ISSPRINT.RVW 980915 Comparison Review Company and product: Company: Sprint Canada (cf. CallNet) Address: P. O. Box 5100, Station Don Mills, Don Mills, ON M3C 3W4 Phone: +1-416-496-1644 Fax: Sales: +1-888-812-3279 Support: +1-888-395-3279 help@sprint.ca Contact: Email: support@sprint.ca Other: http://www.sprintcanada.ca Product: The Most Online Summary: "unlimited" dial-up Internet access Cost: C$22.95/month Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good) "Friendliness" Installation 2 Ease of use 2 Help systems 1 Compatibility 3 Company Stability 2 Support 1 Documentation 1 System required 2 Performance 2 Availability 2 Local Support 1 General Description: The Most Online is a usage insensitive dial-up Internet access service intended for home use. MSIE Internet access software is provided for installation. Installation is only available on Windows 95 machines. Comparison of features and specifications User Friendliness Installation An installation CD-ROM is provided for Windows 95 (and presumably 98) but for no other system. The CD-ROM contains the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, Outlook mail user agent, and related newsreader of the appropriate release level. The installation program installs the software on the target system and then invokes a call, through a scripted Web page, to an isolated, secure server for account setup. The account server (accessed via an 800 number) will only accept calls from a certain level of modem. Because of the use of standard Microsoft supplied modem data, I was not able to connect with this server on initial installation. Three calls to the first level of Sprint support did not resolve the issue, but upon finally reaching second level support I was able to get enough information to troubleshoot the problem myself, although only because I am well familiar with the configuration settings for modems and keep my manuals handy. Ease of use The service is a standard dial-up TCP/IP connection, so any standard Windows sockets program can be installed and used. The initial installation is configured with no automatic redial capability and a 20 minute idle time cutout. Help systems The installation configures the IE Web browser such that the Sprint Canada "The Most Online" page becomes the home page. This does provide a set of initial tips for using the net, but loaded extremely slowly. Compatibility No problems have been noted with Windows sockets programs attempted. Company Stability Sprint is both a long distance and Internet service provider in Canada. The parent company, CallNet, recently acquired another large long distance and Internet provider. Company Support Everyone who works with computers has a favorite technical support nightmare story, but in more than a decade of reviewing computer products I have never personally experienced technical support that is as bad as that I have received from Sprint. Only one of the first level technical support people that I have dealt with has made a single helpful comment, and not once has a problem been correctly diagnosed at first level support. First level staff, in general, appear to be woefully ignorant of even basic computer operations, let alone computer communications. One evening, after numerous dialling attempts had failed, I suspected that the whole modem pool was down and called to enquire if that was the case. I specifically asked about that eventuality, but it was only after ten minutes of pointless queries about my system on the part of the support person that she finally agreed to call the local modem pool number, checked the list on her computer for the number, and reported, "Oh! It says all the modems in your area are down." On another occasion technical support demanded to know which number I was calling (for some reason there are two calling numbers in the Vancouver area, and they seem to operate independently) before telling me which number was not working properly. While most staffers seem to be polite, if ignorant, there are a significant number who present a very smug, if not outright rude, attitude. One staffer took a positively sadistic delight in insisting on taking me screen by button by dialogue box through an irrelevant series of checks that had nothing to do with the problem at hand. When you call technical support there is an option to access a report for the status of all servers. However, this report always states that "all servers are operating normally," even when servers are known to be down, or only operating sporadically. On one occasion the system did admit that the authentication server was down, but it would be rather difficult to hide a problem like that. One of the most serious problems with support, however, is that Sprint refuses to even attempt to diagnose any problem unless you are running the originally supplied software. If you use any other programs, you are out of luck. In fact, if you attempt to upgrade to current levels of any of the supplied Microsoft programs you must "downgrade" to the versions supplied on the CD-ROM before Sprint will try to help. (Since many of the problems I have experienced with Sprint are intermittent and possibly related to specific modems in the pool, this action will often coincidentally solve the problem by forcing a reboot and reconnect.) If you are able to get through to second level technical support, you will find that the staff are more knowledgeable and courteous. However, only once that I have been able to get through to second level support has a problem been properly diagnosed, and never has it been properly remediated. As security consultants, my colleagues and I continually remind people that no Internet Service Provider or online service will ever ask you for your password. This is not the case with Sprint. I have been asked several times for my user name and password, even by second level support people. This is the more problematic since the only way to change your password, after the initial account setup, is to ask technical support to change it. (Sprint have been promising a password change function ever since I got on the system, but have yet to implement it.) Documentation No documentation is supplied. System Requirements Installation requires Windows 95 and probably a minimum v.42 level modem. Once the account has been set up, it can be used, with a manual transfer of the account information, by any TCP/IP compatible machine. Performance "The Most Online" service is intended for home use, and, paradoxically, this makes it very suitable for business use in many cases. The evening hours can be very active, but I rarely get a busy signal during business hours. However, the service is very basic. Although the sales agent promised multiple email accounts when I signed up, you only get one. (Sprint apparently feels that the promise of multiple accounts is adequately fulfilled by the fact that outside enterprises such as Hotmail provide "free" email accounts accessible via Web interfaces.) There is no provision of Web page space. Internet dial-up access, POP (Post Office Protocol) email service for one account, and a Usenet news server is the extent of the service. The mail server seems to be relatively stable, although I did have fairly serious problems with lost mail when I first signed up with the service. Mail access is fairly speedy if you have a good mail user agent (such as Pegasus) on your end. The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server that handles outgoing traffic is considerably slower. The news server is very problematic. On the one hand, Sprint does supply a very large number of newsgroups, over 37,000 at last count. On the other hand, all manner of access to news group lists, headers, and the bodies of large messages is very slow. Speed varies according to the news reader used, but is never really fast even with the best program. Initially, on a slower computer, the frequent stalls caused numerous crashes of the newsreader program, but on a faster machine running NT the system seemed more able to recover from the timeouts. However, in recent months, approximately one third of connections seems to result in no access permission to the news server. This is unrelated to the newsreader in use at the time, and seems to be more probably associated with specific modems in the pool (although this cannot, of course, be fully diagnosed from the user side). This connection specific loss of privilege is the more annoying given Sprints frequent line dropping. Sprint provide flat fee, unlimited Internet access. Presumably in an attempt to keep people from tying up the lines all day, the initial installation configures the dial-up networking to drop the line after twenty minutes of no activity on the line. However, since this is configured in the Microsoft Dial-Up Networking, there is no way to prevent knowledgeable users from dropping this restriction. Sprint, therefore, seems to have instituted an enforced dropping of the connection from their end after a certain period of no activity. Whether related to this function or not, subsequently Sprint has demonstrated very frequent loss of carrier even during active transfers. In my own experience this seems to average about one loss of connection per hour of active online time. However, as with all random occurrences, this can happen many times in a short period. Frequently a connection will be dropped within a minute of it being established. General access to the Internet seems to be good. Speed of file transfers and access to Web sites seems to correspond to the particular sites, so it would seem that Sprint's backbone bandwidth is good. Note, however, that this only applies during business hours, which is not a busy time for the Sprint service. Access to mail and news, as well as file transfers and Web browsing can be extremely tedious during evening hours. Server access is particularly slow in the evenings, and it is not unusual for a download of the newsgroup update list to take over two hours. DNS (Domain Name Service) tables seem to be solid, although international sites can sometimes be a problem. An annoying aspect of the service, particularly in light of the intermittent connection faults, is the sporadic and unannounced bringing down of servers for maintenance. As of the latter part of 1998 service interruptions or slowdowns have been very frequent. At one time server status was reported in the recorded welcome message on the technical support line, but this practice has been rendered useless by a failure to update it. Even more annoying is the fact that support staff now ask for your identity before confirming that the service is, in fact, down. (It's rather a giveaway though, since if nothing is wrong they don't ask for your ID. If they ask, something is wrong.) (Interestingly, the one exception to reasonably rapid loading of Web sites is Sprint's own, which, of course, is configured as the default startup or home page on installation. During the final drafting of this review some programming loop had occurred on the page that caused an infinite loop while the site endlessly recontacted itself for the next section of the page. The only thing that actually got displayed was a highly ironic "Please wait while loading ......." legend. Sprint also now holds the world's record for most persistent and annoying insistence on setting a cookie, and is the first site ever to have forced me to disable *all* cookies.) Availability Sprint service access points have been available in 17 major centres across Canada since it started. However, while there have been ongoing promises for expansion of this list, in almost a year no new points of presence have been added. Local Support A Web site with minimal technical information is provided. Company support is available via a tool-free number. Support Requirements For nominal use, the system should be accessible even to novice users immediately upon installation. Reconfiguration of modem initialization strings is probably needed with less heavily marketed modems. Reconfiguration for automatic redial is desireable for home users. General Notes Sprint appears to be generally solid as an access provider, with some annoying, but not fatal, glitches. The insistence on the use of the MSIE suite of access tools is not as bad as it might be, since the 3.02 level required is less prone to security loopholes than the more recent 4.x versions. Once installed support should not be required, which is good, since it doesn't appear to be provided in any meaningful way. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998 ISSPRINT.RVW 980915