Taking care of some business at my Mom’s place this Christmas, I am finally helping her get into the 21st century with some 1.5 Mbps (hopefully) DSL service from AT&T / SBC / Yahoo. It’s pretty l’trocious, but after having negotiated the minefield that is AOL customer support during the switch, I feel confident in saying that it is approximately 2^64 times better than her current situation. A few “choice” words I have for AOL:
- What in the Jesus Tittyfucking Christ is up with the PFC format that your emails are archived in? If you actually set out to create the most impenetrable and frustrating file format in the history of the world then my hat is off to you sick fucks. But if that was not your intention, then you can at least take pride in having perpetrated the largest cock-up in the recorded history of technology
- How is it that your publicly accessible website actually renders *better* in Firefox than the same layout does in your own god-damn stand-alone application? I know my mom isn’t running at the *highest* resolution possible, but there’s really no excuse why the headline “Sweet Suri takes after Tom!” needs to be truncated to “Sweet Suri takes…” when you’ve got roughly 8 square inches of white space available on the same screen. Maybe you stopped working on the client software when you realized that 90% of users were just minimizing it after dial-up and running IE or Firefox instead.
- Just because you say “Connected at 48000 bps” doesn’t make it true. I knew 28000 bps. 28000 bps was a good friend of mine. And AOL, your 48000 bps is no 28000 bps. The last time I connected to the internet this slowly my modem was seated in an ISA slot
- With regards to #3. In light of your shitty bitrate, mabye you could have less than 8 cycling banner ads on each page? And why is there a banner ad on the fricking “Account Settings” and “Customer Support” pages? Do you really feel that that is an appropriate moment for targeted selling?
Well, there is more I could say, but I’ll call it a night. But before I go, here is a word of advice for anybody who might have to set up an SBC / AT&T DSL account for their folks in the future. So, SBC uses this clown-shoes tech called PPP over Ethernet to authenticate connections for some reason. I guess the idea is that by requiring a login to access the DSL, they could cut down on bandwidth “splitting” i.e. the installation and use of routers and WiFi networks and etc. Or at least… that *used* to be the idea, since they now apparently condone this type of behavior. But anyway, the crummy part of PPPoE is that you can’t just plug the modem in between the wall and the router and let it rip. Nope… You have to “register” an SBC Global account first and config the router firmware to login with this info. And according to the guys at customer support, the only way to do this registration is with this handy CD-ROM that they’ll send you, along with the modem. Well, that sucks, because I’m not even going to be here when the modem arrives, and I’d really like to make sure that everything is set up correctly *before* I travel back to the other side of the continent. Anyway, long story short, there is a workaround for this, and I’ll let you in on the secret. So apparently SBC decided that Flash would be the best platform to deliver whatever abomination of an installer they wanted to inflict on people. But somebody must have been horrifically unclear on the concept of cross-platform compatibility, because they locked the installer into using Flash 5. What’s more they locked it so hard that if you already have a version of Flash *higher* than 5 at the time of installation, you have to manually uninstall it first so that the installer can “auto-upgrade” you to the “correct” version. OMFG. I don’t even know *how* to engineer software that half-assedly. But anyway, since apparently this whole upgrade/downgrade rigamarole won’t even work at *all* on a Mac, they offer the poor, blighted souls running *that* operating system a “lo-fi shortcut” installation process. If you’ll take the time to read this FAQ you’ll notice that there’s a link to this page which allows you to handle the entire PPPoE registration process via the web (IE only, of course). So, based on my rough working knowledge of the internets, I decided to go to that site on my PC and lo and behold, I was able to register for an SBC Global account in a matter of minutes, without even having to see their hateful CD-ROM. So yeah… Hope all this ranting helps somebody out someday. Now let us never speak of consumer ISPs again.
Coincidentally, I’m embarking on exactly this same mission for my folks, who are also currently modem running AOL members (seems to be the software of choice for that generation). Anyway, we haven’t ordered the DSL yet, but I was hoping I WOULDN’T be facing something like this when they do.
Should I urge them to go Comcast cable internet instead? They seem to be drawn to the whole not-needing-a-separate-wire aspect of SBC DSL, but seems cable internet is faster?
Well… It seems to me that using either method will present *some* kind of problems, even with Comcast, there are still network config issues to deal with. And one thing about SBC is that they are definitely way cheaper, despite being only a little bit slower. The main thing I would recommend in either case is getting a router that will sit in between the cable or dsl modem and the actual computer. That way you can configure the router the way you want right now, and then when the modem arrives, all they have to do is plug it in, in between the cable/phone jack and the router. In the case of SBC, this actually makes setup much easier, since once you’ve gone through the process of getting the “@sbcglobal.net” account that I described above (in the “this page which allows you to handle the entire PPPoE registration process via the web” link) you can put that into the router setup and then they won’t even have to install the software that comes with the modem. In theory at least… =) Anyway, that’s my plan. So, to review…. I:
1) Ordered DSL service (opting for the modem w/o built-in wifi)
2) Did the SBC Registration thing on the web
3) Bought a cheap router and made sure that it was connected to the computer properly
4) Configged the router to use the login from step 2
5) Told my mom to just plug the dsl modem in between the wall jack and the router when it arrives (placing the included DSL line filters in the other phone jacks in the house)
That’s it! Anyway, I’ll post a follow up here when I find out how it goes. Good luck, and happy holidays!
Thanks Eric, I’ll let you know how it goes on this end too.
Happy Holidays back ‘atcha!
Wow.
Oh… It all worked out fine, btw. Since I had already done the ATT registration and put the user id into the router, when the modem arrived, my mom plugged it in between the phone jack and the router and everything was cool. Of course, then the DSL cut out a couple days later for some mysterious reason, so I ended up having to call ATT tech support and fight with them over how I had already done all the local connectivity tests (i.e. check cables, power cycle the modem, etc.) but their tech support “script” won’t even let them proceed to the part of the call where they check connectivity on their end until I verbally acknowledge that I am doing each one of their stupid tests *as* they instruct me to do it.
Here’s what I don’t understand: The broadband companies obviously are in a tight spot. They want to sell Cable/DSL to as many people as possible, but they have to face facts that it’s just not as easy to config and keep running as dial-up (at least initially). So they offer you a choice when you sign up. Either try to figure out the install process yourself, or pay them approx. $200 to send a guy out to do it. They outsource (in many cases) the “pro” install, and the $200 price tag sort of tells you how hard they’re getting hit by these 3rd party contractors. So, the point is, on-site tech support is not cheap for them to provide. Phone support is cheaper, but still not free and so the less of either that they can get away with the better.
So why in the #(@*# can I not self-identify as an “expert” when I call tech support and skip over the time-and-money-consuming scripted interaction with somebody who knows less about the situation than I do? Some companies (i.e. my web-host, Dreamhost) offer this and it makes so much sense that I just can’t believe it’s not a more common practice!
Anyway, alls well that ends well. So here’s a vote of confidence for AT&T. (At least until their merger with SBC is forgotten and they can rip up the net-neutrality agreement they issued last week.)