my internet provider-(at&t dsl) had to come out and provide me with a new modem today...

[dysfunctional press]

last night i was uploading some photos to a photobucket album for a friend, when a few seconds past midnight- i lost my internet. my modem showed a red light in the broadband link indicator, meaning it was down. my first thought, due to the timing 12:00am aug 1, was that it was some kind of pre-planned maintenance shutdown, but i unplugged the modem, waited and plugged it back in...still red.
so i decided to call at&t to see what the deal was. i waited on hold nearly 45 nimutes, until i spoke to a techie named george, and eventually his supervisor, mark(who both sounded suspiciously sub-continental for people with those surnames(:sarcasm:))
george eventually told me that it was a widespread outage in our area. mark, his supervisor said that it wasn't, and elevated it to a line maintenance issue, and that i'd need a service call. when i got handed back to george, he told me that the reason he thought it was a widespread outage was because of all the calls from the area he was getting with the same problem. which was also why i had to hold so long in the first place.
when i got up this morning, it was still out, so i called them again to set up a service call- since i had a 10:40 vet appointment for one of our cats- (she's got a grapefruit-sized tumor on her left shoulder), they were able to set me up for an afternoon service call.
when the tech guy gets there, he does this and that and tells me i need a new modem, that mine is shot. he also says that i'll need to have my email account & password info in order to set up the modem. i asked him why, as isn't that stuff stored on the computer and not the modem anyway...?
he tells me that with the new modems this is how it's now done- my modem that was being replaced was probably 5 or more years old.

what gets me, and keeps bugging me is the timing- just seconds past midnight...it sure seems to me that perhaps my older modem was no longer 'acceptable', and perhaps aug1 was the pre-arranged shut-down date for it and all other older ones like mine...?:shrug:
or am i just being paranoid, and the timing's a coinky-dink...?
and last question- did anybody else have to have their modem replaced today...?

[liberalmuse]

1. I'm getting a little paranoid...

not seriously, but I've heard about all sorts of problems the past two days with blogs, IE, and last night I lost my wireless connection. My security profile for WPA was gone. That's never happened before. My wireless connected to someone else's signal in the neighborhood so I didn't even realize it. I tried to log back onto mine and was unsuccessful. It came up again after awhile. It was just odd, but I'm sure it happens and I probably haven't noticed it before.

[Th1onein]

2. Uh oh......

I tried to log on to my Yahoo account this morning and found that the password was changed. I had to get on the phone with Yahoo and verify credit card info and zip code in order to get a new password sent to another email account.

What's going on here?

[ck4829]

20. That happened to me too

I managed to resolve it myself though, did Yahoo ever say what happened to your password?

[Th1onein]

22. No, they wouldn't tell me......and this is strange, too.....

After they gave me a temporary password, when I logged on, it greeted me with "Hello ecard from." Normally, it says, "Hello Melanie." Then, when I went to change my settings on my account, I saw that I was listed as "Ecard from" some card company. Strange.

[smiley_glad_hands]

3. I had to replace my cable modem not too long ago.

The software installed on it was out of date and it was no longer compatible.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. My AT&T modem went out last night as well

It was late, though, like 2am central.

I turned the computer off and went to bed. It was working this morning.

[sharesunited]

5. Yes, the NSA noticed you needed an upgrade.

[Contrary1]

6. IE7 here. Never had a problem, until tonight.

Tried to access some of the political blogs, and couldn't. Same on the husband's PC. Weird.

[unapatriciated]

19. I have been having trouble all day accessing DU...

When I finally access DU I have trouble opening up videos or posting comments....
I haven't had any trouble on other political blogs.
We have a new mac (few months old).

edited to add: I have Comcast so I don't think the problem is isolated to one provider.

[PatSeg]

21. I had problems with DU this morning too

and I don't have Comcast - AT&T. I didn't have problems with any other sites however.

[unapatriciated]

26. Crooks and liars had a problem earlier...

Open Thread: SiteMeter Problem for IE users
By: John Amato on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 8:30 PM - PDT

Update: It looks like there’s a sitemeter problem that is affecting Internet Explorer all over the internet. Many websites won’t open if they have sitemeter. Working on it now…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/01/open-thread-883/

I only had a problem with DU.

[1]

7. eh...

almost every night i lose access to democraticunderground.com

right around 2-3 am.

my isp is hughesnet, that satellite provider that extends broadband to us country folk.

i don't mind losing internet access. that happens. but it always seems to happen just when i am in an argument with my favorite du foe.

curse you, hughesnet. denying me my argument. just when i had that 1000+ on the ropes.

curse you...

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. same here

DU goes out for me in the middle of the night too.

[1]

10. so is it that just du just shutting down? to reorganize their files or somesuch?

is it my isp?

inquiring minds want to know?


do tell...

[murielm99]

11. Mine does that, too.

I just log back on a few minutes later.

[TrogL]

27. DU goes down for backup during the night

[kas125]

9. Mine went out last night, too. I couldn't call tech-support -

kept getting a recording that said their office was open from seven thirty to nine and to call back tomorrow. I KNOW they have 24- hour support, so that was weird. So, I called this morning and waited forever on hold and finally got someone who got me connected to the internet, but then, after we had hung up, I discovered that I couldn't log into my homepage or email. I tried calling again and waited forever for a live person only to get disconnected when he put me on hold. That kept happening - at least eight times. One call was an hour and ten minutes, the guy had just had me turn off my firewall, and we were disconnected. I was on the fucking phone with those people from eight thirty this morning until THREE FORTY in the afternoon. And still, I can't log in with IE, only with Firefox. But they didn't say anything to me about it being a problem with my modem, they all said they had no idea what was causing the problem.

[bdf]

12. Was there a thunderstorm that night?

A nearby lightning strike can kill modems (whether old-style analogue modems or adsl modems; cable modems are less vulnerable unless it's a direct strike). The phone line termination at your house includes a spark gap which reduces the risk of differential voltage damage (one conductor of the twisted pair goes to a lot higher voltage than the other) to phones. But the likelihood of that happening is slender anyway (both conductors of the twisted pair usually go to a lot higher voltage than earth potential).

It's that second possibility that causes the damage to modems. If you're far enough from the exchange and the phone line is struck near to you, both conductors of the twisted pair phone cable go to millions of volts above earth potential. The mains, however, does not. The two meet at your computer, via the modem. The result is fried modem and possibly fried chips on your computer. BTW, a nearby strike can instead raise earth potential in the area and the earth line in your mains goes to millions of volts above that at the telephone exchange. Either way, your modem is fried. Over a period of 15 years I've lost three modems to lightning— the first was without warning and so nearby I thought a bomb had gone off, the other two happened when I was out and wasn't expecting thunder that day.

As for the email account and password, that stuff is stored in the modem. Really. If you have an internet interface (rather than USB) to your adsl or cable modem point your browser at 192.168.1.1 (the most commonly-used address, although I've seen 0.1 and some really odd addresses used by manufacturers). You
should be asked for a password (and possibly a username) to access the modem (these are different from your account username and password). Sometimes those are blank, sometimes it's admin/admin, sometimes adsl/adsl (depends on the manufacturer - do some googling). Once you're in you should be able to navigate to a page where you enter your account username (which seems, from what you said, to be your e-mail address) and your account password (probably your e-mail password). You should also be able to see lots of other interesting stuff (most of which can screw up your connection if you change them, so be careful).

[JerseygirlCT]

13. So, lots of people in your area suddenly had the same problem?

And it was your modem? So I assume suddenly their modems were shot, too?

It doesn't make sense - I'd be suspicious, too.

[seabeyond]

14. left at&t as soon as i heard about them breaking the law and stepping on constitutional rights

and went to sudden link. they are a crook too. telephone changed to at&t in dec and sure enough, dec, the first month, i was overcharged and had to fight them on it.

use to like the company. hate the company now. and owning a business when we first bought there was at&t stealing and told them stop the service, not gonna pay. they didnt fight it. knew they were stealing. charging for 24 lines. had only 8 lines.

stuck with them on husband cell phone thru his company. hate it

[lonestarnot]

16. Good for you! Now see what happens to sheeple that keep paying them.

[seabeyond]

17. i HATE people are not taking a stand walking away, financially hurting them because

their service is more important to them than our right not to be spied on. cannot stand it. every person that continues to use att are saying fuck us, break the law.... ok with us, just give us a service

[melm00se]

15. there are a couple of

non-conspiracy theory reasons for a geographic specific cell of failure.

the 1st is the that telco cut over to equipment that has a different chipset rendering the older modems incompatible with the new hardware.

the 2nd is a software upgrade on the aggregation equipment - same thing can happen (that happened here when sprint switched to embarq).

No one ever said that the right hand (CPE - customer premise equipment - folks) knows what the left hand (infrastructure folks) is doing.

[RainDog]

18. my isp went down the other night - not last night

and a recording said they were doing an upgrade and to call back after 6 am. At 6 am, all was back. however, before this I have had problems with Firefox/yahoo - as in I cannot use Firefox to read my email b/c it won't show up. I can read it with Safari, however.

I wouldn't be too paranoid. Most likely the telecoms are just making sure they have all their cameras installed that can watch you from your monitor. :evilgrin:

however, I no longer put anything past BushCo.

[suffragette]

23. DSL reports forum has a long thread about it

If I got your area correct. If not, you may want to search in their forum for your area and see if there are similar threads.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20881599-No-service-on-the-West-Loop-at-midnight-8108

[onager]

24. I'm in Egypt and DU has been up and down all day.

So that seems to be a singular issue, not related to any other spying hijinx. :-) Everything else Internet-related is working just fine, including other web sites, Newsleecher, etc.

I'm 7 hours ahead of you if you are on the US East Coast. And of course, 10 hrs. ahead if you are on the West Coast, where I will hopefully return after this job assignment. Someday.

e.g., right now it is 9:23 PM Saturday night 02 August here. DU is up, momentarily a least.

[Liberal In Texas]

25. Buy your own modem.

We don't use the ISP's modem, we use our own. It's a bit of a job to set up, but the ISP charges "rent" on their modem, so we avoid that charge every month.

Also, you set up your own security on the modem.