Comcast Customer Support

[Evil_Dictator]

I wanted to get your guys opinion below on a conversation I had with Comcast today. I live down in Payson and found out my web connection doesn't go to Orem or even to Salt Lake back to Orem but travels about 2000 miles before it finds Orem.

I realize internet traffic goes with the big backbones, but my request went through Salt Lake twice (2nd time after visiting Denver and California) which seems unnecessary to me. Sometimes I hear complaints about connection speed to Bluehost but if the ISP's don't do their job to route things efficiently then it won't matter if Bluehost has an OC-768 connection because there will always be a bottleneck on the ISP's side.

Comcast refused to connect with someone who could tell me why. I wouldn't have minded if Comcast said "No it's not possible" as long as it came with a half decent reason. It could be that extra routing configuration could slow the network down more than it's worth to get smarter routing and I would have been completely fine with that. But they decided to hang up on me instead.

This isn't a web server I pay 7 dollars a month for. I pay Comcast $120 bucks a month. They claimed they had no Tier 2 support and there was no way they could talk with the network admins. At bluehost the admins are on the same floor as the techs.

Do you think this is too much to ask or is this just another case of a monopoly forgetting about their customers?
http://mattheaton.com/?p=38



http://www.notoriousservices.com/conversation.jpg

As for me I'm going Utopia fiber as soon as it becomes available. If anyone knows who I can contact in Payson so I can help dig the trenches for the fiber please send them my way. :)

[trace30]

Reading the script would be funny if it wasn't so completely sad. They are almost treating you like a criminal for asking a question! One of the problems with Comcast is that they don't own any infustructure beyond their headend. Your going to go on someone else's backbone. One of the reasons I use Sprint Broadband Direct (in SLC) is that they own thier infustructure (sprintlink). It's still 15 hops to bluehost/hostmonster but it all stays on Sprint (SLC Sprint>Chicago Sprint>SLC Sprint>SLC Electric Lightwave>Orem XO Communications)

I do however envy the Utopia and iProvo people - there are very few places in the world you can get 10 Mbits up and 10 Mbits down for 40 bucks a month. It's actually a threat to companies like Bluehost. You can setup your own Apache server for next to nothing and know you have the bandwidth to support it.

[Dustin]

I like how he pretty much 'hung up' on you.

And Utopia internet is free with my apartments!

[trace30]

Renting one of your apartments with Utopia is probably cheaper then the monthly cost for a T1 line - I'm thinkin' server farm with a frig!

[alligosh]

It's still 15 hops to bluehost/hostmonster but it all stays on Sprint (SLC Sprint>Chicago Sprint>SLC Sprint>SLC Electric Lightwave>Orem XO Communications)

Actually, most of the incomming traffic doesn't touch the XO network. There is a known "feature" in some versions of the Alteon/Nortel switch code that reports higher numbered interfaces in traceroutes. Basically, the hop that reports as XO is one of our routers. We have a fix planned, ubt it isn't anywhere near the top of the list lately.


I do however envy the Utopia and iProvo people - there are very few places in the world you can get 10 Mbits up and 10 Mbits down for 40 bucks a month. It's actually a threat to companies like Bluehost. You can setup your own Apache server for next to nothing and know you have the bandwidth to support it.

I beleive it is actually against the ToS with UTOPIA or iProvo to run your own commercial servers. Also, it isn't a much of a threat. I used to run my own server at home (a couple years ago) untill I realized one day that it was almost as much work to maintain it properly as the servers I run for a living. That just wasn't worth my time to save a few dollars a month.