Clear the Water

[PMB]

Good Day All . . .

Happy New Year

First post here.

I have connectivity issues with Aliant High Speed in Newfoundland. Sometimes my service is dropping off. I would not say it was frequent but sometimes(?)

I can ping my gateway and Firefox reports 'Server Not Found' when trying to connect to the outside world.

I telephoned Aliant Tech CSR section and I get the usual questions about resolving the issue at my end. I have heard 'through the hoops' for this line of questioning.

Now for my question. At least twice my service has resumed soon after my telephone call. One CSR told me that there was nothing that could be done at "their end" while another told me that the problem was fixed at "their end."

Which is the more believable? I am not a real techie in this area. Is it a coincidence or does another conspiracy theory begin?

Thanks.

[nathan]

If you're not using a router, and your PC is directly connected to the outside world, then if you CAN ping your default gateway, even if your service appears to be down, then it's a problem on the ISP's side.

If you're using a router, then that becomes your default gateway, and being able to ping it when your service is down doesn't really mean anything. Try going to the 'status' page in your router config, and see if it gives you it's default gateway, then try pinging that. Again, if you can ping THAT default gateway, it's a problem on their end. If you can't, it's possible it might be something on your end...but not necessarily.

This will at least give you an idea of where the problem lies so that when you talk to them, you'll have something to give to them. (no sense having them make you jump through their hoops if the problem obviously lies on their side of things)

When I've had problems with my high-speed internet, which, admittedly, has been extremely rare (knock on wood), it's never been something that was as easy for them to fix as 'flipping a switch', and is usually a bit more involved and time consuming.