Tech support circus

Fuck modems and routers and tech support...hell, fuck telecommunications in general.

So for a few weeks now I've been having issues with my internet connection. It's brought into striking clarity just how critical it is to have access to the internet at all times, even (especially) when trying to fix your internet.

I'm sore and cranky and want to bury all my electronics in the desert but ultimately I feel a sense of superiority against my ISP for thwarting their attempts to control my internet usage.

So here's the crux of the problem. My ISP is Bell/Aliant. I imagine this isn't an uncommon practice but when they send you the modem (Siemens Speedstream 4200) it's loaded with a gimped, safety-scissors version of the firmware. You can put in your password and that's pretty much it. No port forwarding or any of the things that you'll want to be messing with if you use any program or service outside of web-browsing. I've never attempted to connect to the router directly, always through the router and it's worked well. Then last month I had to troubleshoot some technical issue that required me to use the pinhole on the back to reset it to default settings.



This is apparently not as straightforward as it sounds. From what I can conclude from looking back on all of this it all comes back to when my 12 month internet subscription (you get a better rate if you buy the 12 month deal) expired. When my contract was up they switched me over to another channel which caused the modem to flake out and go into an error state. When I reset it it switched from "bridge mode" to "router mode", the difference being that bridge mode lets my other SMC router deal with all the port forwarding and PPPoE stuff. The difference between setting the modem to one of these or the other is the length of time you hold down the reset button.

This is so far out of what the average technical capabilities of any tech support person I've had to deal with is I am astounded that anyone ever gets their internet straightened out if this kind of a problem occurs. It really is ludicrous how far some ISPs go to keep their customers from having any control over the product they're selling.

Links:
Factory Firmware for Speedstream 4200
DSLReports thread that helped me solve my problem
I feel bad for this guy. Hope he figured it out on his own.