Technology is great when it works

We had an interesting experience with our DSL connection this week. That’s interesting as in the old Chinese curse “May you live in an interesting time.” The whole episode demonstrated a few essential concepts about technology and the risks and benefits of depending on it. Here’s the story:

Our DSL connection pooped out Tuesday morning. There was no warning; it just died. I found out about this when Folkcat called out to me that “the network died.” Now I know when she say this that she doesn’t mean the local network. She’s telling me she can’t get on the Web.

I verified that in fact we could not go anywhere on the Web. I unplugged the DSL modem for a minute, then plugged it back in. No joy there. I did it again. Still no connection. “Houston, I think we have a problem.”

I looked up the number for Tech Support and called. Despite “unusually high call volume” I waited on hold for no more than about 5-10 minutes. I explained my problem to the support person.

The good news is that the support techs for our ISP (TDS Internet Services) are all quite capable of distinguishing their elbows from other well-known body parts, and are quite professional. The bad news is that they have to follow their scripts, even when they figure out that you know as much about the business as they do. The end result was 30 minutes of walking through “Is it plugged in?” questions with a tech who was just as happy as I was when we decided that the modem had just died.

Okay, fine. He issued a trouble ticket that requested a new modem. I went down to the local office (which is about two blocks away from where we live) in the pouring rain and gave them the ticket number. I got a new modem. Problem solved, I think to myself.

Well, maybe not. I plugged in the new modem, configured it, and it still won’t connect. Damn. I try all the obvious things and call Tech Support again. I get a different tech, but no problem. I give her the original ticket number and she can see everything the first tech tried.

She tries other things. No luck. We still can’t connect. It looks like the DSL modem is physically connecting, but falling on its ass when it tries to confirm the user name and password. After about 20 minutes of pushing every button she can, the tech concludes that the replacement isn’t working and orders a replacement replacement modem.

It is still raining cats and dogs. I drench myself again to the local office. They don’t have another modem of the same model, so they try to call the field office at the other end of the street. No one is in. Not surprising. These guys spend the day on the road fixing and installing stuff. Okay. I leave my cell phone number and get a promise that a tech will call me. Sounds good.

About 4PM, I’m at work and my phone beeps to tell me I have a message. Goody, I think. It’s the guy from TDS calling to arrange the delivery of the new modem. NOT! It’s Folkcat, calling to tell me that she heard a voice in my office and realized it was someone leaving a message on the answering machine for the home phone we never use. It was the TDS tech, calling on the number we told them NOT to call, telling us that they had tested the first modem we returned, found it perfectly fine, and asking what they could do to help.

Folkcat was pissed off and so was I. I was expecting to hear that the new modem had been dropped off so I could hook it up overnight, and now we’re stuck until the next day. I decided that I’d just walk down to the field office in the morning and work something out. That meant dealing with Folkcat’s bad mood about the whole mess, but it was all I could do.

I walked down to the field office as soon as I was up and dressed Wednesday morning. I got lucky and caught nearly the whole bunch of them in the office. I explained my problem, and they pounced on it, with one taking the lead and the others providing support. It was impressive to watch. In less than ten minutes, the lead guy had decided what he needed to do to solve my problem, and told me he’d go into the switch building to do that as soon as he dealt with something else. I confirmed my cell phone number to him and left so they could all get to work.

Less than an hour later, the tech called my cell and told me he has solved the problem. He confirmed that I was at home and walked a new modem up to my apartment. I promised to check it out right way. I plugged in the modem, configured it, and it worked. The tech called about 15 minutes later from the road, and I was able to give him the good news.

So what was wrong? The port needed to be reset. Somehow, a setting had changed itself and screwed up my ability to connect. Now the remote tech in Madison was able to reset the port, but only through software. That was like pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL in Windows. The local tech physically unplugged that port card, waited a minute, then plugged it back in. Whatever was wrong in the port card had to be cleared by a “hard” reset, and that’s something you have to do in person.

This experience clarified a few truths about DSL connections, and technology in general, at least in our town:

• The centralized tech support works amazingly well. The techs in Madison, WI were able to figure out a lot about my situation and do a lot by pushing buttons on their computers. They are also online 24/7, which local techs can’t be.
• The centralized tech support can’t do everything. The problem was finally solved by local techs with local knowledge going into the local equipment rack and physically resetting an interface card. Nobody on the far end of a wire will ever be able to do that.
• Fast Internet connections are a modern necessity. Losing our fast connection drove home just how much we use it. It hit Folkcat a lot harder than it hit me, because my daily work doesn’t require always-on net access. But she could hardly make a move all day without tripping over the fact that she had very limited access to the ‘Net.
• We don’t know how good we have it until it’s gone. We were able to connect using a dialup connection while the DSL was out. We got 52K-56K connections, and they were painfully slow by comparison to the DSL. They were, in fact, so slow as to be pretty much unusable. I remember when a 56K connection felt like faster-than-light travel. Now that we have a DSL line that almost as fast as a T1, any dialup is like crawling. If nothing else, this fiasco has made me appreciate just what we get for $30 a month.

It’s rather scary, actually. The DSL connection costs less each month than our other utilities, but in subtle and critical ways, we need it more urgently than we need the others. If I had to make hard choices, the ‘Net connection would probably rate up there right behind the electricity I use to run the gear.

-= Gryphon =-

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