Ok..... My favorite subject...... Comcast Hi-Speed Cable.......

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They suck!!!!! When I first got cable in my area it was TCI Cable..... Worked like a dream... high speeds..... Solid as a rock. AT&T bought them out...... Worked like a dream..... high speeds..... Solid as a rock...... Comcast and AT&T swapped regions...... Works like a dream..... High speeds...... They can't keep it up for five F*****G seconds..... I swear if my network had as many problems as these morons I'd have been fired years ago.

At one point it was failing out for up to 5 seconds every minute.... It just dropped the connection..... couldn't see the DNS servers or the gateway..... I play counterstrike a lot and it's a pain in the a$$...<s>

I drop tech support a note and mention the Counterstrike bit.... Their response - We don't support online games 'cos we have no control of the game server. I write back with a ping -n 1000 the.gateway.ip attached clearly showing the drops and mentioning that I frequently administer my work network from this connection and the dropping is bad news. Their response - we don't support work connections without you upgrading to our "Pro" version at $X more..... (Note that at no time did they try to address the problem - they just abdicated any responsibility) <sigh> I respond, copied to the Better Business Bureau saying "unless Comcast can come up with a valid reason why I am not allowed to visit Yahoo.com then your crappy system is interfering with my surfing pleasure and if you do not fix it immediately I'm out of here and I will recommend to the 40 or so of my users that I know that use your system to move to DSL"....... Funnily enough I get a response from a VP of Customer Support in good ole California...... Interestingly enough before I even got his response I had been switched to a different subnet..... Alarmingly...... No more 2-5 second drops...... Odd how that works, huh?

So, everything is going swimmingly for a couple of months then it starts dropping for a minute to 2 minutes sometimes as often as 3 times in an hour....... I hesitate to even write to "non-technical support" so I decide to call them...... They won't even start doing anything until I remove my firewall..... I point out that they can ping my firewall and that, at this exact moment they won't see anything wrong 'cos connectivity is good. They don't care, I have to drop my firewall..... <sigh.... so many morons and they all work at Comcast>. I tell them to stick a monitor on my connection - he tells me he can't because of the firewall - I tell him he can and that I do it daily 'cos I run systems - he says "Yeah......" Now I know they probably get told all the time that "I'm good with computers" but gimme a break.... If I'm talking his level or higher than his level of understanding he should probably give me the benefit of the doubt..... But no..... I'm the dimwit and he is the all powerful $7/hr Tech Guru from Comcast.... Nothing will be done till I drop my firewall..... Nothing gets done.... I'll live with it.

My Boss uses Comcast and is computer illiterate. So I set up her system at home with a nice little firewall and an IDS that reports to me by mail if things go awry 'cos she has a 16 year old daughter..... <say no more.... teenager - computer - kazaa....> One day I'm sat minding my own business and I get an email - from her machine - it's a snort alert on a web attack on her master machine - (it has puresecure on it so the IIS server is active)...... But hang on!!!!! Port 80 inbound is blocked - in fact there are no ports mapped to internal machines..... WTF happened here..... I call..... They had a cable problem and the nice chap at Comcast had her daughter remove the firewall and everything was fine - so he told her not to put it back.... $h1T - I go over and what has occurred becomes apparent...... They "upgraded" the cable modem overnight..... Now it requires the FQDN of the attached machine AND a MAC address from a manufacturer of NIC's not firewalls......<sigh> I MAC spoof the address, enter the FQDN of her machine and everything is just swimming again. It bothers the $h1T outta me that Comcast provide NO protection but insist that their subscribers not protect themselves except with AV!!!!!!! Aggggghhhhhhhh........

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Thank you for your time.......