Stoopid Internets

[tesla]

Tomorrow afternoon the cable people are supposed to show up and fix my bloody internet connection.

This is frustrating to me because I don't think it's a physical problem and so I don't think it will do any good to have them out to look at it.

Service worked flawlessly for 2 years. Then, the week that Comcast bought out Time Warner, I started losing connectivity completely once or twice every day, recoverable by power cycling my modem. No hardware changes, no software changes, even took my wireless router out of the mix to ensure that it hadn't started randomly causing issues. Service works perfectly when it works; when it drops droppage is sudden and complete. I've been dealing with this for the last several weeks/few months, calling in tickets left and right (even after I recover service) just to let them know that it's happening.

Somebody on their end told me it was Earthlink (my ISP in name only - Comcast provides infrastructure, billing, service, and everything else) refreshing IPs and suggested that I order service direct from Comcast. Okay, I'd love to. Except that for some idiotic reason purchasing what should be exactly the same service would cost me a time and a half as much from Comcast as from Earthlink. And they won't even give me a dedicated IP for that outrageous amount.

I'm getting about 4.2 mbps down. When it's working, it's awesome.

I wonder how good the Minneapolis wireless network will be? How fast? And how soon it will arrive? My neighborhood is part of Phase 2, so prolly late spring/early summer.

Comments

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

The part that puzzles me is that it working without flaw for 2 years. I know fuck-all about this stuff, but I have to cycle my modem every day, and I've been told that that is just how modems work--the buffer gets full and it has to be cycled. Obviously, if you went two years without needing to do that, my information is incomplete.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

I live not so far from Tesla and I'm having some of the same issues too. As far as I know you only need to recycle when the modem just quits working. As PM tho I un and replug everything a few times once a month or so. This insures good contact between cable and device as IME cables are the most trouble prone link in the chain. No company spends anymore money on cable than the bare minimum spec. Do a upgrade and it should cut down troubles greatly. This works too on sound and video systems.

[madtruk.livejournal.com]

We were one of the first on our side of town (Columbia Heights) to get DSL 'back in the day,' and at one point I started getting similar problems, although add to it excrutiating slowdowns for no apparent reason. After weeks of phone wrangling (including a service visit wherein the almighty word was my phone cord was too long), they finally tested the outisde lines in an orderly fashion. Turned out that only on my block, the 'jumper' was malfunctioning intermittently. They fixed it the day they found it and Voila! It took two other folks on my block reporting the same problem over the course of weeks...they did refund my service payment, though. I can't recall who our provider was at the time-possibly Earthlink.

Comcast

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Do you use Comcast? I have a question about e-mail.

B

Re: Comcast

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

I don't use Comcast or Earthlink for e-mail at all, merely for connectivity. You could ask, but I can almost promise that I wouldn't know the answer. Sorry.