I’ve been a Bellsouth DSL subscriber for about 10 years now. It has at times been a tumultuous relationship. In the beginning I gamed quite a bit and there were issues, but after a year of complaining everything balanced out. It’s been great since then.
Over the years I’ve upgraded consistently to the highest package available. I currently subscribe to the DSL Xtreme 6.0 package. Aside from a brief outage here and there, it’s been a trouble free experience — until about three weeks ago.
I awoke one morning (OK, afternoon) and hoped online as I always do. Something was amiss. It took pages minutes to access. No problem, I thought. Reset networking equipment, but the issue was still apparent. As it happened, I was scheduled to fly out to L.A. later that day, so I forgot about it and took off.
Skip forward a week. I arrive home to experience the same problem. Flustered, I called Bellsouth AT&T and told them that something is wrong. “Nothing wrong on our end,” says the tech choad. I know there is nothing wrong on my end, but I acquiesce to allowing a line tech come to my place the following day.
The line tech arrives and he, of course, finds nothing wrong here. Nevertheless, he replaces some aging paired lines with Cat-5. Bandwidth shows a marginal improvement but the problem accessing websites still remains.
I call tech support back and tell them that the problem remains. They still insist it’s on my end. I jump through some hoops (more of that magic fix everything solution, the restart) and become increasingly belligerent. My suggestion that they check their DNS servers is dismissed as a preposterous hypothesis. Hoops continue and I become enraged.
While on hold, listening to the most unbearable Kenny G crap on loop for the 100th time, I remembered something I saw recently: OpenDNS.com. After some waiting, I managed to access the site. Switched to OpenDNS servers and, as if by magic, everything works perfectly again.
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Meanwhile, the tech gimp continues to insist there is nothing wrong with AT&T DNS servers. So what the hell is going on here? To me it’s an exceedingly transparent issue. Switch the DNS, everything works, it must be DNS. Right? Am I wrong? Is there something that I’m not seeing here? A conspiracy perhaps?
I’m incredibly pissed off about this. After having Bellsouth for years I was a relatively happy customer. Yet, withing months of AT&T taking over, I experience something really unfortunate. It does not bode well.
I’m also incredibly pleased with OpenDNS. It’s a remarkable service, and one to which I owe much props. The feature set is excellent and the access rates are topnotch. I suggest you all check it out immediately.
And so, in closing, let me propose a challenge of sorts. Consider this post your impetus to rant and flame about ISP disasters. Post your stories in the comments section (and make sure a working email address is in your information section). We’ll select the best stories and vote on them. The winner will receive a Sansa Connect from SanDisk. Entries close on Friday.
