bosconet.org: chocolately writings

For about the past week (since the thunderstorms rolled through Hampden and burned down a church) my DSL line has been less than stable. A week ago Saturday the line was completely down. Sunday it came back and until Tuesday it looked like everything was improving. Then I started noticing that the line was dropping and while monitoring ping packets and instead of getting better over time the overall trend was getting worse.

On Friday I had decided to contact Hampden Wireless to set up service for a back-up internet connection for times when my primary Speakeasy DSL line goes done in the future. Sadly I’m in a dead spot for their service. Although after their email address on the website bounced and seeing the inside of their store front (Little Shop of Hardware) I’m not terribly upset.

By Sunday things deteriorated to the point where, when Speakeasy followed up on my open ticket I explained what was happening and we determined that a new modem might be a good idea to narrow the problem. After speaking with them it seemed like the DSL was getting less stable. Around 3:50pm I decided to eliminate my internal household wiring and plugged a phone line directly into Verizon’s ‘demark’ box outside. This eliminated my internal wiring as the problem but didn’t solve the problem. In fact while I don’t think it made anything worse it certainly didn’t help and correlated to a noticeable period of instability of on the DSL line. Later in the evening it stabilized for a while, long enough for me to install hobbit (Big Brother’s replacement/current incarnation) to better monitor the line. And here is the result from monitoring the line today:

Each red bar indicates an outage…..so while there were periods of stability.

After yesterday’s frustrations I resolved to find another back-up connection (and NOT Comcast). Luckily I think I found one in Believe Wireless. I contacted them during the day and they will be out Friday to install an antenna for service. For the time being I’m just signed up for their most basic service to use as a back-up link.

Oh and speakeasy has sent me a new modem to see if that solves the DSL issues. If not it will involve a dispatch from Covad to hopefully trace the problem.

Oh and despite my DSL woes I’m not angry with Speakeasy.

Early Saturday morning we had a thunderstorm roll through Hampden. A lot of lightning strikes very close by. (One actually struck and set a church on fire couple blocks away). We had DSL connectivity initially Saurday morning but lost it at about 9:30ish. Shortly after 10am I determined that the DSL link was downa nd it wasn’t just a networking issue. So I called my DSL provider, Speakeasy.

Let me take a moment here to say that calling thier support number is not a pleasure (because it means my DSL is out) but very pleasant. The support staff is knowledgeable, pleasant and genuinely want to help you not just get you of the phone. Sure they make you reboot the modem and plug and unplug things but they need this to run loop tests on the line. So it isn’t like they are just trying to make you feel like they are doing something. Oh and here’s one of the things that make it pleasant. They take ownership of a problem and actually call you back is they say they will. Now enough of my praise for Speakeasy support. Back to my problems.

George who answered my call had me do the normally reboot, unplug modem, ask if anything had changed in my environment. etc. He determined it was nothing on my end and opened a ticket with Covad to check the card in the DSLAM in the CO and see if it was the issue. He said they should address that ticket in about 4 hours. That was fine with me. I had plans for the afternoon so could wait a few hours. When 6pm rolled around and I hadn’t heard back from them I decided to leave the birthday party I was at in Roland Park and head home to see what was up. Once home I called to check the status of my ticket. I was informed that Covad wanted to do check in person and that this could be billable if they found nothing wrong with the DSL line to my house. Not ideal but I was confident enough at this point that it wasn’t my problem so I wouldn’t be billed. I requested 1st thing Monday but they couldn’t accommodate that so it was scheduled for first thing Tuesday. I went to bed with the DSL line still out.

Sunday we woke up to no internet again. Sunday afternoon I decided to do the last bit of testing I could and found a phone line long enough I could get from the telco box directly inside. I then relocated the DSL modem to connect to the new phone line. When I connected it there was no DSL connectivity. However later around 2pm I noticed the DSL light on the modem lit. So I plugged it back into the firewall and ta-da the internets were back! After we got our fix of internets I re-wired everything back to the way it was prior to Saturday morning. Everything is working again.

I can’t say for sure but I suspect Verizon is to blame for this outage. The outage occurred after a nasty thunderstorm and was later restored without Covad doing anything. I can totally see Verizon ‘re-wiring’ something to re-route around damage and interfering with my ‘naked’ DSL line.

Now I need to call Speakeasy, inform them my lines is back p and cancel the Covad service call.

A week ago Sunday as part of various errand in Towson (including Danielle’s purchase of an iPod Touch) I changed my T-Mobile service plan to drop my $19.99/month VPN Internet option with T-Mobile to instead be the $19.99/month Total Internet Add-on. The diference between the two plans is the VPN plan gives you a small subset of static IP addresses the Total Internet give you a larger dynamic range of IPs and T-Mobile Hot Spot access. I never really too advantage of the static IPs from the VPN option and have run into occasion where T-Mobile hot spot access wuld come in handy. So I figured changing option would get me more value for my dollar. Since I don’t use a supported T-Mobile phone I couldn’t do this online and decided it would be easiest to do this in person at a T-Mobile store.

The woman at the T-Mobile store was very pleasant and helpful. She inquired what phone I had and when I told her she didn’t bat an eye and proceeded to process my request for the change of service. Her only downfall was lack of knowledge in understanding part of the product I was subscribing to…the T-Mobile HotSpot option. From the way she answered my question about how I access they service she was mistaken in thinking I needed either a phone that supported WiFi or WiFi device I could plug my SIM in. This is not the case at all. For HotSpots I can use any WiFi device (like my MacBook Pro) to login and access a HotSpot. [T-Mobile should educate their corporate store employees better IMESHO].

Sadly when I checked my account online later that day while my VPN option had been removed from my account the Total Internet option hadn’t been added. It was at that point that I decided to game T-Mobile’s website and say I had a phone that would let me subscribe to the Total Internet Add on option. I was able to subscribe this way.

Armed with my new T-Mobile HotSpot access I decided to gie it a try last Wednesday at a Starbucks. I went to the Starbucks but because I wasn’t armed with the appropriate knowledge when I tried to log on I was unsuccessful. After returing to my office and googling I found the solution to my problem. Luckily the next day I was again close to a Starbucks and could try my new found knowledge out and see if I coul log on. I was indeed sucessful. The key bit of knowledge I lack on the first occasion was that my password was not my online my-tmobile password or the PIN for my account access but rather the last 4 digits of my SSN.

No I have HotSpot access with no extra cost to me.