMC website and lodge a formal report. The direct link to the Aduan is here.

We need to send a message to TM that downtime will cost them money. Otherwise it’ll be as usual for every single service we have in Malaysia where we just sit and wait for the service to get back.

We need to make them go out of their beds and work on fixing the issue. I am serious about this. You can do your part.

Yes, I am getting old and like to rationalize instead of rant.

skmm-unifi-report

What Happened to My Upload Speed?

For quite some time I have been working from home with no difficulties, and I am happy with the speed. Sometimes I even have 3 or 4 terminal service windows open, juggling between them to complete my tasks.

However this morning when I tried to utilize my Nortel IP Softphone 2050 to call my boss for the weekly 1 to 1 meeting the software kept crashing on me. It was the same case when I called my cell as a test.

And so I decided to poke around everything and digging up stats for my home network. Do you know what I found? I found out that my upload speed has been capped to 64kbps. What the hell happened? Rebooting the modem didn’t help.

Here is a screen capture from my AM300 router:

I am too old to rant too much, and I am too tired to give them a call just to have them go through the usual routine of plugging and unplugging.

This is the moment where I really pray that a better service would be introduced. I am truly tired with TMNET’s incompetent service. This is a low class service. And because it’s government linked we have no choice. Two of the Internet giants are both government linked. I am sad.

Weird IP Mismatch on TMNET Network

Tonight’s Internet access was annoyingly slow so I thought of recycling my ADSL connection. Out of habit I opened up WhatIsMyIP.us and was presented with a weird IP.

The top text with black background is the actual IP my router was assigned with (60.52.127.200).

And then I recycled my ADSL connection. The new IP was 60.50.203.72. However when I opened the site above again it still shows me the same IP. There is something fishy about this.

I tried ProxyWay and here’s what I got:

And here’s from CheckIP:

The two sites that gave me the correct and matching IP are IPChicken and IP-adress:

What the hell is wrong? Since TMNET has the reputation of doing stupid things right now I am thinking that they are testing some kind of HTTP bypassing. This is because the other traffic that I tested was not affected (e.g. SSH and FTP) and I see my “real” IP fine.

Anyone else is experiencing this twilight-zone scenario?

TMNet New IP Block 124?

3 days ago I was alerted by my DNS-O-Matic script that my IP has changed. Usually I don’t care much because the script will do its job in updating my dynamic IP. One interesting thing is that I usually get IPs beginning with 60 but now I am receiving IP beginning with 124.

TMNET New IP Block 124

I am not sure whether TMNet acquired a new IP block from IANA or something. Anyone has any news about this?

Nevertheless, nothing has changed with the speed. It’s still snail-paced. 😉

TMNet Decides to Block Port 25

If you’re a Streamyx subscriber and is actively monitoring your Streamyx email you would already be aware that TM is blocking all outgoing connections to port 25 from the dynamic IP users. Simply put, home users with dynamic IP will not be able to use their email clients (i.e. Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora, Kmail) to send emails via their own mail server.

For example, as a Yahoo! Mail Plus user I use Yahoo! SMTP at smtp.mail.yahoo.com to send my emails. With the blocking enforced, I will no longer be able to send via this server. The same goes to other users who have their own mail server for their own domains. As of the time of writing this email, I see that the blocking is still not enforced:

SMTP Blocking on TMNET

My Thunderbird and sendmail on my Linux box are still happily sending out emails via my SMTP servers / smart hosts.

Here’s the official announcement: MITIGATING SPAM IN TM NETWORK.

They are doing this to prevent spammers from sending emails from dynamic IP addresses. However they do open up an SMTP proxy as an open relay for dynamic IP users. I am unsure and pretty much would like to see the effect of having an open relay in their network.

One particular thing that is bad for everyone is that the final destination will check for IP addresses as they mentioned. But how are they going to make sure that the IP address of the smtp proxy (smtp-proxy.tm.net.my 202.188.0.174) will not be blacklisted?

Certain anti-spam implementations such as SPF does check whether the email is sent from authorized mail servers (technical: MX records), and sending from TMNET’s SMTP relay will make sure that your email will fail the SPF test. Adding it in the SPF authorized list (technical: “v=spf1 a:smtp-proxy.tm.net.my mx:smtp.yourdomain.com”) is an initial idea – but doing this will allow everyone to be “authorized” as one of your domain users 🙁

And of course, you can forget about DomainKeys as the smtp-proxy will break your signature.

As for me, as long as they don’t block port 465 (SMTP over SSL) I will still be happy.

Oh yes by the way this policy is not only used by TMNET. Last week, one of my users who were in a London hotel had the same problem when he tried to connect to port 25 (a mail server in Malta). In the end we added another listening port and it worked fine. If you own a mail server, consider doing the same thing!

So far, how does this policy effect you?

Slow Streamyx

For quite some time Streamyx has been quite stable for me, no complaints. However starting from a few days ago it has become really painful to access the Internet, and to even access my own blog. I guess the problem is with international connections again as accessing a local server hosted in Netmyne is not as painful.

Oh well, I am getting too old to rant about Internet in Malaysia anyway.

What about you, notice anything different lately?

4.0Mbps Streamyx?

I was browsing through some blogs when I found myself on this particular post in doBot’s blog. Here’s the official announcement.

Familiar Malaysian forums have been discussing this for a while, and as usual I’m left behind again. Some of them mentioned that the 4Mbps is nothing if TMNet still decides to limit/throttle traffic especially for P2P users. I’m actually neutral in this P2P throttling issue, even though I am a heavy bittorrent user. Why? Well actually the number of broadband users in Malaysia is not that high, and most concentrated only among savvy Internet users. If most of these users are using P2P daily and TMNet does no policing act on it, the whole Streamyx infrastructure will most probably overload. This, is not deniable due to the incompetency of TMNet but IMHO every company deserves a chance to improve themselves, provided that they are trying to improve.

As I read everywhere in the media, TMNet is heading a committee for the second submarine link (I don’t remember the project name). That is indeed very good if it can provide us a secondary pipe and a fail-over mechanism. I have no idea but I am really hoping that this will widen our International link in a massive scale.

On the introduction of the 4Mbps link, I think it is to soon if no International link upgrade has been done. If anyone from TMNet can enlighten me that would be great, as I have no idea of what is going on in there that they actually decided to offer the 4Mbps package.

The price of RM268 is indeed quite high, but it is very reasonable IF AND ONLY IF there would be a huge improvement to speed and reliability. I know users in some other countries pay a lot more for broadband, and of course some pay less. It’s really just business and you can’t really do much about it. I’d pay RM268 if the service is good and reliable, with superb customer support. I guess I’ll just wait and see before running to the nearest TM Point.

If you want to be the first to test this service, go quick as they are offering RM198 before 17 June 2007. I need your feedback on the service before deciding. Oh yes, check the availability/coverage in your area first before even thinking about it. And of course, you have to be with 3km or less from the exchange 😉

I wonder how they would consider/calculate a package upgrade?

What do you think… would you go for this package?

Down Again

Looks like my excitement this morning was short-lived. The connection is down again.

Received a call from TMNET and they asked me to check my connection when I return home. If the connection is still not OK they suggested I wait for tomorrow morning. I immediately jumped at the caller and said “tomorrow??? tomorrow???”. And she quickly asked me to call if I still have problems.

What kind of service is that? This morning they even asked me whether I have done the stupid steps they always ask customers to do (create dialer, flush DNS, etc.). Last night I was still willing to go along with their low level technical skills. Today I am not so patient anymore.

Obviously as a network and firewall engineer I have checked all possible causes on my side and when I call I am sure it’s not my equipment’s fault!

That’s what always happen with TMNET – I play good and they bit by bit test my patience. 🙁

Cable Fixed?

I lost my Internet connection at about 6.00pm local time yesterday, and according to my logs Internet was restored at about 2.30am today.

This morning I tried to ping some sites and the speed is good. Has the submarine cable been fixed already?

-(~/:#)-> ping yahoo.com
PING yahoo.com (216.109.112.135) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=1 ttl=45 time=425 ms
64 bytes from w2.rc.vip.dcn.yahoo.com (216.109.112.135): icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=415 ms

--- yahoo.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 415.794/420.556/425.319/4.806 ms

-(~/:#)-> ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.131) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.131): icmp_seq=1 ttl=114 time=240 ms
64 bytes from rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.131): icmp_seq=2 ttl=114 time=231 ms
64 bytes from rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.131): icmp_seq=4 ttl=114 time=237 ms
64 bytes from rdirwww-vip.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.131): icmp_seq=5 ttl=114 time=232 ms

--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 received, 20% packet loss, time 4027ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 231.551/235.507/240.924/3.875 ms

-(~/:#)-> ping performancing.com
PING performancing.com (216.251.243.173) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from vip (216.251.243.173): icmp_seq=1 ttl=100 time=337 ms
64 bytes from vip (216.251.243.173): icmp_seq=2 ttl=100 time=337 ms
64 bytes from vip (216.251.243.173): icmp_seq=3 ttl=100 time=338 ms

--- performancing.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 337.500/337.795/338.171/0.727 ms

There are no particular announcement about restoration of the International link in TMNET’s website yet, though.

Bye Michael Lai, Hello Zainab Hashim

Zainab Hashim? Who’s that? That’s the new TMNET CEO. Well, acting CEO.

Telekom Malaysia Bhd said in a statement that the company was in the process of looking for a suitable successor as the present CEO, Michael Lai would be leaving his current position to pursue an external career opportunity.

Zainab, who has been with TM Net since 2001, would serve in the acting capacity during the transitional period, the statement said.

She has been with Telekom Malaysia for the last 28 years serving in various capacity and her experience covers a broad spectrum of telecommunications and multimedia business.

Oh my oh my… only one thing comes to mind when a company CEO quits… (use your imagination). I do not need to comment.

As for Zainab, good luck. I really hope that she will be able to solve TMNET woes. Really. Not the other way round.

… as reported by Bernama.

Traffic Shaping According to Time Of Day?

Looking at my traffic graph generated from the router, I can see that my traffic increases at night and gradually slows down right after 0800. Traffic remains slow until going up again at about 2300. Interesting.

Streamyx 1 day

Streamyx 1 week

Is TMNET implementing traffic shaping based on hours of the day? Anyway the traffic at night hovers around 10kB/s download and 7kB/s upload, not that much 🙁

I guess it’s better than nothing but I really hope they can increase it a bit more… come on..

Traffic Shaping on TMNET Streamyx?

Everywhere I see people complaining that their Internet access speed via TMNET Streamyx is slow, and there are accusations that TMNET is using traffic shaping technology to limit bandwidth for certain applications. I don’t know how true are these, and have never bothered to check.

However lately I have been experiencing very slow Bittorrent traffic, as you can see from the table below. October traffic is much worse. I don’t really care too much as long as web browsing and POP traffic is fine. So far everything else seems fine but connections to GMail via POP3S / HTTP sometimes chokes.

While I know it is not valid (legally and morally) for me to complaint about slow P2P or bittorrent traffic, this is just an example of how slow things are becoming.
August
September
Day
Outgoing MB
Incoming MB
Totals
Outgoing MB
Incoming MB
Totals
1
3397.6
2111.7
5509.3
2115.7
1321.8
3437.5
2
3136
1350.8
4486.8
2249.1
222.6
2471.7
3
3941.8
3239.6
7181.4
2570.1
1472.4
4042.4
4
3990.9
2352.5
6343.4
2447.6
3151
5598.5
5
3745.7
384.9
4130.6
2218.6
692.2
2910.8
6
3944.5
553.7
4498.2
1951.5
1666.9
3618.3
7
3969.4
836.9
4806.3
2485.3
1615
4100.2
8
3690.5
331.3
4021.9
2594.9
483.2
3078.1
9
3494.3
1153.2
4647.5
2754.2
911.8
3666
10
3332.9
680.5
4013.5
1979.2
1764.2
3743.4
11
3569.7
1801.5
5371.2
1752
777.2
2529.3
12
3693.2
5103.8
8797
988
255.2
1243.2
13
1476.2
3140.6
4616.8
1406.5
784.9
2191.4
14
3727
3272.3
6999.4
1459.8
211.8
1671.5
15
3740
3970.2
7710.2
1393.3
449.6
1842.9
16
3125.8
2780
5905.8
1443.7
397.3
1840.9
17
3151.6
1864
5015.6
1238.8
1774.7
3013.5
18
2158.1
6072.7
8230.9
1327.8
2465.5
3793.3
19
2077
6462.9
8539.9
1654.6
422.9
2077.5
20
1840.2
5045
6885.2
1628.3
741.9
2370.2
21
2014.2
5440.4
7454.6
1001.7
1339
2340.7
22
2151.6
2312
4463.6
874.3
908.2
1782.5
23
1864.6
2069.8
3934.4
1474.1
1133.6
2607.7
24
1843.1
1472.5
3315.6
954.8
735.6
1690.4
25
2235.3
1022.7
3258
887.9
563.4
1451.3
26
2241.9
2720.2
4962
705.6
459.2
1164.8
27
1899.7
259.3
2159
345.7
245.9
591.6
28
2173.6
1051.7
3225.3
567.4
197.3
764.7
29
2110.8
2146.8
4257.6
398.5
138.8
537.3
30
2597.5
2089.1
4686.6
475.2
833.1
1308.2
31
2308.3
524.3
2832.5
88643.2
73616.8
162260.1 MB
(158.5 GB)
45343.9
28136
73479.9 MB
(71.8 GB)

The table above is combined from 2 tables produced by trafvol.pl script downloaded from the Internet sometime ago. Measurements are taken only on the eth1 interface of my torrent box, which is the external interface connected to the router. Traffic above includes web traffic as the box is also running squid serving 4 PCs in my home.

I think October results will be much lower, as can be seen below the daily traffic passing through is less than 1GB (compare this to August and September daily values).

Day Month Outgoing MB Incoming MB Totals
1 Oct 308.7 525.1 833.8
2 Oct 321.6 268.4 589.9
Month Oct 630.2 793.5 1423.7 MB (1.4 GB)
statistics last updated at 18:35:02 on 02. Oct 2006

I’m too tired to rant anymore, so from now on I’ll just see what happens, while praying that a miracle would happen and the Government will realize that if TM monopoly to the Internet goes on, their IT-vision for Malaysia is just a dream. Angan-angan Mat Jenin.