Quote:
Originally Posted by HipAintCheap
I am fuming a bit right now about some incorrect information posted in Party Poker's blog titled, "Our response to the last events of our 2nd Garden State Super Series on Sunday night"
The ISP Section of the post is incorrect and full of misinformation. Jeffrey Haas(Party Poker's Group Director), states the following(his comments are in bold, my response to each idea is italicized...
The ISP he is referencing, but will not name for probably legal issues or not to deter players/new players from still trying to play is Verizon FIOS. He is right users using Verizon FIOS have had connectivity issues for the past week, and the problem continues to happen as late as last night. At least he acknowledges that it was the biggest factor for disconnection issues. My problem is when Jeffrey, states, 'The problem is beyond our control." That statement is misleading and just false. Verizon FIOS is not to blame for the issue. It is a server side issue on behalf of Borgota/Party Poker. I say this because I have experience as a network administrator and understand how servers and networks connect/work. Verizon is the middle man between us players and the Borgota/Party Poker servers. One of two things occurred due to the network setup of Party Poker.., First, Verizon's DNS might have been rejected because of the overwhelming amount of users trying to access certain ports on Party Poker's server side, whether the firewall, proxy, or actually server rejected/limited the connections is only something Party Poker's network guys would know. It's a safety measure to limit port access to guard against DDOS attacks, and hamper down the system. The other possibility is that Party Poker's server's have not been configured correctly to accept certain addresses from Verizon FIOS. This would still be Party Poker's fault due to not configuring their network correctly. Either way both problems are on Party Poker's end and they still want to push blame on to Verizon. Unacceptable. I know user Niss contacted Verizon and they tried trouble shoot to no avail. I also called FIOS yesterday since they are my ISP provider and talked to actual Network Administrators who agreed the problem is on Party Poker's server side. This is such a big deal to me because the problem can only be fixed once Party Poker understand the issues is on their end!!!!
Careful, I appreciate and I am sure other players goodwill, but what happens when Party Poker realizes the issue is on their server side? Will they then reissue a new apology and admit that us players who had issues deserved to be credited, not because of their Goodwill? The lack of true responsibility for the issues is disheartening.
Lastly, I am happy that they are continuing to investigate what is going on, but I hope they keep us updated, whether it'd be this forum or their blog. This is a problem that needs to be resolved urgently, and I hope Mr. Haas understands that.
All feedback agreeing or disagreeing is welcome because I know I am not always right and there are things my mind might have missed. Thank you all.
I assure you that there are many people who work in IT in one form or another who are also users of Party / Borgata. Not all network engineers have the same level of understanding of the back-end systems that are needed to keep these sites operating properly.
I don't think it's wise for us to diagnose their problems publicly from afar. None of us has administrator access to any of their systems. And in the end it's their responsibility to fix it. Believe me I have my own ideas about their system, software and network issues.
I largely agree with the points you made. Yet I feel like we are missing a key point here. This announcement says that these problems started on the last day of the GSSS. Many of us have been reporting the exact same problems for weeks / months / etc. This is just another SLAP IN THE FACE to all those who were told over and over that there was no issue or that the issue was "our fault" in some way.
The issues were only further clouded by those who jumped the gun and assumed this was because they were on Verizon. Please note the following.
1. Verizon Fios serves millions of customers. It is not likely that all the people on Verizon's network had these disconnection issues. The number of complaints would be much greater if everybody on Fios was experiencing this problem.
2. I have had the exact same issues while connected via other ISPs including Optimum Online / Cablevision.
3. Many people who use Fios admit these problems do not happen all the time. This applies to me as well. I had problems a while back, and then went through a period where it seemed like the problems had been resolved. Just in time for the GSSS, not only did the problems resurface but it seemed like more varieties of them cropped up.
4. Every trace points to network servers / services controlled by Party / Borgata.
I think there are many people at Party who are working hard to try to deliver a great product to us. I feel for those people. But before we quibble over the EASY stuff, somebody needs to dramatically change the culture. Users who call to report a problem should not be blamed for the problem by default. Somebody trained customer service that unless every single user in a tournament is disconnected, any individual user who reports the problem is somehow the cause of it. I know I called less often because I was tired of hearing it was on "my end." Maybe if they had a real help-desk function they would have identified and fixed the real problems sooner.
Fixing network problems and technology problems are not the biggest challenges here.