Tuesday, August 19, 2025
It was as bad as I feared, but not in the way I was expecting
My friend Mark wrote me, asking why I was not with Comcast. I answered it was more the devil I know than the devil I don't know. Intertia is hard to overcome at times.
The “wireless service unit” finally showed up at Chez Boca yesterday. I had the “phone app” to configure the device installed on Bunny's phone and I think that was my first major mistake. I should have ignored the marketing crap about the “easy to use phone app” and configured it manually via the web interface that most home routers come with these days.
But alas, I did not do that. I opened the box, took the unit out, and started following the steps on the “phone app.” I got as far as the sign in page.
Sign in?
The “wireless service unit” is right next to me.
Why do I need to “sign in” to The Monopolistic Phone Company to configure a unit right next to me?
I tried creating a sign in account,
but didn't get very far.
Since the service is in Bunny's name,
I tried using her email address XXXXX@XXXXXXXX.conman.org but the Monopolistic Phone Company apparently doesn't like a third level .org domain.
It accepted sean@conman.org though.
But even that wasn't enough to get signed in.
So I did the second worse mistake of the day—I called tech support. I spent the first half hour getting to the right technician only to have the phone call dropped. The second call was an hour and a half and consisted of me repeating the following over and over again:
“No, I do not read email on my phone.”
“I can't check email on my phone since I never set it up.”
“No, as I have stated, I cannot check my email on my phone.”
“No, I cannot check my email since I don't have Internet access! That's what I'm trying to set up!”
“What do you mean I have to use my email password to sign in? That's for email, not this site!”
“Yes, I know my email address is my ID, but that doesn't mean your system will accept my email password.”
“What do you mean check my email on the web? I don't use the web to check my email.”
“Okay, I've got my laptop hooked up to the ‘wireless service unit” and I still haven't received your email yet.”
“Yes, I can receive email. I've received several pieces of emails in the time you've tried sending me email.”
“No, I cannot check my email on my phone.”
“No, I don't read my email on the web.”
“Gmail? You want me to log into Gmail? Look, I know that 95% of people use Gmail, but I'm in that 5% that don't use Gmail.”
“Okay, I'll click on the link you sent to my phone for a video call. Okay, see? There's my email client—no email from you.”
“You want me to log into Gmail on the web? Did you not hear me? I do not have a Gmail account.”
“Okay, see where it says ‘Sign up for Gmail”? Oh, now you believe me?”
“Okay, can you give me the number for Comcast?”
Did I mention that was an hour and a half long conversation?
It was clear during the conversation that the “wireless service unit” was preconfigured with default settings,
enought for my laptop (and Bunny's laptop) to get onto the Internet.
After hanging up,
I did what I should have done and went to https://192.168.1.254
(as printed on the back of the unit)
and configure it via its web interface
(I'm now convinced that the “phone app” is nothing more than a web browser that loads the web app from the “wireless service unit”).
It was at this point that I have to move three book shelves to get to the mess of existing wires supporting the now dead DSL link. My existing wireless router decided to have a fit and for a good half hour I thought it was dead (no, it just took an exceptionally long time to reboot—yes, I was having a grand ol' time here).
Over the course of a few hours, I was able to get the “wireless service unit” configured to get everything back online. I had to dig for the advanced Wi-Fi settings to get it to send different SSID for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands (something my old wireless router did automatically). I wish it came with more than two Ethernet ports, but I'm really only using one port anyway (it's the principle). It may be faster than the DSL, but I can't really tell since I'm not downloading huge files nor a hardcore gamer. The only things I don't like is the lack of multicast support (which I did use but can't now) and I think it drops inactive NAT TCP connections a bit too quickly for my liking (still testing that).
The only positive thing is that the “wireless service unit” supports IPv6 and not only did it assign a
(I hope)
static IPv6 address,
but it's a /64,
so now my main computers all have a public IP address,
something I haven't had in 25 years.
I'll see how today goes, but I'll double check the phone number for Comcast.
