VizG
join:2002-12-09
USA
| RR St. Augustine FL 4 week tech support battle....
4 weeks ago, we had a big lightning strike in front of our home and it knocked out RR. A tech came out 3 days later and replaced some cable, connectors and modem. He put a Toshiba 2600 in place of a 2200.
After he left, we started having dropoffs where the modem would lose the signal totally for a few seconds up to 30 minutes. The drops were random and would happen every few minutes, then nothing for 20 or 30 minutes, then every few seconds, etc. There was no distinct repeatable pattern to the drops.
During the course of the 4 week battle, we had techs tell us this:
Your modem is bad
Your drop cable is bad
Your tap is leaking
Your connectors aren't on right
Your repeater had water in it
Your router is causing the problem
Your computer is causing the problem
Your NIC is bad
People stealing cable TV is causing your problem
Your electrical system has a bad ground
Your power company is at fault
Our (RR) digital trunk line was sabotaged
Replacing modems, cables, taps, connectors, repeaters, routers, NICs, and turning off the computer while the modem stayed on didn't help. Our electrical system had been totally rewired and regrounded recently as well. The power company had been working on the lines for a total of 2 hours.
We hadn't realized that the bandwidth had been bumped almost at the same time this started happening. A tech that came out this past Friday said that another user was having the exact same problems with a Toshiba 2600. He figured they had a bad batch of modems. Yesterday I went to the office and swapped my 2600 for a 2200 and for the past 2 days, I haven't had one dropoff. The speeds are maxed out as well.
In all this was a rather ridiculous scenario for such a large company. I have to give the techs credit, especially one fellow, as he is responsible for us probably having the most fine tuned system in the neighborhood. They are understaffed and undertrained, basically cable guys with new test equipment.
I hope this may give someone else some clues whenever they have a similar problem.
Regards,
VizG |
