Saturday, November 07, 2009
Giving up on Linksys
So I just spent about 90 minutes on the phone with Cisco/Linksys trying to get the wireless G router to work properly.
To recap, purchased this for my mother, the goal being make it easier for me to connect when I come here and give her better firewall protection. Set the whole thing up, got everything working, but speed dropped down to sub-dial-up speed. Obviously not satisfactory.
The good thing about Cisco is the response time on their tech support line. I called at 8 AM EST and only had to click through about 4 menu choices before being put through to an actual person. (PCCW, you paying attention?)(No, of course not.) But that's about where the goodness ends.
The first mistake was mine - about 20 minutes into that call, the guy asked me to cycle the cable modem. I forgot my mother also uses Optimum Online for VOIP, so when I unplugged the modem, the call was of course dropped.
Called back and yes, they did have the record of the previous call so I didn't have to start up quite from square one again. But now, before going any further, the guy tried to upsell me. For 10 smackers, they'd remote connect to the PC and try to fix it for me. But, I told the guy, my current connect speed is slower than dial-up, I don't think your guys would able to actually accomplish something even if they can connect.
An hour later, still on the phone, things were actually in worse shape than before I called. I was getting an IP address but couldn't connect to any web site at all; DNS was no longer able to resolve any web site addresses but in a weird way .... I'd get "connecting" then "waiting for http://www.yahoo.com/" and then after a minute or two it would then say it was connecting me to the google search page and then after another minute would say that it couldn't find that address either.
At least I was able to connect to web sites before I called them even though it was frigging slow. Now zilch. On both my mom's PC running WinXP and my MacBook (running Snow Leopard), trying both wired and wireless.
At this point, the guy wanted me to recycle the cable modem again, knowing that it meant I'd lose the call. He gave me my case number, I wrote it down, repeated it back to him, ended the call.
And then unplugged the router, packed it back up in the box and will return it to Best Buy tomorrow. I give up.
To recap, purchased this for my mother, the goal being make it easier for me to connect when I come here and give her better firewall protection. Set the whole thing up, got everything working, but speed dropped down to sub-dial-up speed. Obviously not satisfactory.
The good thing about Cisco is the response time on their tech support line. I called at 8 AM EST and only had to click through about 4 menu choices before being put through to an actual person. (PCCW, you paying attention?)(No, of course not.) But that's about where the goodness ends.
The first mistake was mine - about 20 minutes into that call, the guy asked me to cycle the cable modem. I forgot my mother also uses Optimum Online for VOIP, so when I unplugged the modem, the call was of course dropped.
Called back and yes, they did have the record of the previous call so I didn't have to start up quite from square one again. But now, before going any further, the guy tried to upsell me. For 10 smackers, they'd remote connect to the PC and try to fix it for me. But, I told the guy, my current connect speed is slower than dial-up, I don't think your guys would able to actually accomplish something even if they can connect.
An hour later, still on the phone, things were actually in worse shape than before I called. I was getting an IP address but couldn't connect to any web site at all; DNS was no longer able to resolve any web site addresses but in a weird way .... I'd get "connecting" then "waiting for http://www.yahoo.com/" and then after a minute or two it would then say it was connecting me to the google search page and then after another minute would say that it couldn't find that address either.
At least I was able to connect to web sites before I called them even though it was frigging slow. Now zilch. On both my mom's PC running WinXP and my MacBook (running Snow Leopard), trying both wired and wireless.
At this point, the guy wanted me to recycle the cable modem again, knowing that it meant I'd lose the call. He gave me my case number, I wrote it down, repeated it back to him, ended the call.
And then unplugged the router, packed it back up in the box and will return it to Best Buy tomorrow. I give up.
