lifebsideben

Normally, I like my Comcast service. I really do. I mean, it’s ridiculously expensive, yes… and I have the “triple play” (voice, cable tv, internet) so I theoretically “save” money. But usually, it’s pretty good. At least it has been fairly reliable compared to my past experience (many years ago, admittedly) with AT&T DSL, and it’s fast as all get-out for data. And the VOIP actually works, unlike Vonage or TomatoVine who should both be bankrupted as soon as possible for fraud, in my opinion.

However, last night was the exception to general Comcast goodness. Just before 10pm, Val calls down to me in the office… “the internet’s not working.” Usually, this is some wacky wifi issue on the mac, like the microwave interfering with it… oh wait, that’s right, she’s now hardwired in. Hmm. Let me check… sure enough, seems down. Check the router. The “online” light isn’t lit, but everything else is. Let’s try to reset it. Little switch on top does nothing, let’s try pulling the power cord… no dice, that’s right, I forgot. This is a VOIP modem as well, and we wouldn’t want that to die when the power went out, right? It’s got a big honking battery in the bottom. Sigh. OK, let’s actually call Comcast.

After digging up the number from a statement (paper statements, what a novelty! I guess they’re good in this case, when otherwise, everything is online and I can’t really, get online easily^*). Call them, navigate the voice menus, and “we’re experiencing difficulties in your area. there is no need to stay on the line to report this issue.” Grr.

OK, well, the cable still works at least. But yeah, no data. No voip (so no telephone). Meh. I did want to know how long this outage was actually going to have lasted by the time they resolved it, however, so I just set up a commandline to record pings: while true; do sleep 5 && date >>pings && ping -c 1 -t 5 www.google.com 2>&1 >>pings ; done and I figured I’d check the ‘pings’ file in the morning to see when it started having output. (I’m sure there’s a smarter, simpler way to do this… this was the 2-minute hackery version.)

Well, according to the file, pings started working at 1:25am. Three and a half hours Comcast data was down. That’s pretty sucky. I hope this was a major fiber cut somewhere that they dispatched everyone in the area to fix… for voice customers particularly, that’s really lousy, on a holiday night (hey, relatives can be calling! your great grandfather who served in the Big War might decide to call you from beyond the grave on Memorial Day, who knows?)

^* by “easily”, I mean, without walking upstairs. Yes, my iPhone would get me online. Yes, my 3G card would get me online. But mighty sloth, would not let me traverse the steps unless absolutely necessary…

Tags: bitching, Comcast, telephone, VOIP