[Novalug] Report on losing phone and then DSL and getting it back

[Bonnie Dalzell]

Well now, a week after we lost the voice part of our phone
service and 4 days after loosing DSL both the phone and the DSL are back.

I am posting this because some of the problems were weird and some of the 
solutions were not obvious.

Initially we lost voice on the phone and DSL speed dropped on Monday June 
7.

First problem - Verizon gave us a repair date (June 21) which was 14 days 
after the date that the trouble was reported to them.

Solutions:
  (1) file a formal complaint to the State of Maryland Public Service 
Commission and
  (2) Let our local ISP [QIS.net] know about the loss of the voice 
capability and the drop in DSL so they could also file a report with 
Verizon.

Thurs June 10 very nice Verizon repair guy shows up expecting problem to 
be in our in house wires or in the NID at the house or between the 
Verizon pole and the house. Problem turns out to be in the 2 1/2 miles of 
phone wires that run through the woods between us and the hook up on the 
main road North of us. (Verizon does not bring our phone lines up 
from their wires a mere 300 feet down our driveway at Hydes Rd to the 
South).

Result of this visit. No DSL after repair person failed to get voice 
line working.

Friday "Lineman" type repair  person shows up with cherry picker truck 
and succeeds in fixing voice line. However still no DSL. Since we have 
Linux and MACS he has no idea how to deal with DSL troubling shooting in 
house.

Now the weird thing is that my husband's (Jim) MAC laptop still has 
internet connectivity (slow) but my Linux desktop does not.

So I spend an enormous amount of time messing with my Ubuntu desktop 
trying to troubleshoot the network connectivity using the IPhone to google 
help pages at the Ubuntu site. I am learning why people might want an IPad 
or a Netbook or a magnifying glass.

But Jim's MAC laptop is online, the ethernet to modem desktop is not, the 
ethernet to modem MAC tower is also not online.

So Sat we call QIS.net and they tell us - according to our logs your modem 
has not connected to the internet since Friday noon (time of visit of 
second Verizon truck). "Maybe, they said."the laptop or the Apple Airport 
(which is our wireless router) has picked up someone else's unprotected 
wireless signal".

This was part of what was making it so hard to figure out what was going 
on.

Verizon had reported that they thought our DSL modem was malfunctioning. 
Well our DSL modem was manufactured in 2000 or something like that and we 
seem to be the last QIS.net customers who are still using that model (a 
Netopia) so tech help at QIS.net said come on out to Manchester and 
pick up a new modem. (there is a charge for that but it was not very 
high).

So Jim (husband) drove out to Manchester and picked up new modem and we 
installed it. However although it worked as a local network router (this 
one had a lot more ethernet ports than the Netopia modem) we could NOT get 
online - and it was the evening and the morning of June12 > 13.

Sunday AM QIS.net tech help (Mike) calls and says they have some problems 
with logging into the modem due to the password being incorrectly recorded 
in their paperwork.

We discuss this and Mike tries a few things and suddenly we are back 
connected to the world.

Conclusions:

The Government in the role of the Public Service Commission can be your 
friend.

Even if you live far away from everyone else there may be unprotected 
wifi you can pick up, especially if you have a MAC airport router.

Small ISP's have their advantages when it comes to customer service.

SO HAPPY to be back online!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
mail:5100 Hydes Rd PO Box 60, Hydes,MD,USA 21082-0060|EMAIL:bdalzell at qis.net
Freelance anatomist, vertebrate paleontologist, writer, illustrator, dog
breeder, computer nerd & iconoclast... Borzoi info at www.borzois.com.
HOME www.batw.net    ART bdalzellart.batw.net  BUSINESS www.boardingatwedge.com