On Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:24:39 -0800
John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> dijo:

>Alea jacta est. Today I went to the 'store' in Hollywood and signed up.
>(It's not a store, there's no merchandise for sale there, but I didn't
>argue with them.) The 1 GB service is $70 a month, plus 3.99 for a
>'recovery fee,' whatever that is, and installation is free. And I opted
>to lease the modem for the time being, so the total comes to $83.97,
>less $9.99 after I get my own modem. Installation is Tuesday 2/28.
>
>Can't wait to tell Comcast to go suck eggs.

The installer came today. The appointment was for a window of 10 am to
2 pm, and at 10:15 he called and said he needed another 45 minutes at
his current job and then he would be here. I thought it was nice of him
to let me know, even though he had no obligation to do so.

When he arrived we surveyed the layout of the house, the current
Comcast line, and what the best options were. He was very considerate
of my desire to keep my house looking like a house and not a structure
with a web of wires hanging all over it. The decision as to where and
how to install the connection was mutual. And now that it is finished I
am happy to say that it is not very visible.

I had a lot of issues with the paperwork that I got from the Hollywood
office (a few notes scribbled on the back of a business card) and the
PDF file that came in an e-mail that I didn't receive until yesterday.
There was nothing about data limits, guarantees of speed, and several
other issues. An old lawyer saw is 'if it's not in writing it's not
worth the paper it's printed on.' So this morning I called to cancel the
installation, knowing that this would get me to someone with some
facts. It did, and the gentleman who I spoke to said that the installer
would bring the real contract. And indeed, he did, although it was on
an IPad and the only option was to accept or reject. And the installer
did not bring this to me until after the installation was complete. I
wondered what he would do if I refused. The document was 16 pages long
and it was impossible to digest it fully under the circumstances, but I
did get one fact straight: I can cancel the service anytime in the
first 30 days without penalty, although there are severe cancellation
fees if you cancel after the first 30 days (it's a two-year contract).
So I spent five minutes trying to skim through the legal stuff and then
agreed to it.

Then, with the installer standing by, the new modem connected and the
router reset, I sat down at my laptop (my main computer) to see if it
all worked. It did, so I opened a Firefox tab to speedtest.net to see
what I would get. I got about 750 down and about 900 up. Not bad
compared to the 55 down and 5-6 up from Comcast. And I should add that
the gentleman I spoke to this morning said that CenturyLink guaranteed
85% of the rate that I was paying for. I haven't finished reviewing the
contract, so I'm not sure if that is in there.

Now for the annoying news. My laptop works fine with the new modem, but
I have problems with other devices. The new modem was set to
192.168.0.1, which is the address that my Netgear R6250 router was
already set to. On encountering the conflict the router graciously
reset itself to 192.168.1.1. This seems to have solved the problem with
the laptop, but my desktop computer was still set to '0', so it was
unable to connect to anything. With the command line I succeeded in
setting the desktop to 192.168.1.1, which succeeded in getting it to
see other devices on my own network, but it still can't get to the
internet. 

Also, my Synology DS216j NAS is apparently still set to '0' and nothing
on the network can see it. Synology has a web-based too for configuring
it, but the tool can't find the Synology because it is still on '0'
when everything else is on '1.' I tried to reset the Netgear to '0'
temporarily in order to fix the Synology, but the Netgear 'Genie' web
based configuration tool allows me no options to change its IP address
manually. The manual says 'click on this' and displays what the screen
is supposed to show, including boxes for manually entering IP addresses,
but when I 'click on this' absolutely nothing happens - the screen
that is supposed to appear does not appear. There must be a way to
change its settings without the tool. I'll call them tomorrow.

That's enough for today. Suggestions to solve my problems will be
welcome. I will report more later as I figure out how to get everything
working.
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