[TriLUG] Re: OT: Dial-Up ISP

[Ken Mink]

The modems do provide a good bit of troubling shooting capability. 
After the one drone hung up on me, I called back. Once I described my 
problem the second tech simply tried to connect to my modem, they can 
do that somehow. When he couldn't he asked me again the status of the 
LEDs. Once he was satisfied that the modem was up, but the network 
wasn't working, he opened a ticket. A couple days later, TWC guy knocks 
on the door, does some tests and fixes something in the box by the 
road. Bingo, traffic.

My problem was solved without being asked what OS I was on or doing 
anything more than power cycling the modem.

Ken


On May 10, 2004, at 12:07 PM, Jim Wright wrote:

> Of course that unfriendliness extends to anything that is not provided
> by them...whenever I have had problems with rr, I connect my wife's
> plain vanilla XP laptop up directly to the rr modem, bypassing any home
> networking.  If you say you have xyz router that is not provided by
> them, or use xyz wireless card not provided by them you won't get
> anywhere either.  Basically anything that is not on their
> troubleshooting script will get you booted out.
>
> That is understandable, though...they need to have a frame of reference
> to do the troubleshooting.  And they really don't want to be scheduling
> a truck roll when all that was needed was a bouncing of your xyz 
> router.
>
> It would be nice if the modems themselves had a little more capability
> in providing connectivity troubleshooting.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
> Behalf Of Ken Mink
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 11:43 AM
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list
> Subject: [TriLUG] Re: OT: Dial-Up ISP
>
>
> Hey Ben,
>     I completely understand your point of view about supporting Linux. 
> I
>
> don't expect RR to support Linux. The number of distros and the number
> of version in each distro make that unreasonable.
>      However, I expect an ISP to support their network. I called RR
> support because my connection was down. I mean the lights were on on
> the modem, but I could not ping out. Once I said that I was running
> Linux, the support drone stated that they did not support Linux and
> could not  help me. When I pushed that I wanted support of the network
> not my machine, the drone held the corporate line and eventually hung
> up on me. I did get kind of hot, but never swore nor was I abusive. I
> was really pissed off at that point. That is Linux UNFRIENDLY.
>      I have never expected an ISP to support my Linux machine. ISPs
> provide network connectivity and I expect then to support their
> network. A network does not, or rather should not, depend on the
> machine I'm using. Simply supporting the network connection regardless
> of the OS of the client would be Linux friendly enough for me.
>
> Ken
>
>
> On May 8, 2004, at 1:31 PM, Ben Pitzer wrote:
>
>> Mike,
>>
>> Well, take it from a career ISP man:  If you have enough customers to
>> keep
>> yourself in business, it's not practical to support every possible
>> piece of
>> software that they might be running.  Fact is, there are half a dozen
>> different modem dialers for Linux.  Add to that the different modems
>> that
>> Linux might or might not support, 50 different distros, and the fact
>> that
>> two people running the same distro might have boxes that look
>> completely
>> different from one another, and you've got a support quagmire that's
>> just
>> ridiculous.  You can't support Linux in a cost-effective manner (as an
>
>> ISP,
> <SNIP>
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---------------------------------------------
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin
" 'Necessity' is the plea for every infringement of human liberty; it
is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."--William Pitt