012 Smile internet

Looks like now, my internet connection is fine.

After I've spent a lot of time last week on my cell phone with them, their VoIP box passed away, and they replaced it by new one after 2 days. Another fail is when I ask for free call back from support because I on my cell, they saying "wait, it will not take more than a minute" and then again and again.

All was need is a right support guy, his name is Eugene.
He is not tell to Cisco employee "type ping on black screen, it's spelling P-I-N-G" or "you need a PC technician, you have problem with your PC" that's just so unprofessional for support host. I guess, the main issue on any support service its experience and quality of that young boys and girls, 012 is the worst company.

Also, if 012 representatives (not support) promise to call you back on next day to check is that fixed or when to take replacement, that will never happen.

But anyway, thumb down for 012, better choose Bezeqint or Netvision.

012

I want to clarify why I complain about 012 and why you should avoid buy their service.
I'm not saying that it happens with all their clients, but from what I know - you better find another provider.

I work at Cisco and till April 25th 2010 our company was paid for home broadband internet, usually 5 Mb / 512 kb. I was happy subscriber of HOT business as infrastructure and Bezeqint Business as ISP.

Now, as company reduces costs and employees need to switch to self paid internet. Cisco called all ISP to the office and the come with different deals - 012 Smile, Netvision, Bezeqint and Orange. Most of us chose 012 cause of lowest prices. They have bundles (ISP + infrastructure) or just ISP service.

Compare details on 012 deal to Cisco versus regular request as new client, prices in NIS.
Client type: Business vs. Private
ISP cost: 30 vs. 90
HOT cost: 72 vs. 80
Bundle cost: 102 vs. 130
In summary, if you are new client you will pay 130 NIS every month for 5/512, if you from Cisco - 102 NIS. Pretty good prices for us, because we have a big group of people looking for internet.

Now, when I switched to 012 from Bezeqint, here start my problems.
The major are
- torrent traffic is shaped (more details in next post)
- L2TP connection lost from 2-4 times per day
- support is also playing ping-pong with you sending you to HOT, HOT to 012 and so on.

Before Cisco (3 years ago) I was also using 012 and was very unhappy with them because of same things. I thought they changed - wrong! Now they won't let me leave and keep fucking my brain every day (details to follow).

By the way, you can try them for 14 days and disconnect without even say a reason as new remark to law says.

012 vs Bezeqint

This is a simple check I made yesterday evening - same torrent files were tested over 10 minutes.

Bad ISP - traffic shaping - 012 Gold lines

Good ISP - no shaping - Bezeqint

More details to follow...

012 Smile - Voice box after router

How to connect 012 voice box after your router and control it.

This is my device

Make: AudioCodes
Model: MP-202 (012 uses MP-202/012/CBL)
I got with M.Date 12/2008

user@wazup:~$ sudo nmap -sS -O 10.100.101.1

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-05-06 01:24 IDT
Interesting ports on 10.100.101.1:
Not shown: 995 closed ports
PORT     STATE    SERVICE
23/tcp   filtered telnet
443/tcp  open     https
992/tcp  open     telnets
8080/tcp open     http-proxy
8443/tcp open     https-alt
MAC Address: 00:90:8F:09:93:DC (Audio Codes)
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.4.X
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.35 (likely embedded)

Also another suspicious ports
2555 open uknown
8023 open unknown
2945/sctp filtered h248-binary
7626/sctp filtered simco

UDP scan took 20 minutes.
user@wazup:~$ sudo nmap -sU 10.100.101.1

Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-05-06 01:26 IDT
Interesting ports on 10.100.101.1:
Not shown: 983 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
53/udp open|filtered domain
67/udp open|filtered dhcps
68/udp open|filtered dhcpc
161/udp open|filtered snmp
789/udp open|filtered unknown
965/udp open|filtered unknown
1007/udp open|filtered unknown
1105/udp open|filtered unknown
1900/udp open|filtered upnp
16503/udp open|filtered unknown
20678/udp open|filtered unknown
21524/udp open|filtered unknown
21644/udp open|filtered unknown
21780/udp open|filtered unknown
21898/udp open|filtered unknown
49173/udp open|filtered unknown
55043/udp open|filtered unknown
MAC Address: 00:90:8F:09:93:DC (Audio Codes)

So, to place this box after your router and control it, you need to connect your PC via cable in LAN/PC port, wait for IP address from it, check a Gateway IP and use it in browser with 8080 port (https://GATEWAY-IP/ also works). Username is "user", password is "wel-012!" (all without quotes). Set Connection Type to "Automatic IP Address Ethernet Connection".

No you need to set QoS rules for SIP and RTP protocols - this will help prioritize voice traffic over other, so when you need to call, your torrent will not affect you, because voice will get high priority.
Ports are 5060, 5061, 5004, 5005.

If support guys can't reach it, setup port forwarding to black box, they should be happy.

Led indication
SIP registration status LED indication - a successful registration ('online' state) is indicated by a LED flashing slowly (a very short flash every 4 seconds). This indication is per phone line.
The LEDs labeled 'Phone 1' and 'Phone 2'reflect the status of the phones connected to the MP-202:
ON - During power-up and when the phone is off-hook.
OFF - Normal / the phone is on-hook
Flashing - Phone is ringing

See also about that in Hebrew

Learning Adobe Flex

Last week I learned some Adobe Flex.
They got great video course - Flex in a Week - recommended if you want a smooth start without too much reading.

In frame of this week, I did a small project - company car chooser. Most big companies (like mine Cisco) offer to their employees leased cars. Sometimes it profitable, sometimes not (out of this article scope).

So, people should choose a car and CarChooser will help them to make a first choice (or minimize options) by simple criteria filtering like budget, major car specs, tax rates (for Israel). It uses Google Image Search service for preview images, so it's very cool. Before that we have simple cars table with names and links to makes pages. You need to open 5-10 links until you find how much you will pay, how it looks like and can you use trunk for folding bikes with food at once.

Online demo
Source code on GitHub

See also
Flex developer center
Flex/AIR Application Scope Tips