Since I was on a phonecon this morning, even as I watched the cable modem blink its lonely, clueless, disconnected way, Margie ran off to the Comcast Office. She walked in, said it was broken, and they gave her a new one.
Different model this time, though. Motorola SURFboard SB5120. I have no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Modem didn’t seem to work at first. All the lights came up fine, except the PC light. Played with normal vs. cross-over cables, played with power cycles, etc. No change.
Okay. Call Comcast to register the modem, just in case. Wait on hold for several minutes. Give the nice lady the modem MAC address. Plug stuff back in, waiting for it to recognize …
[Grotesquely painful long story cut short.]
I suspect it is a line problem. Same cycle of blinking lights. Rrg.
Margie eventually called up. Dude at Comcast walked her — again — through the same three pages of “diagnostic tests” they have scripted, complete with my bringing over my notebook to plug directly in (and then being told not to).
She eventually mentioned that there was still a service call scheduled at the house tomorrow morning. At which point, Dude informed her that, no, it was cancelled when I called to register the new modem (which registration they didn’t actually confirm, and which cancellation was not at all mentioned when I talked with Dudette this morning).
Margie wrangled them into a service call time that was relatively convenient, again tomorrow, and hung up.
So Margie is Disconnected in Denver. I’m WiFied in at DIA (“DEN is Ten!”), waiting for my flight. Which is mildly ironic.
On the other hand, I had no problems connecting to the AT&T Wireless signal here this time, and it will bill directly to my company cell phone, and since I made use of the time to connect into the company mail …
Guy came out at 11AM. Replaced the new modem with a new new modem, checked to see that everything worked and left by 11:10. We are now back in action.
So … the old new modem was bad?
Anyway, huzzah.