[ale] Bye-bye, Telocity/DirectTV

[Transam]

jhubbs at telocity.com said:

> On September 28, my DSL service went out completely and after two and a
> half weeks of spending hours and hours on hold with tech support only to
> basically have to keep starting over and over with Tier-1 know-nothings
> each time (regardless of how many times I'd talked to Tier-2 people),
> I decided to bail and give cable a try.

> I have installation scheduled for 11/1.  From what I can tell so far,
> what I need to do is take the Internet-side NIC from my Coyote Linux
> firewall and put it into a Windows machine so the installer can set me
> up, and then I'm free to move the NIC back to the firewall in order to
> find joy.  Does anyone know if AT&T Broadband uses PPPoE or if there
> are any other issues I should know about?

When I got MediaOne Cable here in Duluth I didn't have to supply a Winbloz
box 'cause I don't have one.  The tech didn't test the setup, though.

He was handed a piece of paper with my NIC's MAC address.  (I was out
at the time with a friend).  It didn't work when I tried it.

After not being able to get MediaOne (now AT&T Broadband) to give me the
time of day 'cause they don't support Linux and wasting a whole day, I
simply lied and told 'em I had Winbloz 95.  They checked the MAC address
first off and, sure enough, they keyed it in wrong.  Sigh.


Btw, I'm using "dhclient eth1" to establish my DHCP nonsense.  They
don't use PPPoE in this area.


It has gone out for days at a time.  Presently I'm having to cycle power
on the cable modem several times a day and I'm dreading calling
customer NO support to try to get it replaced.

IMHO AT&T Broadband is dreadful.  (I'm too far from the CO for DSL.)  I'm
considering satellite Internet.

I will say that when I replaced my NIC (gave the old one to a client),
after only about 20 minutes on hold the female tech gave me no hassle
when I explained that I replaced my NIC and please program in the new
MAC, which is X.  I followed her advice to wait 10 minutes and power
cycle the Cable modem and I was up.

> It very much appears as though the DirectTV/Bellsouth relationship is
> extremely broken.  During this DSL outage, I lost my dialtone and two
> guys were at my house the very next day to fix it.  Is it fair to surmise
> that Bellsouth simply makes as little effort as they can get away with
> to repair DSL service via other ISPs?

Don't expect any better from Cable!

> - Jeff

Bob

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