🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, the ordeal is over.

I think the theory about them separating the non-real uverse customers from
the real ones still holds water. Basically what I have now is the same thing
I had before, all they did was run a new line (dry pair), stuck the dsl on
it, leaving the normal copper phone line alone.

So if they wanted to, AT&T could keep the pots line, sell off the dedicated
DSL circuit to Bob's HySpeed Intranet Services. In theory anyway.

Nothing went smoothly, the installer they sent out admitted he was only on
the job for a month and didn't do too many of these yet. He also got deer
in the headlights looks when I told him I already had a business/static dsl
service, and have had it for over ten years. Appeared the work order was a
bit light with details.

After he made a phone call or two, he got the idea on what needed to be done
and managed to get it done, which included connecting up a new line. The big
disappointment for him was getting only 90 minutes for the install and it
ended up taking about 4 hours total. Not sure what that ends up being on his
permament record, but being the work order only specified "new install",
it's not really his fault.

The circuit and new router (Motorola NVG510) did come up, we went through
the auto-registration process, he even put in the static addresses. But
after he left, something just didn't seem right.

For one thing, the fastest it would sync up was somewhere between 3Mb and
3.5Mb, not the "around 6Mb" I was getting on the old dsl line. The other
thing was the static addresses they issued didn't make sense. The routers
"real" ip address was not in the same range he had for statics. I even found
several copies of the instructions saying the line you put in for the
gateway/router address should match the real ip as shown on the device
status page.

So before I started to re-ip the machines here on the statics, I went online
to the chat system, level 1 tech only was able to verify it was configured
correctly, but connected me to a level 2 chat person for more information.

Although it was just a chat window, that level 2 tech seemed kind of snotty.
They confirmed the account was configured properly, I had the static
addresses available, the real ip of the router was always out of the range
of the static subnet (?!?) and in fact the "real ip" was itself static,
mostly for law enforcement. They even said this, "In case the FBI or other
law enforcement required a wire trap, that is the ip we would trap".

So there ya go.

I'll spare the boring networking explanations but after setting up a test
machine, the statics did appear to work, sort of. Odd as it sounds, they
seemed to be intermittent. Outbound (from the machine) it always worked,
from the net to it, was there for a while, then not, came back, gone again.

After a bit of screwing around I also discovered they put the outbound port
25 block on the statics (oddly again, not on "the real ip"). So I went back
to the online chat, amazingly whoever it was knew what to do and fixed it
within a minute or two.

But within 5 minutes of that fix, most of the lights on the router turned
red or blinking red, it looked like it would reboot, go all green, then as
soon as it synced up, went to red and the whole cycle started again.

After a couple hours wait (it was dinner time anyway), figured a phone call
was in order, talked to sabu in india, they were unable to see the router
(no surprise) and opened up another appointment for the early morning. The
router was in that reboot mode at least till 10pm, last time I looked at it.

Next morning, it was online and working again, but only as good as it was
before (3.5Mb/784k), but no reboots or red lights. The tech called
confirming the appointment (russian guy, thick accent) and I told him maybe
to cancel the job because for whatever reason, it was working again.

Somewhat in a strong voice he said no, I already looked at the line from the
office and something is wrong somewhere, they never should of closed out the
install order, he wanted to come over and test it from here.

So he did, from the router, then outside from the wall box, then from the
pole and finally "the box" which is around Hamlin and Montrose. After about
an hour he came back and said the problem was between the pole out back and
"the box", but there wasn't anything he could do, but he submitted the
repair to the line crew and said it would be fixed within 24 hours.

That I found hard to beleive but they did show up in the morning on day 3,
did something (they never called or came in) but after they left the speed
was back to what I was paying for 6Mb/784k. No drops or reboots.

Spent the rest of the day changing the ip addresses and testing things out,
and I have to say, it's the same as it was before with the plain DSL.

One plus, I did manage to get them to delegate reverse DNS for the static ip
addresses. This was possible with the DSL, but they had some odd
requirements which I never understood or persued. They allowed to "enter in"
two of the five usable addresses, but to do all 5 required more paperwork
and hoop jumping. I guess on uverse, since the statics are common, a couple
of emails is all that is needed these days.

Anyway, everything is up and running, not saying I'm happy about it, but
glad it eventually fell into place. According to the sales drone, my cost on
it drops from the $70 a month to $35 ($19.95 a month + $15 for the statics)
for 12 months, then it's $34.95 plus the $15 afterwards, the cap goes from
150GB to 250GB.

But the "UVerse" is just plain dsl in this area...

Line State			Up
Broadband Connection		Up
Downstream Sync Rate (kbps)	6016
Upstream Sync Rate (kbps)	765
Modulation			ADSL2+
Data Path			Fast

But I was able to confirm the bastards would of disconnected the DSL on
4/12, that was already in the system as a disconnection date and from what
the russian said, there isn't any real uverse north of Montrose around here
and heard of no plans to move it into this area, anytime soon.

So I still don't get the point of changing it over now, except to get people
off the AT&T pots lines and separate billing under the Uverse name.

Still smells like a sellout to me.

-bruce
bje@ripco.com