Internet Issues

My regular readership will realize that it's a rare event when I don't get a post up on a Thursday evening. Here's the reason why, and it's not that the dog ate my homework...

I turned on my internet connection last night, and my desktop. My USB WiFi adapter connected to my router, but FireFox kept not connecting to the internet. I then tried MS Explorer with the same result. Clearly the problem must be with the WiFi adapter (as an aside, the Buffalo one has worked really well, but they stiffed me out of the $10 rebate claiming I didn't send the UPC even though I did, c'est la vie). After trying two others, including this one, I simply wasn't connecting to anything despite a reboot of the 'puter, WiFi router and modem more than once.

Ok, time for the next plan, and some network troubleshooting. I powered down my desktop, and fired up the notebook wondering if something had monkeyed with my settings. Again, I connected to the WiFi router, but couldn't load a page in two different browsers. When I looked at the router, the LED for internet was on, so I was starting to wonder if my WiFi router had gone haywire and need replacing, although I was able to detect its signal.

The next plan was to bring the notebook to the router, and plug directly into the Ethernet port, completely bypassing any wireless issues. Should work now- except it didn't. Ok, maybe the whole router is bad, and I plug directly into the modem taking the router out of the equation. When I send a request, I then notice that the modem light blinks red (normally it's green). Hmmm. That's a new color, and probably not a good one that everything is working fine.

I then think back to what happened in June, and wonder if the whole telephone line went down, and realize that I probably should have checked for a dial tone before getting so far down the troubleshooting tree. I also take a minute to check all the wires are still in place, which they were. Yup, I still have a dial tone on the phone, so that's not the problem. Guess I'll need some professional help.

Next, I pull last month's Verizon bill, and call the company. I'm immediately greeted with the "We're experiencing heavy volume" message so something is probably going on as we're after business hours. I work my way through the voice prompts, and when I'm asked what my problem is with my phone, I say "INTERNET" until the voice recognition kicks in. The robot then tells me that I should contact my ISP. Huh? Verizon is my ISP so I'm confused now. Wait a sec, they give me a new number to call that wasn't on my bill.

Calling the second number, I'm again told that they are experiencing heavy volume. Yeah, I bet if the internet is out. I'm then told that it's out for most of my entire area code, at least on the DSL service. I didn't get to speak to anyone to find out what was really going on, and when it would be fixed.

Curiously, I checked with a neighbor, and their Verizon Fios was working fine. I'm not sure if my DSL ever came on, as I called it a night, and accepted I was off the information superhighway. Could a whole county's DSL really go out all at once? Would I be better off on the newer fiber optic network: Fios? The conspiracy theorist might think that perhaps the phone company would do this to get at least some of us to switch to the higher priced offering, but as I've been generally satisfied with the DSL service for two years now, I'm not going that route quite yet.

Keeping this in perspective, I've been without electricity, heat, hot water, phone service and even any water for more than a few hours at various points in the last several years (thankfully not all at the same time), and the lack of internet is probably the least painful. It's probably in the same category as my cell phone outage which is annoying, and inconvenient, but not terrible or dangerous in the end. I just hope this doesn't turn into an unending saga. If I hadn't taken so many steps to diagnose the issue, I could have just read a book.

--Jonas

PS: I looked online to see if anyone had posted about this, but if the internet is down, that would definitely explain why "mum's the word" on this issue.