I recently signed up for COMCAST broadband. Working through their web page, I decided to buy my own MODEM. I have a ZOOM modem on my OS/2 machine which has been working perfectly for many years, so I bought the ZOOM 5421 which looks to be the latest and greatest. It supports DOCSIS all the way up to 2.0. I thought I was going to do self install, but it turned out that self install is not available where I live. By the time the technician came out to the house, it was too late to return the MODEM.
The original cable company went bankrupt. With all the mergers I lost track of who owned that box on the side of my house. Then one day a complete stranger began banging on my roof without any warning. I ran out of my house with a weapon, and I spied a COMCAST truck in my driveway. This rude stranger spoke neither Spanish nor English nor Chinese (our traditional languages in California). Indeed he was from Brazil, and he spoke Portuguese. Eventually I learned from a slip of paper that they had a problem with the ground lines. He ran another wire down the side of my house to steal a ground from the phone company. I was not a COMCAST customer. If someone hadn't mentioned they were about to do broadband internet, I would have run him off and sued for damages.
So now it is a year or so later, and the COMCAST tech finally came to hook up my cable modem. Yes, he is from Brazil, too. Apparently Mexicans and Chinese are too expensive for COMCAST, or else they want to be sure their employees can't talk to the customers.
The MODEM didn't work. Nothing worked. Finally the tech climbed the utility pole in front of my house. He said the someone had cut the cable there. I don't blame them for cutting the cable. I hope the original company cut all the cables. My neighbors love TV. They watch it all the time. I didn't pay because I don't watch TV any more. My neighbors watch TV all the time, and they didn't pay either.
By the time the tech arrived, he was already four hours behind schedule. After spending a couple of hours at my house, he fled. He claimed a supervisor would come and complete the install. I asked him if he wanted to leave the work order, and he said no, he would come back with the supervisor.
As the sun set, I didn't believe that they were ever coming back, but when I called COMCAST they reassured me that they do make calls into the night. Sure enough the supervisor did come. He was alone. The first thing asked was where is the work order. When I told him, he said "I am going to kill him (the tech)."
So he went back into his truck and rummaged around. He returned with a makeshift work order. We tried one thing after another to make my MODEM play. The install program kept saying that my MODEM was not supported. But right on the box it said the MODEM supported COMCAST, and the COMCAST web page has all along insisted that my MODEM is supported by COMCAST. The supervisor returned to his truck and came back with a Scientific Atlanta rental MODEM.
He connected the rental MODEM, and that didn't work either. We were able to get an IP address from their DHCP server, but that was as far as it went. After half an hour of trial and error, he called the office. He carefully explained the situation to me before he left.
The "bedrock server" was down. What I needed to do was wait until after midnight (!) and call the COMCAST 800 number.
"Forget the software, it never works." he told me, "but they can turn it on in the office if you give them the IP address."
He explained how to obtain the IP address in tedious detail, but all I really needed to hear was IPCONFIG instead of 'ifconfig.'
While I waited for my computer to chime midnight, I disconnected the rental MODEM and reinstalled my purchased MODEM. Not wanting to rush them, I waited until 1:30 AM to call in. I had a long conversation with one of their support staff. Eventually he insisted that I put the rental MODEM back on, and he enabled service. I spent a few minutes watching TV broadcasts from Europe (why don't they make me angry the way American TV does?). I went to bed.
In the morning I had a brilliant idea. I disconnected the rental MODEM and connected my purchased MODEM. Everything worked perfectly, and it was noticeably faster. I spent about ten minutes surfing the web in rapture. I was browsing my windows firewall provider, when suddenly the dreaded COMCAST new customer page came. Try as I might, there was no way to get rid of it.
Mind you the MODEM was still working perfectly. I could ping anywhere I wanted, but other ports were blocked.
"OK," I thought, "they are only trying to protect themselves. They need to know my MAC number."
So I called COMCAST again to give them the MAC of my purchased MODEM. After two escalations and a ticket number, a supervisor explained to me that there was a typo in their software. He told me to wait three days and try again. In the meantime I could use the rental MODEM.
I spent two evenings watching foreign language TV and enjoying every minute of it. I downloaded the latest version of Linux and installed it. I downloaded the latest Linux kernel and installed it. The latest version of Linux let me view full screen virtually any TV station in the world. With windows I get 1 inch max. I need a magnifying glass to see the image.
On the third day I hooked up my purchased MODEM as instructed, but still no joy. Another call to COMCAST yielded the information that I was not supposed to use the rental MODEM; instead I should have left my purchased MODEM connected until they could download some software into it (not what they said three days earlier). In the meantime I am able to ping, but the only web page I can view is the COMCAST registration page.
This is actually much abbreviated. What is clear is the COMCAST support staff is lying to me. One minute they will say the servers are down until midnight. The next call, no the servers were never down. Or they will break into their now find "start" then "run" and then type "cmd."
I cut them short with "You mean you want me to run ipconfig in a DOS box again?"
So in retaliation (for what?) they disabled my email account. After another call to customer support, they turn email back on. When I log in it says "Hello, Matt."
Very funny. My name isn't Matt.
Now when I try to install my MODEM now I get the following message (instead of the unsupported MODEM message I previosly recieved):
The install wizard has encountered an error:
(01)6959=No Smartissue id found
I did a little looking around, and I found that "bedrock" is actually a company that manages internet connections. Apparently some COMCAST customers are supported by COMCAST while others are farmed out to bedrock. Those who are serviced by COMCAST are decently treated. Those of us who hit bedrock have a number of problems. For one thing they insist that the MODEM be connected with USB under windows, and that we download a 37 megabyte installation program. To me this is highly suspicious and a security hazard. Cable MODEMs should be connected to an ethernet port, and they should never need any drivers.
COMCAST/bedrock support is so security conscious that they can't even send me an email telling me when they have solved my problem. That is the sort of security appropriate for an espionage agency, not computer support. They are also insisting that I drop my firewall. Instead I proceed cautiously letting the firewall ask about traffic, and I see that I am hammered by suspicious traffic that tries to install new dll's. Nobody, not even microsoft, is authorized to alter the software on my machine without my informed consent. I need a list of dll they are going to change *in* *advance*, but the support reps are so stupid you can't even ask them intelligent questions. This kind of management does not happen by accident. It is military style management run by corrupt insiders and staffed by troops too ignorant to know what is going on.
As far as I can tell, customers in the southeast can hook themselves up, and they don't even need an installation program. I have reason to suspect a concerted campaign of economic warfare being waged by Washington insiders against California. ENRON was another example. I began to be suspicious when they began revoking security clearances for anyone who didn't have relatives outside of California (including me) a few years back. Now they are giving a communications monopoly to COMCAST and using it for economic espionage. How can I possibly trust a MODEM that a manager made a special out trip to deliver to me?
Thanks for reading this far. Any constructive suggestions?