I work out of my home using the internet, making a reliable connection a must.
Last week I stared having connectivity issues with my internet, I was constantly having to reboot my router, and it was getting worse as the week went by.
By the time the Friday rolled around it was just getting ridiculous, my fiancé, started playing a game online, which left me unable to get on the internet at all, which was odd considering, I have in the past been able to watch streaming video, download a file and somebody could play an online game, and not suffer any significant lag.
I chalked it up to there being a problem with our ISP, and decided I would give them a call Monday morning to see if we could track down the source of the problem.
In the mean time my fiancé need a file off of my pc, and hopped on the network to copy it over, when he notice a strange pc on our network (had to be a close neighbor our wi/fi barley covers our house).
My first reaction was how is that possible we have taken the necessary steps to secure our network, and we are no amateurs we both have certifications in networking and pc maintenance. That doesn’t mean it would be impossible to get into our network, it just means they would have to really put some effort into it. My next thought was why would they put so much effort to hack into our network, and not take steps to hide their presence?
So I tried to log onto our router/modem, to boot the interloper off, only to find that my login for the router/modem wasn’t working, so I took a shot in the dark and tried the factory default password, and sure enough that worked. It turns out that at some point in the last few weeks our router had reset itself to factory defaults.
Well we set our router back up change passwords and wireless security, and we debated for a while weather the person we found on the network was responsible for the router being reset, or because of the reset they just connected because they could. We decided it was the later, because even a noob hacker would know enough not to let their presence on our network to be so obvious. (that, and none of our neighbors are that smart)
I did some research and found that a couple of people have had the same thing happen to their routers, and most likely its caused by some electrical interference, line noise, or the router is just trying to tell us it is about to go to the big router cloud in the sky.
So mystery solved, more or less, and we didn’t give it much thought….. until this Monday morning, when much to my disgust my internet went down. Here we go again! Right? Wrong! It turns out that my ISP turned us off because “someone” had illegally downloaded copyrighted material from our network.
At this point I was ready to kill, both the network interloper and my ISP.
I explain what happened to the tech support guy, he made me swear on a stack of bibles that I had taken steps to secure my network before he could get it turned back on, but it will take 2 to 24 hours before it was back on, and that’s when I lost it, I felt like I was literally just bleeding cash at this point I am losing money because I can’t do my job with no internet and I have paid for a service that I am not getting! It wasn’t my fault it happened, we are paranoid about network security, my router just has deferent ideas apparently!
My blood pressure must have went threw the roof, because I was seeing spots in front of my eye’s and my head was pounding! I disconnected the call as politely and quickly as possible, because its not the tech guys fault, so I wasn’t going to take it out on him, ( I have worked at a job like his before )
My fiancé however was not going to take it laying down, and he headed out for the local office and get them to switch back on immediately or he was going to disconnect the service entirely.
The service was back on before he even got to the office, and I called him to let him know but he was still going to have a word with the management, he felt after all the years of being a loyal customer should count for something, at least a phone call or a letter saying hey we noticed some nefarious activity on your network yada yada. I couldn’t argue with that. Well, apparently neither could the ISP, because they did try to make it right by upgrading us from the 5mb speed tier to the 10mb for free WooHoo!
So It got all resolved end of story, and I get calmed down I can go back to work and all is right in the world. Right? Wrong! My internet goes down again! WTH!
I am ready to go 3 kinds of ape shite on the person that answers the phone this time, thinking it is because of the same reason they had earlier, and I am sure their competitors will be more than happy to have my business.
That’s when my daughter called me to ask me why her internet wasn’t working, she has the same ISP as we do . we decided it was just an outage, and purely a coincidence that it happened right after the them turning me off.
What I found really interesting is my daughter said her router/modem did the same thing at the probably about the same time nearest we can figure, she had the tech out to fix it because her router is provided by the ISP ours is not and not even the same brand. maybe its an odd coincidence or maybe the ISP did something that made our routers reset (firmware update maybe?)
What really gets me is we have had this ISP forever, and they have been very reliable, and I have never had a complaint until this year. Now I am starting to see outages more and more, and I have to reboot my router on a daily basis, and they have started throttling bandwidth.
That’s my biggest gripe of all is the throttling of the bandwidth, I realize I am not the typical user, with streaming video, I watch, netflix and online video games, I maxed the 3gb cap they have for the 5mb tier in no time. The cap for the 10mb tier is 5gb that dose give me a bit more breathing room I guess.
I still don’t think its right, if I pay for 5 mb I should be able to use 5 mb all day long dammit!
It is however a mute point, because almost all ISP’s are starting to cap their bandwidth and if they aren’t they will be soon.