Sprint Broad Band

[Doug Winterburn]

I just received a letter from SBB telling me "We have recently learned
that your PC is infected with one or more viruses or Trojan Horses."

Well, since they suggested I consider a firewall, and since they claim
to have a firewall, and since I do have a linux firewall - I was rather
panicked!  I ran around the house checking the virtual PC's (vmware) and
any other PC's that might have had consentual contact with those on my
network.  There was nothing as described or as they intimated or that
showed up in all my logs/virus scanners.

So, to find out what I had missed (since they explained their innocent
port scans which I have been seeing for a long time had found this
illness), I called.  I asked what in particular they had found (as I
really wanted to know how to plug the hole) and the techno-wizard that
answered (after 10 minutes or so) said that "it should have been worded
differently - you don't have a virus, but it could happen".  So,
basically, they send out spam snail mail letters to cover their A** in
case their network might be compromised and the lawyers show up.  No
matter that I try my best to "keep clean" - just send out the bulk email
telling me I'm infected!

I'm still searching (for an alternative)...

-Doug


Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 16:23:10 -0700
To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
From: Jim Gunkel <jimg@nevrona.com>
Subject: RE: Sprint Broad Band
orp.com>
Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us

At 16:11 10/26/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>You lucky I NEVER get 0% packet loss.
>my stats are somewere
>12 - 35 % packet loss
>although I have seen worse results.

I figured I had beaten up on them enough on the message so I didn't want
to
mention that about 5% of the time that we click on a link in the
browser,
it comes back with an error message (i.e. lost packet) and we have to
reload to get the page again.  About every 5 or 6 pings I get a "request
timed out" error, but since Windows' brain-dead ping program counts that
as
a 0ms time, it makes the Average number look better than it is so I
included one with all hits.  This lost packet rate is usually much worse
in
the late afternoons.

Jim Gunkel
Nevrona Designs