argh

It is both frustrating and somewhat suspicious that I can't reach www.dslreports.com from my new (and flaky) DSL connection.

I can't tell if it's Qwest or if it's my computer. imtboo's (Windows XP) laptop had no trouble with this connection yesterday.

Qwest's customer support was so unhelpful:
"Now bring up Internet Explorer."
Me: "I have a browser running already."
"Is it Internet Explorer?"
Me: "No, I am running Ubuntu Linux; I'm using Firefox."
"Is that XP?" etcetera, until I am trying not to scream at her.

They won't support it in terms of "now make an HTTP request so we can trace your line" and "officially" they only support Windows, a single computer, and not the wireless connection (never mind that they ship a wireless DSL modem!).

I'm tempted to drop them right away even though that would put us out some installation fees. At the moment, I'm stuck trying to fix it myself. graah.

in happier news

Carla Speed McNeil is updating Finder again. Visit the site or subscribe to the RSS. Jaeger in speed-dating! Imagine the chaos!

DSL updates

despite some of the hand-waving of the last post on this subject, I think I have pinpointed the problem with the DSL. The modem is flaky in a very specific way -- it's got a bad DNS cache that sometimes returns 1.0.0.0 when it should punt to its own upstream DNS. whatever web pages happen to receive a 1.0.0.0 DN response then time out.

This is particularly bad on LJ, because every LJ user now is on their own domain, so the DNS gets a lot of work.

I fixed it (temporarily) by updating the DNS entry in my own system by hand to point to the upstream QWest DNS (not 192.168.0.1) and everything seems to work now. (update except both of us use laptops, so that gets reset to be wrong all the time.)

But the modem (Actiontec GT701-WG DSL Modem with wireless gateway) has a flaky DNS cache and that has been all of the problem. Gotcha!

Now, to fix....

ha ha

Qwest DSL "with MSN premium" ships the Actiontec modem that's running Linux.
( text of telnet session )