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DEFINITION OF TERMS

SUPPORT BOUNDARY

What is a support boundary?

A support boundary is a restriction or limitation on the support which we are able to offer to our customers. There are many reasons for support boundaries, including the availability of software to both customers and agents, possible service conflicts or possible software conflicts. Once a support boundary has been reached, we are unable to offer further support on the customer issues involved.

Does that mean that the agent will just hang up on me?

No. All reasonable efforts to assist a customer will still be made.

For example: A customer calls in to one of our support centers with a DSL issue that is related to a known outage, but is running the Linux operating system. We are unable to provide any direct assistance to the customer due to the operating system, but we will still be able to advise him of any existing conditions which may be affecting his service.

What if the agent knows how to fix my problem - can’t we ignore the support boundary?

No. While this may seem unfair, support boundaries exist for a reason. Please do not ask our agents to break their support boundaries. They are not allowed to provide support for any reason for services outside of our support boundaries.

If you have any questions regarding our support boundaries, a full description of what we do and do not support is available from our web site, at:

Pacific Bell Support Boundaries: http://dialup.pacbell.net/CustomerSvc/support.html

South Western Bell Support Boundaries: http://dialup.swbell.net/customer/parameters.html

 

POWER CYCLE

‘Power cycling’ is the act of turning all computers and network systems associated with the DSL service fully off and then on again. To power cycle our standard DSL service, follow these steps:

1. Turn OFF the DSL modem. Most models of modem will have a switch on one side. Once the modem has been turned off, the modem lights should disappear.
2. Turn OFF the computer connected to the DSL modem. Go through the standard shut-down sequence first, then completely turn off the machine.
3. Wait TWO FULL MINUTES.
4. Turn the DSL computer back ON. The computer will go through the standard boot-up procedures. Wait until these have been completed.
5. Turn the DSL modem back ON. The modem lights will flash through red and yellow, and should eventually synch back up to green.

 

RESOLVED IP ADDRESS

A resolved IP address is the numerical IP address associated with a given URL. To put it another way, it is the numerical address which ‘points’ to a text domain name (such as ‘www.pacbell.net’). To resolve an IP address, do the following:

1. Bring up a DOS window.
2. At the prompt, type in:
   
   ping <URL>
   
   In this case, we’re trying to resolve the domain yahoo.com. So we type in:
   
   ping yahoo.com
   
   
3. Press ‘enter’. The computer will run a ping test on the selected domain, returning with something that looks very much like this:
   
   Pinging yahoo.com [204.71.200.245] with 32 bytes of data:
   
   Reply from 204.71.200.245: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=247
   Reply from 204.71.200.245: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=247
   Reply from 204.71.200.245: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=247
   Reply from 204.71.200.245: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=247
   
   The number in brackets on the first line of your ping test (in this case, 204.71.200.245) is the resolved IP address.
   
   Helpful Hint #1: Checking Connectifity

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