[Had I known, I'd have written down exact times and names.... well, I kept tighter records after that day...]
On returning home, I checked and found 70% packet loss, serious latency in traceroutes anywhere inside Cavtel's network, but oddly enough, I could get out to the other mail servers I use in TX and MD. No voice messages from the alleged techs working on the problem so I called tech support again. At this point, I was taking notes via kb, so forgive my laziness, but in the interest of accuracy, I shall paste them here, again, I did not write down her name:
ye freakin gods.
I got back on the phone, and they have no record of trouble ticket #275681. It's "lost" and "not in the system."
must.... resist....
anyway, so I'm talkin to the nice lady, right now, figured I'd amuse myself by typing while I talk....
.....said I wanted to check on the repair progress on that issue, and she said what's the problem. I go back through it, and while I'm talking, I start pinging the servers - pop.cavtel.net, smtp.cavtel.net, and then when that got boring, I ran traceroutes instead. 70% packet loss, route dies at 64.83.47.46 now, a bit sooner than earlier today.
She asks for my IP and says it's timing out when she tries to ping me, I reply - isn't that strange? If we're on the same network, you should be able to ping me, what's your IP and I'll try pinging you back. She doesn't know her own IP..... grrrr.... now I'm on hold while she asks somebody.
Having a good time now, she's reluctantly acknowledged that there seems to be a network problem - I mean, she actually asked me what I wanted done with the problem (!!!) so I said "Well, I'm just your customer, so I don't know what your procedures are, but how about if someone goes over there, and hey, here's a thought, kicks the router?!?!"
I may have raised my voice just a tad bit there.
However, curiously, as I'm talking to this lady, and pinging the mail servers, a floodgate suddenly opens and here comes my mail. Weird, I've even got a web page opening now - haven't had any DNS all day, but now boom, there it is. Interesting.
Ok, she's gone off to go talk to someone about this, I'm amusing myself by testing stuff, and hey magic, I've got ping all over the place, no latency anymore, things are coming in without any problems.
She's back - "there doesn't seem to be any trouble with your line now."
I'm asking - "you mean magically while I've been on the phone, someone has fixed the problems that have been going on all day, yet there's no trouble ticket under that number?"
Oh, you'll love this - she says "I've pulled the ticket under #275681 and all that's on it is that you have no dsl service on your account." Wow, so the missing trouble ticket has reappeared, kinda like my access to the mail servers...
You can imagine, I ranted for a bit, then asked for a supervisor. She goes away, she comes back. She says "I spoke with the gentleman with whom you spoke earlier today, and he said he neglected to close the window properly, so the ticket wasn't saved, but that he sent the
proper information to the repair department, and your issue has been closed."
She won't give me his name, nor will she give me a supervisor, so I just vented some more and hung up.
Uh oh, maybe I shouldn't have said anything, now it's back to this:
PING pop.cavtel.net (64.83.1.225): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64.83.1.225: icmp_seq=1 ttl=251 time=1975.53 ms
64 bytes from 64.83.1.225: icmp_seq=2 ttl=251 time=991.293 ms
64 bytes from 64.83.1.225: icmp_seq=8 ttl=251 time=553.449 ms
64 bytes from 64.83.1.225: icmp_seq=9 ttl=251 time=2299.91 ms
--- pop.cavtel.net ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 60% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 553.449/1455.05/2299.91 ms
Yeeesh.