Secrets of Rogers@Home

by Gr@ve_Rose  (graverose@mail.com)

I used to work for Rogers@Home as a first-level and second-level supervisor and now I'd like to spread the joy.

When you call Rogers@Home support, you're not getting Rogers at all.  You're getting an outsourced company called Convergys, located in Ottawa, Ontario.

The first thing they will ask you is your telephone number starting with the area code.  They type this into the Citrix client which brings up your info.  They can also search by your name or address, but the phone number is the preferred way.  They will most likely ask you for your postal code for ID verification (canada411.sympatico.ca anyone?).  Once they have your account, it becomes locked so nobody else can use it.  They will then help you with your problems.

From here, they can do many things: change your password, schedule a "Truck Roll" for having a cable guy come to you (gain, outsourced to MicroAge), give you credit on your account, etc.  Most default passwords are password, changeme, 12345678, or wavemail.  Notice they're all eight characters?  The Citrix client can only handle exactly eight characters for your password.

If you ask to speak to a supervisor, they will pass you off to a second-level agent.  You will never speak to a real supervisor because they just hand out paychecks and can't do anything anyway.  The Operational Assistant (OA) is told to "...keep the customers..." and will do almost anything to keep your service.  Feel free to make up some phony problem and tell them you want credit on your account for the trouble you've gone through blah blah blah.  Bing!  Instant free month of service credited to your account.

The tools used are all web-based and, until recently, could be accessed from anyone on the @Home network (24.112.x.x, 24.43.x.x) using their proxy server.  They range from telling you how many people are down on a subnet to measuring the CRC ratios on your modem.  Fun stuff!

Escalated tickets are, actually, escalated.  Usually to Toronto (York Mills) and, in the event your problem is larger than the Titanic, California.  It's at this point the techs have no control over what happens.

Although they shouldn't know how, first-level agents have the ability to hit the kill switch and shut you down or bring you back online.  (Yes, I have done it and, yes, it is a god syndrome!)

Most people ask me about removing the bandwidth cap on the modems.  Well, there are two modems used by @Home: LANcity and Terayon.  They're phasing out the LANcity's because they're running out of IP addresses and the Terayon uses the Electronic Serial Number (ESN) to get the BOOTP information.  If you have a LANcity modem (the one that looks like a car stereo amplifier), the possibility to remove the cap is there.

You must Telnet to port 1001 of your LANcity modem (the IP should be on that yellow piece of paper) and login.  Support agents are never told about this.  General brute-force attacks should get you in.  Once you're in, find the MD5 checksum and delete it.

This can also be done on the Terayon modem, but you're looking (probably at jail time) at cracking the @Home BOOTP server, finding your specific ESN (yellow paper?) and changing the cap there.  Again, the Network Security/Fraud (NSF) department is watching everything (these guys drink more coffee than I do!) and I do not recommend trying it unless your Kung fu is great.

That's all for now.  I know this article is kinda short but I thought some info is better than none.  If you want more of the 411 on their support centers or the technology behind @Home (network topology map anyone?), drop me a line.  Remember to hack with morals!