ISP went down again last night. *sigh* Did all the normal stuff can do from my end, up to and including replacing the cable “modem” with another, known good, unit and some lil “tricks” the local cable tech clued me in on that are not included in SOP.
No joy. *sigh* Called customer “service”. Doubleplus nojoy. Idjits. The BEST response I got from two first level “service” people was a proposal to schedule an appointment for a tech to drop by sometime on September 13. September 13?!? Ten whole calendar days?!? *feh* After stressing and re-stressing (thus distressing *heh*) to the customer “service” cubicle serf that such a “service” was no service at all, and certainly showed no evidence of good faith, I managed to finally, after repeated “requests” (read, “demands”) that my call be escalated to someone who could deal with the issue properly, I reached someone who noted that my cable “modem” was online, but was “not communicating with the server”. Right. Not at my end. From her end, she could–and did–reset the server’s connection with the modem (I had already been through several reboots of my whole network, in whole and incrementally, in those steps noted in paragraph 1 above), whereupon everything was working again.
Why the first two “service” serfs couldn’t or wouldn’t correct things at the ISP end, I don’t know, but the first rule of dealing with such “service” came in handy again: always escalate until you get someone who can at least find their own backside with a mirror on a stick and full directions written in monosyllabic words.
Now, it’s not barn-burning speeds, but at least it approaches what the ISP advertises:
I can live with that, although my cable “modem” can handle much greater speeds than that.