Fighting with SBC Yahoo! DSL
February 23rd, 2005
I’ve moved down to Los Angeles, and switched from Covad to SBC Yahoo! DSL. I received two installation kits yesterday, so I called their customer service to ask what should I do. Unfortunately, SBC only provides tech support after normal business hour, so the tech guy, Mike, can not help me. He offered me that he can assist me walk through the setup process, sure, why not?
SBC’s kit has a CD and a little SpeedStream 5100 DSL modem. The CD is supposed to load the setup program and guide you through the setup process. Well, one of the CD has scratches and can not be read from my CD-ROM. Now I am very happy with the extra kit that they give me. I used the CD in the spare kit, but nothing showed up. What? Okay, let me try another computer, still nothing. I copied everything on the CD to my D:\temp and tried again. Still nothing, but this time a file named “err” is generated and it said “can not load en-US locale from …”. I AM IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! Where do SBC outsource this sucker program?
Okay, after 35 minutes of struggling, Mike gave me plan B. Direct connect to the SpeedStream modem (192.168.0.1) and then you can connect to http://help.sbcglobal.net for the registration process. I followed his instruction to do the registration, but this time got different frustration. The JSP-based register web application still SUCKS! It’s extremely slow and stalls all the time. Just imagine a 1.5M/512K DSL loading a page in the speed of less than 9600 bps dial-up, that what I fought for 65 minutes yesterday.
Finally I told Mike, “Enough. Why don’t you fill out the form for me and I can provide you all the data over the phone? It takes only three minutes to do so.” He apologized again and tried to remedy the damn registration process. We basically agreed to give up the rest of the registration and just make sure my account/password are created. I tried hard to squeeze the information that how to use my Linksys router to connect but he wanted me to ask Linksys guys. Com’on man, Linksys customer support? They are in India! How do they know SBC settings?
I realized it’s not the right way to get the answer I want. So I changed strategy and played the honesty testing game — ask binary questions. “Is the protocol PPPoE? Just say Yes or No.” Good, it’s yes. I let honest Mike go home, replaced the DSL modem with my own SpeedStream 5360, hook my Linksys router, reset the login name/password. After two hours of frustration and trick playing, I am back to paradise with DSL connection.
Wait a minute, SBC blocks port 25? Okay, I don’t care now. Symantec uses VPN and I can’t access company mail unless using VPN. My good hosting site 1and1.com deals with this problem so I am a happy guy 🙂 Time to watch TV now … Catch you later …
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