Thursday, July 31, 2014

DSL hosed

DSL line went down at around 5am. phone company thinks it's an ISP problem, but we've also had no dial tone for the last 12 hours, so I'm dubious about that. On the other hand, if the gas company digging in our cul-de-sac had cut through the phone line 12 hours ago, presumably that would have taken everything out at the same time. Now talking to ISP folks. Well okay, I was talking to ISP folks. Now the chat window is filled with Java exceptionbarf. Time to resort to older tech. Whee.

Update:(7am) Got through to an actual human voice. Ticket actually opened this time; the matter has been referred to "the back office" (hmm). They're supposed to call back within 4 hours.

Update: (1:40pm) Megapath "back office" evidently hasn't gotten to it yet. Escalated. Supposed to call back in 4 hours. In other news, Centurylink is coming tomorrow morning to fix the dial tone.

Update: (5:45pm) Automated call from Centurylink confirms appointment for tomorrow (no time given, just a promise that "all work will be completed by 5pm"). Still no word from Megapath; result of 2nd escalation attempt is that 1st level support guy is thus far unable to reach anyone in the level 2 office to find out what's going on, supposed to call back as soon as he manages it...

Update: (6:30pm) A Comcast salesman randomly stopped by. (I swear I am not making this up.) "I notice you don't get our service", "Yeah, we don't really watch much TV these days", "What about Internet?" "Our needs are kind of specialized" "You need static IP?" "Um, yeah, actually. Multiple." "Well, that's kinda beyond my pay-grade, but here's my card; I can relay stuff to my bosses." "Ok."

Update: (9:45am, Friday) Centurylink tech arrives, notes weird humming noise on the line, guesses that the line is half-broken, thus explaining the lack of dial-tone but allows for at least the possibility of DSL to get through (but almost certainly not at full capacity). ("Um, you know we do fiber that's much faster." "Can you do static IP with no server restrictions?" "<bluescreen>") Goes to look at the junction box at the cul-de-sac, which apparently someone has backed into and is a mess, but apparently the actual problem is farther out (somewhere between there and the junction on Island Crest), so he's gone off to check that out.

Update: (10:30am, Friday) Found the break. Fixed it. We have dialtone. Modem found DSL signal and we are back on the air. Whee.