[Discuss] Dealing with RCN

[Jerry Natowitz]

Hi,

You can either read my long tale of woe, or skip to <SHORT>:


We've had RCN phone/TV/internet service for a number of years.  Starting 
about 3 years ago, the internet service started to have periodic bouts 
of intermittent outages.  90+% of the outages were short enough that by 
the time I got through to a technician, the problem went away.

Somewhere along the way I found the address 10.16.48.1 being used to 
check for network status.  A single ping wasn't enough to establish 
network problems, but ping -c 8 -s 1472 10.16.48.1 would let me know if 
I was completely offline, or if their network was dropping packets.

After a few months, the problems stopped, only to restart a year or so 
later when RCN discontinued the 7 Mbps service we had, and quietly 
"upgraded" us to 10 Mbps, adding $10 a month to our bill.

Again, after a few months, the problems stopped.  And then about 6 
months ago they started again.  This time they told me that the Motorola 
Surfboard SB5120 I was using was an obsolete piece of feces, and that I 
should replace it.  So I went and bought a Toshiba PCX2600.  But I 
didn't switch it in, I decided to wait until the next bout of problems.

The next bout of problems was a few weeks ago.  I called, they took the 
MAC address of the Toshiba, I hooked it up, and 5 minutes later I was 
online.  They were also supposed to upgrade me to 20 Mbps.

I never saw my throughput increase, and last Friday the Toshiba stops 
working.  I call up, go through the usual power-cycle, power-cycle with 
RF59 disconnected.  They tell me that they can see the MAC address, so 
the problem is on my side.  They make an appointment for Thursday for a 
field tech to come look at things.

<SHORT>
In the mean time, the (new) Toshiba doesn't start working, so I decide 
to try the (old) Motorola.  It comes right up.

So my questions are:
1) Exactly what is done at the NOC to provision a new MAC address?
2) Should the two technicians (two separate calls)  have realized that 
the MAC address of the Toshiba that they saw was not the address that 
was provisioned for my service?
3) I assume when they provision a new MAC address, they remove the old, 
but somehow that change went away which is why my new modem doesn't 
work, but the old one does.  Is this a correct assumption?

I am really looking for the correct terminology to use when I attempt to 
deal with a supervisory level at RCN.

-- 
	Jerry Natowitz
	j.natowitz (at) rcn.com