December 3, 2009

Apparently my hope to link Loopt with my blog did not turn out well. I will post what should've showed up yesterday.

UUUUGHHGHHHHH!!!!!!!!! I cannot stand Comcast! Today is just one of the many examples. Allow me to extrapolate upon this statement.

I have a customer who has had intermittent Internet issues recently with Comcast. They called into Comcast because only the Internet was not working correctly, the internal network was working very fluently.

The phone technician logs into their modem and asks if they have a static IP address. He ASKS THEM!?!?! Why is this NOT in their customer records? It should not have to be asked, it should be known. The phone tech looks around their modem and says, "Hmmmm.... it looks like it wasn't configured correctly. You're looking at Pittsburgh, where are you located?" They give him their location. "I'm going to point you to Philadelphia since you are closer to that location." First, this sounds retarded, if they were setup to look at Pittsburgh to begin with (which I can only assume is the DNS settings, it is the only thing that makes sense from what that statement implies) that is poor configuration on Comcast's part and should have been addressed before now. This did not resolve their Internet issues.

Comcast proceeds to send out two useless technicians who grumble about missing lunch for the whole appointment. They test the lines but have no idea about the cable modem/router unit or how to access it. They fiddle with some network cables and take down the whole network. Thankfully my customer would not allow the technicians to leave until they got the network working. Even though the network is working, there are still Internet issues.

Comcast sends out another technician a few weeks later to check things AGAIN! This technician is just a cable technician who checks the line signals. All looks good there but he has to call into the office for help working on their cable modem/router unit because he does NOT know a thing about them or the setup of the units. He proceeds to test a few things but gets nothing and the Internet is lost.

My customer calls me to explain the new situation, it is already 4:30 that evening and they close at 5, I knew I would not make it to them before that, so I schedule to be out there in the morning. I arrive and bring along an extra switch and two extra routers, just in case. The router is a WatchGuard Firebox. All is configured and running properly. Their static IP settings were not reset or altered. I hook up a spare router to the cable modem/router and set the spare modem to receive an automatic IP from Comcast's unit. I use a spare PC and connect it to the spare router and test things. I can see the Comcast unit and the Internet. I log into the Comcast modem/router and look at the network configuration. I find some interesting things. The WAN IP on the modem/router is NOT what it should be** under a normal configuration. The WAN IP is set to 71.71.71.82 instead of the 77.77.77.76 it should be for their static IP setup. This is where more fun begins!

I call into Comcast business support, plug away through the phone menus to be met with a wonderful response, "We're sorry, no one is able to assist you at this time. The building is currently under emergency evacuation. We are sorry for the inconvenience." My reaction is ?!?!?!?!?! WTH!!! I try again, several times. Same response. I try different menus, plowing through trying to get SOMEONE! I called them several times in two hours, same response. First of all, that is poor business; having only one building handling business support? I could not get in touch with ANYONE who could resolve this issue. I ended up configuring the Firebox to use an IP issued by the cable modem/router for now while I worked on getting ahold of Comcast. I gave up after a few more hours of the same response. Since my setup got the customer internet for now, I let it go. I will try again tomorrow.

**Normally, the comcast modem/router is configured to be the gateway for business who require static IPs. The businesses router is setup with their static IP, they have a gateway IP that is the cable modem/router's WAN IP. So if I have a static IP of 77.77.77.77 the modem's IP is 77.77.77.78.