Then the problems started.
About 3 months ago the service went offline totally for about 5 days. This just happened to be right about the time I was getting ready to take my Microsoft Windows XP Pro certification exam and couldn't get to any online study materials and tests.
Then about 2 months ago I started having serious speed issues. From time to time the speeds would drop to about 10 percent. Finally about a month ago it has stayed at 10 percent and now I am getting speeds comparable to dial-up.
I am A+, Net+, I-Net+, MCP, and CCNA certified so I know a little bit about what is going on. I have never worked in the field except for a short time as a PC repair tech. I didn't like the people in the I.T. field and probably never will. They were uptight and just not my type of people at all. For this reason I went back to being a steel fitter and a welder. I'd rather breathe fumes all day then deal with a bunch of know-it-alls. Next year I plan to open my own PC repair/retail shop but thats another story.
Anyhow, I am running AVG antivirus, the Spybot S&D resident program (teatimer), Spyware blaster, Zone Alarm, and almost daily I run Bazooka, Ad-Aware, and Spybot. So there are no issues there. I was using Norton AV but its such a resource hog that I went to AVG and will never go back. I actually uninstalled AVG, reinstalled Norton and scanned but still no viruses/trojans/worms. I also ran netstat and Ethereal and saw no suspicious activity or bandwidth usage. That pretty much clears up my end. I am using a wired router but even when bypassing the router I still cant get above 400 kilobit speeds on any of my computers.
I reset all TCP/IP settings in Windows back to default but again no improvement. I even went and got a new cable modem but that didn't help either. As a last ditch effort I did a clean reinstall on an old 10GB HDD I have but nothing helped.
Ping and Pathping tests reveal no latency issues. They say I am provisioned for 3 Megabit but I'm still getting 10 percent or less.
They sent out one "tech" but he was a retard and never even heard of the pathping command. He ran a simple ping to Yahoo himself and could see that there is no packet loss occurring or latency. He called up some hillbilly on his walkie-talkie and the redneck at the other end said "If all yer signals is ok then it's prolly somethin' in the computer". I felt like killing somebody. I was LIVID.
3 days later they sent out another dip**** "tech" that had never even heard of Ethereal or a protocol analyzer period. All he did was pull of the TCP/IP settings dialog in Windows and that was it. He said he would "escalate the issue". After a week of waiting I had had enough and went to the local office myself. They said it was "definitely being escalated" and I would hear back on Monday or Tuesday this week.
Pissed once again I called the 800 number last night and told the guy to check the signals and provisioning to make sure. He said that it was ok but decided to send me the QCR diagnostic anyway. For those of you that don't know, the QCR is just a batch file that runs pings and traces to various sites to check for latency. After viewing the results myself I could see none but sent the QCR back anyway. They guy last night said I would "definitely hear back from tier 1 today". Guess what? NOBODY CALLED.
Tonight when I started getting dialup speeds I called back and the prick on the phone said that "Tier 1 won't be in until tomorrow at 6am. Call back then". Like thats gonna do anything anyway.
What I don't understand is that the other day I was getting smoking speeds. I was downloading well over 300KB from any site and thought the problem was fixed. I left for a few hours and when I came back the crap speeds had returned.
I would move to DSL but I can't get it where I live. I am getting no help from this disaster of an ISP and don't know what to do. As I said, I hold a couple I.T. certifications but on the same token I am no expert. Maybe I am missing something on my end. I don't know. If anyone can help, I beg you to do so. Thanks way in advance.
