Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 23:37:14 +1000 From: David Nugent <davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> To: grog@FreeBSD.ORG (Greg Lehey) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat) Subject: Re: Anecdote: Connecting to the Internet in Australia Message-ID: <199706031337.XAA00445@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 30 May 1997 10:50:12 %2B0930." <199705300121.KAA01561@papillon.lemis.com>
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> Well, I don't like telcos any more than the next person, but this > is a really good price. So I went to the local Telstra shop to > ask for an application form. They told me that there was no such > thing: they'd sell me Internet software for $20, and I could just > sign up under "Windows" via an 800 number. I told them about the > stuff I had read on the web, and they reluctantly called somebody > who faxed them the form, which I filled out and they, with obvious > bad grace, faxed back again. Heh, this is the Telstra we all know and love. This exactly situation happens to me so often that I've come to expect it whenever I walk into a TBO. If it isn't something about a standard residential phone service I'm usually very surprised when someone on the desk actually knows what I'm talking about. I'm not surprised very often. For an arganisation (and I use that word advisedly) that is supposed to be servicing a communications industry, their internal communications and staff information system is *terrible*. > believe. Anyway, they won't connect until the end of the last > month--to quote a Telstra person, their internal organization > leaves something to be desired. >From the horse's mouth. Absolutely right, and I've seen this a few times from the inside also. Historically, I guess it isn't too surprising. Telstra ex-Telecom ex-PMG was evolved from a government department, after all. Internally the organisation suffers from the "empire building" disease, where possession of current information is a key strategy to achieving advancement, and is thus are held as a closely guarded secret. This is perhaps a little more cynical than it should be, but it's not far from the truth. > the most obnoxious mail IDs I've heard, something like > <name@unpronouncablehostname.telstra.com.au>. When I suggested > that their mail gurus should put in a masquerade name in their > sendmail.cf to get rid of unpronouncablehostname (I didn't quite > phrase it that way :-), she told me that the problem was that they > were running Microsoft mail, and it wouldn't work. She also asked > me not to quote her, so obviously they're at least ashamed of it. Well, that's something. :-) Internally, Telstra have completely sold out to Microsoft and have made quite an investment (!!!) in MS products, with tens of thousands of pc's around Australia running a wide variety of versions of windows on Novell LANs. They're not likely to change that, and have had to make all sorts of amazing kludges to get a functioning mail system (I happened to be contracting for them when MS mail first went in as an 'upgrade' to cc-mail - this is under Win 3.11. What a fiasco! MS Mail's mail database certainly got a very thorough debugging with 15,000+ employee entries :-)). I guess they're apologetic about it because of its rate of failure, which is very often. From what I saw, the most common use of the mail system was to hand around pirated software between employees rather than for anything productive. They know about the problems and even grudgingly live with it, but it doesn't help them or anyone else. AFAIK, noone's doing much to rectify it either, other than hoping for better software from MS in the future. But, fwiw, most of their internet servers run on HPs and NCRs running some sort of UNIX (SVR4, I believe). They work ok only because most Telstra employees don't get anywhere near them. :-) The people who manageme them know what they're doing, but getting to actually contact these people is next to impossible. > Yup. No problems. If this thing also gave me ftp, I wouldn't even > need to sign up for Telstra. What an enormous back door (and what a > tiny front door). :-) > Unfortunately, I *do* need ftp, so I called up Telstra and asked them Hey, did you try to start a ppp session? I wouldn't be all that surprised it it worked! :-) > what was happening. It seems that their menu server is down (probably > runs on Microslop). Should be up later today. But it's probably > worth checking whether the back door remains when the server is > running. I can see they learned a lot about security from Microslop. <grin> Cheers, David David Nugent - Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia Voice +61-3-9791-9547 Data/BBS +61-3-9792-3507 3:632/348@fidonet davidn@freebsd.org davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn/
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