Is the MicroCell Service Down?

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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joelsplace wrote:

Mine is still down in Keller, TX (DFW area)

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All you can do is call support, notify them, and see if they can confirm that your area is in fact down. That may save you some unnecessary troubleshooting. Otherwise it's power cycle (with or without a hard reset), de-register/re-register, etc.

[joelsplace]

My earlier post explained that I already called and they said the network is down and to wait until Tuesday to call back.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

Sorry. Didn't go back far enough.

[CharlieSchorner]

This morning, December 3, around 8:30 am I received a text message from an AT&T bot that my MicroCell had succsessfully activated.

Two days ago I had performed a "hard reset," de-activated and re-activated the MicroCell, and watched the flashing 3G light. I left it plugged in in the event that something might happen. Apparently, after four weeks, something did happen.

Due to the dogged persistence of my ISP, a fault was found somewhere along the backbone between here and there. A hasty VPN re-route was patched in and, magically, data began to flow. There's no guarantee that a permanent fix has been found, but I called my ISP, on my cell phone, via MicroCell to thank them for their efforts in pursuing this problem. During that call, my wife called her sister to let her know that we once again have service. Even with our meager 3/4 Mb DSL connection, both calls were flawless.

I'd like to thank Inland Internet for helping to restore phone service to an isolated rural community where AT&T had completely dropped the ball.

[jamileh]

Hi all, 

I'm sorry that you're having trouble with your Microcell working properly. 

I took a quick look and don't see any logged issues but need to do a bit more research to see what might be causing the problems you're seeing. 

You are always welcome to send a private message to ATTCustomerCare with your name, account number, email address, phone number and the best time to contact you. A member of our team with contact you directly to help determine the cause of and work toward resolving the issue.  




To send a private message, you can either click on the link in this message or click on the little blue envelope in the upper right hand corner, click "compose new message" and type ATTCustomerCare in the "Send To" field.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

@ CharlieSchorner - I'm glad to hear that your service has finally been restored. I too went thru a period of a couple weeks a long time ago where I didn't have any service either. That's why I hung around and have tried to help folks where I could in getting them up an running. There are so many ways for the MicroCell to fail, most of which have the same sypmtoms, so it's very difficult at times to isolate the problem and know where to start troubleshooting. However, I'll keep doing my small part for the MicroCell community.

[paullie_t]

I was just on a support chat with a MicroCell technician and there was an outage report this past weekend, here are the details of the chat:

No, it was an internal notification. They are not for disclosure outside of AT&T. The title of the notice is *TREND* Outage Notification - <3G Flashing LED> - <AR,TX,OK>

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

That's helpful, thanks.

[MC_ISP]

Our 2 admins were on the phone with multiple AT&T techs and maybe even a Cisco guy last Friday and finally figured out it had something to do with port 4500 packet fragmentation. The good news: it's not us, ie we didn't break it. The bad news: it's not us, ie we can't fix it. It's been a long, heavy haul to get to this point. Really hoping we can get a final resolution soon.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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MC_ISP wrote:
Our 2 admins were on the phone with multiple AT&T techs and maybe even a Cisco guy last Friday and finally figured out it had something to do with port 4500 packet fragmentation. The good news: it's not us, ie we didn't break it. The bad news: it's not us, ie we can't fix it. It's been a long, heavy haul to get to this point. Really hoping we can get a final resolution soon.

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That's really helpful detail. Thanks. I'll pass that along to my support contact. It never hurts to put a little pressue from different angles.

[jamileh]

Hey folks - 

I was able to locate a small issue that was logged over the weekend but it was fairly quickly resolved. It impacted some, but not all of the areas indicated in this thread. 

If you're still having an issue with your Microcell and aren't already working with AT&T, please send a private message to ATTCustomerCare with your name, account number, email address, phone number and the best time to contact you.  




To send a private message, you can either click on the link in this message or click on the little blue envelope in the upper right hand corner, click "compose new message" and type ATTCustomerCare in the "Send To" field.

[joelsplace]

Mine is still down and they are telling me I need to buy a new one because mine is out of warranty.  It seems that if updates killed it then I shouldn't have to buy a new one.

[jumpdawg]

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joelsplace wrote:

Mine is still down and they are telling me I need to buy a new one because mine is out of warranty.  It seems that if updates killed it then I shouldn't have to buy a new one.

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joelsplace

 That's a good one even for AT&T, since they give these things away to the folks they want to.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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jumpdawg wrote:

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joelsplace wrote:

Mine is still down and they are telling me I need to buy a new one because mine is out of warranty.  It seems that if updates killed it then I shouldn't have to buy a new one.

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joelsplace

 That's a good one even for AT&T, since they give these things away to the folks they want to.

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AT&T gave MicroCells away to some who had a documented history of issues in hard to service areas that couldn't be resolved. I don't know if they are still doing that or not.

[jumpdawg]

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Otto Pylot wrote:

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jumpdawg wrote:

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joelsplace wrote:

Mine is still down and they are telling me I need to buy a new one because mine is out of warranty.  It seems that if updates killed it then I shouldn't have to buy a new one.

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joelsplace

 That's a good one even for AT&T, since they give these things away to the folks they want to.

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AT&T gave MicroCells away to some who had a documented history of issues in hard to service areas that couldn't be resolved. I don't know if they are still doing that or not.

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I used the ATT app (Mark The Spot) that documents bad, dropped and no service locations in my account for my cell phone. After 30 or so days of marking my bad spots (my home location) a few times a day, I had a documented history in my account which convinced AT&T to comp me a MicroCell at no charge.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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I used the ATT app (Mark The Spot) that documents bad, dropped and no service locations in my account for my cell phone. After 30 or so days of marking my bad spots (my home location) a few times a day, I had a documented history in my account which convinced AT&T to comp me a MicroCell at no charge.

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Companies love metrics and something like that is hard to retute.

[joelsplace]

They also sent out coupons for free ones that seemed completely random.  My son got a coupon and he never complains even though his service is terrible.  I complain all the time because I'm supposedly in a "best coverage" area but get constant dropped calls and I didn't get a coupon.  I got my son's Microcell that worked fine at his house and registered it to my account.  It is still down with a flashing 3G light.  They said I need to buy a new one because mine is a "very old unit" right after they told me it was 15 months old.  I guess anything past the year warranty is "very old".  Does anyone know how to get in touch with someone that knows anything about the Microcell?  Everyone I've talked to is limited to reregister/reboot/plug it in somewhere else.  They don't know how they work, what ports they use or what ports are, what DHCP is, what a switch or MAC address is.  I made the mistake of telling them mine was plugged into a switch.  They told me that they aren't tested to work through a switch but they are tested to work plugged into a router.  How many home routers have you seen that don't use a switch?  (I realize that there have been some single port routers that don't have built in switches but how long has it been since you've seen one of them in use?)  I'm wondering how they communicate with the mothership if they don't go through switches?

Help!

Some way to actually see what is going on from the Microcell would be a big help.

The last person that called me also told me there have been no Microcell outages in the last couple of weeks.

[joelsplace]

Some info that I discovered and haven't seen here:

A fast flashing link light means it detects a network but hasn't been given an IP address.  If your DHCP server is down you will have this problem.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar · Accepted solution]

@joelsplace:

Here's the link to the MicroCell Troubleshooing Guide. It may help:

http://www.wireless.att.com/media/en_US/swf/3Gmicrocell/ATT3GMicroCell-Troubleshooting.pdf

To answer some of your questions, the blinking red 3G light means that there is a hardware failure. Either due to a real failure or, more likely, it was an update by AT&T and when the MicroCell tried to reset itself, the reset failed so the MicroCell "thinks" it's a hardware failure. A hard reset (using the reset button on the back, held down for 30 seconds) sometimes will clear the problem. A blinking green 3G light can have multiple causes. If the internet light is green and solid, you have internet connection which means the MicroCell has been assigned an IP address. Four main lights, Power, Internet, GPS, and 3G all have to be solid green.

Yes, a router is a switch in a sense. But if  you have a another ethernet switch between the router and the MicroCell (to make more ethernet ports available to your LAN) you may encounter problems. The MicroCell is really finicky and doesn't like anything between it and the internet. Security issues? I don't know. You can try priorty setup which is used mainly for troubleshooting but some folks find that works best for them. Priority is: modem  -> MicroCell -> router. That basically takes the router out of the chain and connects the MicroCell directly to the internet. The modem has to be in bridge mode either way so that all it does is pass traffic. All of the routing and firewalling needs to be handled by the router. You may even had to do port forwarding to a static assigned IP address for the MicroCell based on its MAC address. That's what I do with my Apple Extreme Base Station.

The MicroCell is a totally closed system with no access at all except by AT&T. As a side note, if you try to take the MicroCell apart, there are activation clips inside and if one comes loose, it will pernamently disable the MicroCell. I've seen reports where a cat knocked over the MicroCell onto a hard floor loosening one of the clips and bricking the MicroCell. If it rattles, it probably won't work.

[joelsplace]

I'm back up!  Thanks to a suggestion from Jamie Gilbert I pushed the reset button on the Microcell and within about 15 minutes it was activated.

Here's how I did it:  With the Microcell powered up I held the reset button in and watched the lights.  The 3G light went through various sequences of flashes and finally went out.  I ended up holding the reset button for about 30 seconds.  I released the button and then the Microcell didn't seem to do anything for about a minute and then it appeared to reboot and go through the normal power up sequence.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

I'm glad you're back up. If you read my previous post I did suggest a hard reset but maybe you didn't see it between the time I posted and you talked to support (I'm assuming that's who Jamie Gilbert is).

[joelsplace]

The only place I noticed a hard reset specifically was for a flashing red light.  I didn't have that and the boot sequence looked normal so I didn't think to do it.  I should have tried it.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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joelsplace wrote:

The only place I noticed a hard reset specifically was for a flashing red light.  I didn't have that and the boot sequence looked normal so I didn't think to do it.  I should have tried it.

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A hard reset can fix a lot of things. Bottom line is that you are up and running which is all that matters.

[jamileh]

I'm glad you got this resolved! 

I marked Otto's post as an Accepted Solution so other folks who have similar issues shave an easier time.

[MC_ISP]

Just an FYI, we FINALLY have full resolution on this one. Many AT&T techs and many techs from our end, plus a "Cisco guy" and an admin from one of our upstream providers were ultimately required. I'm guessing AT&T's upstream provider was also looped in at some point. It turned out the company that provides our upstream connection to the internet backbone had made an equipment change on Nov 2 that borked just port 4500 traffic to and from AT&T. No other traffic appeared affected, which was why customers were OK with everything else including other types of traffic to/from those AT&T servers. Fortunately their admin was able to quickly reshuffle his hardware and get us back in business very quickly once the source of the problem was nailed down. This is a very odd corner case that probably won't be even vaguely replicated any time soon. THANK GOODNESS, because it took quite a few resources to finally find that one little wrinkle.

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

Thanks for the follow-up on this. It's nice to know that it wasn't all AT&Ts fault this time. It's unfortunate that it took so long but when there are connections in place that other's have control over, it's very difficult to find the root cause. Thanks again!

[AnClar]

And a quick word to Jamileh...thank you for your reports and advisories here.  This is the first time in my years on these forums that I've seen information coming back to users from an AT&T employee on anything approaching a regular basis.  Just these short, simple posts acknowledging issues and giving general updates on progress is incredihbly helpful and goes a long way towards making happy customers.  Thanks again! 

[Otto Pylot ACE - Czar]

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AnClar wrote:

And a quick word to Jamileh...thank you for your reports and advisories here.  This is the first time in my years on these forums that I've seen information coming back to users from an AT&T employee on anything approaching a regular basis.  Just these short, simple posts acknowledging issues and giving general updates on progress is incredihbly helpful and goes a long way towards making happy customers.  Thanks again! 

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I agree. She works very hard behind the scenes a lot of times and doesn't always get the recognition that she deserves.

[jamileh]

Thanks!

I really appreciate you taking the time to say something!

[Wolfmansnake]

FYI same problem now appearing in Raleigh/Durham area of NC. Jamileh can you help?
Michael Blankenship
919-906-0110
7127 Eliza Lane
Mebane, NC 27302