Vision Frustration in San Diego

I've been using my Treo 600 to access various email accounts since
February of 2004. Among those accounts is my Road Runner account.

To access the RR email account, I use the server address that RR
specifies, pop-server.san.rr.com.

It has worked perfectly up until mid-October. Since then, the email
application sporadically responds "We were unable to connect to the
server pop-server.san.rr.com...". Actually, it responds this way more
often than not.

If I replace pop-server.san.rr.com with the numeric IP address to which
that DNS address resolves (66.75.160.45), there's no problem at all.
Clearly, that's a very unsatisfactory, very temporary work-around. And,
coupled with the fact that I have no problem accessing this DNS address
from any network other than Vision (I often use networks both inside and
outside the Road Runner system), this points to a misconfiguration in
Vision's DNS servers.

I reported this to *2. Took half an hour to convince the guy (who
doesn't know what "DNS" is, of course) to write up a ticket and pass it
to the Vision network administrators. By the time someone called me
back on it, it appeared as if the problem had been cleared (I hadn't yet
understood that this was a sporadic problem.) By the next day, the
problem had returned.

I write up a clear, cogent description of the problem and email it to
the tech support address on the Sprint PCS website. I promptly get a
reply saying that I'll have to talk on the phone to Vision tech support
-- there is no email-based support for Vision!

So, I call Vision tech support. An hour more on the phone (including
having some tech support fellow "accidentally" hang up on me after a
half hour), and I get a new ticket opened (or an old one reopened).

A supposedly knowledgeable person calls my phone (blocked caller id, of
course), and I spend yet another half hour convincing him that this is
not merely a configuration problem on my phone -- it's an obvious DNS
misconfiguration problem on the Vision network. After all this, he
expresses surprise that I had ever had this working (he's of the opinion
that one can only access the Sprint POP server within the Vision
network!!! I've never even been told about a Sprint server, and I have
no interest in using a sprint email account.) I vent a little bit
(after having wasted at least 90 minutes of my time trying to convince
them that they have a problem, and -- what do you know -- I've been hung
up on!

I generally have had positive experiences with Sprint customer service.
This has NOT been one of them.

As things stand, any Road Runner customers in San Diego have to use a
nasty hack in order to reach their email accounts. And Sprint seems
unwilling to address the problem. Actually, they're unwilling to allow
a knowledgeable customer to report the problem to an empowered
professional. It's very sad. And very frustrating!

Next stop is probably http://www.planetfeedback.com/

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› See More: Vision Frustration in San Diego

In article <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>I've been using my Treo 600 to access various email accounts since
>February of 2004. Among those accounts is my Road Runner account.
>
>To access the RR email account, I use the server address that RR
>specifies, pop-server.san.rr.com.
>
>It has worked perfectly up until mid-October. Since then, the email
>application sporadically responds "We were unable to connect to the
>server pop-server.san.rr.com...". Actually, it responds this way more
>often than not.
>
>If I replace pop-server.san.rr.com with the numeric IP address to which
>that DNS address resolves (66.75.160.45), there's no problem at all.
>Clearly, that's a very unsatisfactory, very temporary work-around. And,
>coupled with the fact that I have no problem accessing this DNS address
>from any network other than Vision (I often use networks both inside and
>outside the Road Runner system), this points to a misconfiguration in
>Vision's DNS servers.

I used Vision in San Diego just a few weeks ago for an entire week and did
not experience any DNS problems. It all worked fine.

While I understand your frustration, I think a problem like this is a bit
outside the expertise that one can expect from a typical Vision tech.

Have you tried to nail down the problem further ? Is part of the problem
that the RR server is constantly changing IP addresses ? Is the problem
happening to other sites/DNS names on the Internet. I didn't have any
such problems, including accessing my home server, which is using
using RR as its ISP. The only similar problem I saw was that Sprint
Vision was using a different, heretofore unknown (to me) IP block.
But that shouldn't affect POP access. Did you have problems with
SMTP access ?

Daniel Tso wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>I've been using my Treo 600 to access various email accounts since
>>February of 2004. Among those accounts is my Road Runner account.
>>
>>To access the RR email account, I use the server address that RR
>>specifies, pop-server.san.rr.com.
>>
>>It has worked perfectly up until mid-October. Since then, the email
>>application sporadically responds "We were unable to connect to the
>>server pop-server.san.rr.com...". Actually, it responds this way more
>>often than not.
>>
>>If I replace pop-server.san.rr.com with the numeric IP address to which
>>that DNS address resolves (66.75.160.45), there's no problem at all.
>>Clearly, that's a very unsatisfactory, very temporary work-around. And,
>>coupled with the fact that I have no problem accessing this DNS address
>
>>from any network other than Vision (I often use networks both inside and
>
>>outside the Road Runner system), this points to a misconfiguration in
>>Vision's DNS servers.
>
>
> I used Vision in San Diego just a few weeks ago for an entire week and did
> not experience any DNS problems. It all worked fine.

Are you a _San Diego_ Road Runner customer? I have no problems with
Vision, OTHER than when trying to access my San Diego Road Runner POP
server using its DNS address.

> While I understand your frustration, I think a problem like this is a bit
> outside the expertise that one can expect from a typical Vision tech.

Clearly the case. The problem is that they are unwilling to connect me
with a more-than-typical Vision tech. Nor are they willing to look into
the problem at all.

> Have you tried to nail down the problem further ? Is part of the problem
> that the RR server is constantly changing IP addresses ?

No, definitely not. Otherwise, the numeric IP address wouldn't work.
I've used the same numeric IP address to access my RR POP server for 3
weeks now.

> Is the problem
> happening to other sites/DNS names on the Internet.

Not so far as I've seen.

> I didn't have any
> such problems, including accessing my home server, which is using
> using RR as its ISP.

That's not the problem. This is not a connectivity problem. It's a DNS
resolution problem.

Are you using a Treo 600 or a Pocket PC phone? Have you configured it
to read your Road Runner email account? That's where the problem lies.
If I specify the "incoming" server as "pop-server.san.rr.com", it fails
to connect. If I specify "66.75.160.45", it connects satisfactorily.

> The only similar problem I saw was that Sprint
> Vision was using a different, heretofore unknown (to me) IP block.

What do you mean? You mean the IP address of the Sprint phone device?
In what way was it "unknown"?

> But that shouldn't affect POP access. Did you have problems with
> SMTP access ?

Only with DNS resolution of the POP server's address. I don't use the
Road Runner SMTP server from outside the RR network -- they don't let
you do so. I use another SMTP server to send mail.

Actually, I suppose I ought to learn how to configure my Treo to use the
Sprint SMTP server. (I never use the Sprint POP server for anything.)

[email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>If I replace pop-server.san.rr.com with the numeric IP address to which
>>>that DNS address resolves (66.75.160.45), there's no problem at all.

>> I used Vision in San Diego just a few weeks ago for an entire week and did
>> not experience any DNS problems. It all worked fine.

> Are you a _San Diego_ Road Runner customer? I have no problems with
> Vision, OTHER than when trying to access my San Diego Road Runner POP
> server using its DNS address.

no I'm not...

> > Is the problem
> > happening to other sites/DNS names on the Internet.

> Not so far as I've seen.

While I agree that it would be better if a Vision tech would be willing
and smart enough to look into this issue, it sounds like there is at least
a 50-50 chance that the problem lies with RR's DNS servers rather than
Vision's, and that such problems, such as DNS misconfiguration, would not
be easy for a Vision tech to decipher. It's unfortunate, but in situations
like this, the customer often has to do a bit more digging and research
to narrow down the source of the error, if it is ever going to be fixed...

> Are you using a Treo 600 or a Pocket PC phone? Have you configured it
> to read your Road Runner email account? That's where the problem lies.
> If I specify the "incoming" server as "pop-server.san.rr.com", it fails
> to connect. If I specify "66.75.160.45", it connects satisfactorily.

No I have not, I don't use my RR email account -- my phone is a Samsung I500.

So... have you tried to access pop-server.san.rr.com from another ISP (other
than RR or Vision) to make sure that RR isn't doing something funky like
only DNS-advertising that DNS record within RR ?

Have you examined the DNS records for pop-server.san.rr.com to look for
any anomalies ? It's been a while for me, but perhaps things like
inappropriate C records, or multiple NS records particularly where some
of the servers are non-functional, or too short expiration times, etc.

Have you tried using a PC and pointing it to the Vision name servers, or
similarly using NSLOOKUP again the Vision name servers to see/verify that
those name servers don't know about pop-server.san.rr.com ?

I just checked pop-server.san.rr.com, and one anomaly is that it resolves
(using our university's DNS servers) to an IP address DIFFERENT that the
one you mention: 66.75.160.46 instead of .45. Further it looks like the
reverse resolution of 66.75.160.45 is actually pop1-server.san.rr.com
while that of 66.75.160.46 is pop2-server.san.rr.com, YET NEITHER
pop1-server.san.rr.com NOR pop2-server.san.rr.com can be resolved going
forward. My DNS is a little rusty, but I don't think this is good.

My bet is the the problem lies with the configuration of the RR DNS
records in a way that Vision doesn't like. But given that Vision seems
to deal with the rest of the world okay, it would seem that RR needs to
fix its DNS records. But again this is only with a few minutes of poking
around...

> > The only similar problem I saw was that Sprint
> > Vision was using a different, heretofore unknown (to me) IP block.

> What do you mean? You mean the IP address of the Sprint phone device?
> In what way was it "unknown"?

What I mean is simply that the IP addresses that Vision assigned my phone
while in SD were from an IP block that I never seen Vision use before.
No big deal, but that meant I needed to inform my servers that I would
be coming in from a new set of IP addresses. It also brings up the issue
of how Sprint, Verizon, etc are going to deal with this explosion of
IP-capable phones. If all Vision phones were in use simultaneously,
even a Class A block would be very difficult to manage efficiently.
I would imagine that one would have to move to IPv6 soon, even if only
internally within a carrier's network...