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March 25, 2004

Comcast

My Comcast Internet service has been flaky for three days in a row now after having been stable for a long time. I called Comcast this morning and their CS rep said it looked like the modem was not working properly or receiving a poor signal. The rep said they wouldn't dispatch a technician just to inspect my outside cabling; they want to check things out inside as well, even though I told the rep I haven't changed the cabling config in months. This bugs me for two reasons:

  • I wasn't available to accept the support call until Saturday.
  • I have the modem in the basement and the cabling is kind of a mess. Plus I don't know how particular Comcast techs are about what can and can't be connected to the modem. I use a Linksys router to protect my home network and don't necessarily have only one computer connected to the service at a time.

I'll probably move the modem upstairs to test it with my laptop prior to the service call. This would eliminate a lot of cabling and network connections from the equation.

However, I'm definitely miffed that Comcast refused to visit my house ASAP to check the outdoor portion of the cabling. If anything goes wrong with this support call, I may consider the currently-lower-priced Verizon DSL (although I dislike their similarly heavy-handed tactics also).

Just had to get that off my chest and see what you guys think about these types of situations.

Posted by Alex Harden on March 25, 2004 10:37 AM |

Comments

I think I have noticed this in uploading and your music stream I think was unavailable Monday.

Be aware I have setup friends with Comcast and Verizon and I have Verizon. Comcast is a bit faster, I notice the difference. Verizon blocks port 80, so if you are hosting from your house they make you use a different port. I think this is shady tactics to keep people from hosting websites at their home.

I just want you to be aware that Verizon is not all that it is cracked up to be. Now I have just the basic package and I think there is a faster connection package available that may make it more feasible. But with the bandwidth you are using, you may want to consider that it is somewhat slower.

For myself, I really hate that they block port 80. I am paying for the connection and I think I should be able to use it how I choose. Blocking ports is not allowing me to use it how I choose.

Posted by: Scotbuff | March 25, 2004 2:32 PM

Yeah, I've always been wary of Verizon's tactics and service levels. I've had the Comcast service for over two years now and it's been great for the most part. I just get frustrated when problems arise and I've changed nothing on my side; there's no benefit of the doubt from them.

Verizon's blocking of port 80 is something I wasn't aware of and definitely falls in the "heavy-handed" category. Web servers are tools; they'll be abused by some, but not by all.

To keep better track of what's going on with Comcast's service, I've started checking out the Broadband Reports forums... Boy are there a lot of pissed customers out there. ;)

Posted by: aharden | March 25, 2004 3:12 PM

Connection is back up. I think I may have screwed things up myself; after a reset of the router the other day, I neglected to program back in the Comcast-prescribed computer name. I thought that requirement was no longer, so didn't think about it. After fishing it out and plugging it in, things took off. I also moved the modem upstairs before that, so things are probably better off overall than they were. ;)

Posted by: aharden | March 25, 2004 6:56 PM

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