The Blog of Hans Eisenman

Brighthouse gets it right

I think it's important when something goes well to make a note of it in the same way that we would complain about something when it goes poorly. I see people bitching quite a bit about BrightHouse and I've had my issues with them too but I just had a really good interaction with them and so I wanted to be fair and note that as well.

For the last several days I've been trying to trace down a very elusive problem with my Internet connection. I have two different computers here on my desk: one is a Mac and the other is a Windows machine. They are connected to my router in completely separate ways, one via Wi-Fi and the other is hard-wired into the router.

A few days ago I started noticing problems where I would go to some of my regularly-used websites, and my PC (which is the computer I use the most) would tell me that that site is "not available" or "could not be found". It would be like saying CNN.com was not available or MSN.com was not available. In fact, tonight MSN.com was not available!

The other things that would happen is I would go to a website and it would load only partially. It would be as if all the formatting of the website was removed. So I'd only see text and maybe some hyperlinks.

In speaking to BrightHouse several times over the last week we didn't have much luck troubleshooting the problem.

At one point I thought I might have some malware so I spent some of today getting that pulled out by the roots. (Actually handling the malware was easier than I thought it would be because I was able to go back to an earlier point on my Windows machine and restore it to the point where there was no malware.)

In any case, the mysterious browsing problem was not going away. I sat here and watched MSN.com be unavailable on both computers for a good 15 to 20 minutes tonight while I was on the phone with BrightHouse.

Also in my in my favor was the fact that BrightHouse came out today and gave me a brand-new router so that eliminated that as a potential source of the problem. I was still having browsing issues and the router was not the cause.

This is kind of an elusive problem because it would come and go--sometimes it would be on one computer and not the other and other times it would be on both computers and it was just very hard to pin down.

So, to be honest, I was kind of dreading dealing with a tech support rep over the phone at BrightHouse trying to convince them that what I was seeing was a real problem.

Tonight I got kind of lucky in a few ways. The first was that MSN.com refused to come up on both machines (which means it was probably not a problem at my house but rather "upstream" if you will). So that was good and it was refusing to come up for pretty long period of time--long enough for me to get BrightHouse on the line.

Also before I tell you about the call, I should note that I learned during all of this a few days ago that when you call the 888 number for BrightHouse, you get connected to a group probably in the Philippines. Those guys work for RoadRunner. When they take their notes those notes do not make it onto the screens of the guys here locally who work for BrightHouse; and so if your problem is of a more difficult nature and it gets escalated, chances are all that discussion you had with the Philippines group will not show up in the notes in your account at BrightHouse.

So you'll end up repeating yourself.

The number I was given for the local BrightHouse group handling Internet issues here goes almost immediately to a rep. That number is 727–329–2056. I hope you won't abuse it.

I called the number this time and got Kathy. I don't know her last name. She sounds like she might be a heavy smoker and of course that's totally irrelevant (sorry Kathy) but it might help somebody at BrightHouse know who I'm talking about.

If you're a BrightHouse manager and you know who I'm talking about, give that Kathy a big, fat raise. She was great.

The best thing that Kathy did was not assume that my problem was just like any other. Now to be fair I made it easy on her because I started off with a really good summary of my problem and some of the things that we had tried in the past. It so happens that I'm an Evernote geek and I take really good notes most of the time. Before I started this call I made sure to clear my head and write up a new summary of the problem as I currently saw it.

Kathy listened attentively to my summary and then clarified her understanding of what I had said.

Oh, one thing I didn't bring to the table was a lot of emotion related to this issue even though I've been beating my head against the wall and my hands against my desk for the last week over this thing. I guess I'm old and wise enough now to recognize that somebody like Kathy isn't the actual source of the problem.

So chock one up for getting older!

Kathy was fantastic because she didn't make me retrace all of those tier 1 tech-support steps that they always put you through. She merely asked me whether or not certain things had been done before and what I had tried. I felt like she was really on my side and she was working to understand the problem just as much as I was. 

After we tried a few different things that didn't fix the problem, we were both nearly giving up when at the last moment Kathy noticed something in my account. She noticed that I am actually an EarthLink customer.

Of course I worked for EarthLink back in the early days as most of you know and I've just kept my account ever since. But I didn't think to mention it because I'm always calling BrightHouse and I just sort of feel more like their customer these days. EarthLink never contacts me anymore and I think I'm even paying BrightHouse directly. 

So it's just kind of a weird relationship.

I also want to say that all along I've been suspecting that this issue was (sorry for techno jargon here--I'll clear it up for you in a second) a DNS issue.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server and it's the part of the Internet that resolves or translates the English word for a website like "website.com" into a series of numbers (aka: an IP Address [IP = Internet Protocol] that represents the actual location for that website. That keeps us human being able to talk about all our Internet adventures in English instead of numbers.

I'm not even sure why I knew this was probably a DNS issue. I was just seeing some weird stuff on my screen and that's what it felt like to me. Also I'd ruled out just about everything else!

Getting back to the end of my conversation with Kathy, she noticed that I was an EarthLink customer and that there were different DNS numbers they used than the ones for BrightHouse. Long story short [and I'm only including this detail in case someone else out there on the Interwebs has a similar problem one day], she thought it might be worth a try to force each computer to use different DNS numbers to see if that fix the problem. 

I can't tell you how relieved I was when I saw how quickly MSN.com loaded after we made the change on the first computer.

Then I checked MSN.com on my other computer and it was still hosed.

So it sure looked like we had a fix. There's still a small question or two I have around this issue (like why it happend in the first place and how permanent is this fix of forcing certain DNS settings) but it looks like we got it fixed enough now that I can go ahead and get back to work instead of losing so many hours on this problem.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment at the end of all this (hopefully the end) to give a shout out to Kathy and BrightHouse for a job well done in a situation that could've easily been dismissed as just in my head or something too elusive to bother with.

Having been in that position myself (or close to it) at EarthLink, I know it's not always easy fixing everybody's problems and keeping all those customers happy.

I do know though, that when you get it right it's commendable. That's why I wanted to take a moment to jot this down. On the one hand if anybody else is having similar issues to what I had, maybe this will help them. On the other hand I wanted BrightHouse to know that I'm a happy customer and why.

And don't forget to give that Kathy a raise and/or promotion if you can find her!

Cell Phone Use, Brain Cancer

Cell phone use, brain cancer...these are two words you don't really want to hear in the same sentence.

Here's my problem with this topic (see quote at end from Mercola.com, the popular health website).  On the one hand, it seems sensible enough that cell phone use could be causing a rise in brain tumors/cancer.  You get surgeons who are "reporting more cases of brain tumors/cancer than before", cell phone use is on the rise, peer-reviewed journals and all sorts of really credible sounding stuff.

However, there's one piece of information that doesn't seem to match up and I think it's an important one. 

If cell phones have been going up and up in use since, let's say 1992 or so (when I purchased my first cell phone-pictured above), shouldn't the rate of cancer be climbing as well, even if it's on a 10 year delay?  

Well, according to the Cancer Institute, it's dropping!

The Silver Lining Blog: The ethics of "stealing" a WiFi connection

Wow, accessing WiFI is now a crime?  Riiiiight.  Are we really, as a society, going to go down this road?  I mean if you can't legislate people into becoming good parents to their children (The Hill tries, but just do the math on what it would take to really make that work in terms of having enough enforcers around to ensure the law doesn't get broken), re-defining drive-by  WiFi usage as a criminal act isn't going to get anywhere either.

Wouldn't it just be easier to help people get what they need (providing it's not harming others, of course)? 

That's one of the things I love about the Silver Lining concept actually: everybody wins.  Users who, at the end of their probably long day, just want to get some time alone with the 'net, can get a connection for free.  (Well, almost.  The only thing they have to put up with is a small bar at the top showing a line of text/small graphic ads one at a time.)  Meanwhile, advertisers get their needs met with a little more targeted, user face-time.
It's another example of how the free-market could help heal societal woes (if the below really is one) provided lawmakers allow it to do so.  I'm sure there's some real criminality out there somewhere they could be focusing on.

Link: The Silver Lining Blog How Silver Lining Works.

Network security firm Sophos recently published a study on what it terms WiFi "piggybacking," or logging on to someone's open 802.11b/g/n network without their knowledge or permission. According to the company's study, which was carried out on behalf of The Times, 54 percent of the respondents have gone WiFi freeloading, or as Sophos put it, "admitted breaking the law [in the UK]."

Amazingly, accessing an unsecured, wide-open WiFi network without permission is illegal in some places, and not just in the UK.

IPhone Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over, Security Firm Says - New York Times

The real test of Apple's mettle in this situation isn't going to be whether or not bugs or holes like this are found on their new and innovative phones, but how efficiently the holes are effectively plugged.  Knowing Apple, they'll probably be able to push out a fix to all the existing iPhones (rather than making their owners jump through hoops by having to download files and install them).

One of the features I enjoy with my Treo 700p with Sprint is that I can dial *2 and if there is an update available for my phone service, it is detected automagically and downloaded to my phone right there.  That's the kind of low-hassle, hi-tech fix that can make a customer want to stay with a provider for a while (aka: create "stickiness").

If this is a real iPhone security issue, I'll be interested to see how what the average iPhone user has to do in order to fix it on their own iPhone. 

Link: IPhone Flaw Lets Hackers Take Over, Security Firm Says - New York Times.

A team of computer security consultants say they have found a flaw in Apple’s wildly popular iPhone that allows them to take control of the device.

The researchers, working for Independent Security Evaluators, a company that tests its clients’ computer security by hacking it, said that they could take control of iPhones through a WiFi connection or by tricking users into going to a Web site that contains malicious code. The hack, the first reported, allowed them to tap the wealth of personal information the phones contain.

Although Apple built considerable security measures into its device, said Charles A. Miller, the principal security analyst for the firm, “Once you did manage to find a hole, you were in complete control.” The firm, based in Baltimore, alerted Apple about the vulnerability this week and recommended a software patch that could solve the problem.

A spokeswoman for Apple, Lynn Fox, said, “Apple takes security very seriously and has a great track record of addressing potential vulnerabilities before they can affect users.”

iPhone Madness

 

Here I am at our local mall's Apple store thinking I might be able to get in and touch the new iPhone.  Ha!  And this photo you see isn't even the real line.  The rest of them are about 50 yards away, piling up behind a slightly bemused security guard. 

There is so much Geek Energy in the air, it is almost arcing off the overhead fixtures and gawking passersby. 

I don't remember seeing this much technological excitement since the first Star Wars movie release as a young boy!

Still, I think I will sit this early adopter round out and see how the reviews play out. 

Boing Boing: Vancouver cops hate WiFi

Okay this is a fairly disturbing viewpoint.  What concerns me way more than anything else here are the generalizations in this FBI statement.  It makes one feel as if people committing "nefarious acts" (another generalization) are far outnumbering honest WiFi users.  It's just not true.  And what exactly is a "nefarious act."  Are there zillions of people plotting the next JFK like assasination or are we just talking about the  average American's propensity for disagreeing with authority of all shapes and kinds?   Let's get some specifics here before we wantonly cast aspersions on one of the most enabling technologies to hit the face of Earth since Bell's telephone (or at least the cellular version of it).

Link: Boing Boing: Vancouver cops hate WiFi.

    Kevin R. West, a federal agent who oversees the computer crimes unit in North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation: "Free wireless spots are everywhere, and it makes it easy for people . . . to sit there and do their nefarious acts. The fear is that if we talk about it, people will learn about it and say, 'I can go to a parking lot, and no one will catch me.' But we need to talk about it so that we can figure out how to solve it."

Smart Mobs: Wi-Fi and rural areas of the U.S

Link: Smart Mobs: Wi-Fi and rural areas of the U.S.

"Technology advances, and public policy moves, have begun to stimulate the appearance of Wi-Fi in rural areas, and far-flung suburban areas, too,"this govtech.net article reports.

What we know

If there's one lesson we could learn from the Internet, the World Wide Web, the cellular phone phenomenon--not to mention the Short Messaging System (SMS), blogging, chat software, email group lists, and even just the Plain Old Telephone System (aka: POTS), it's that people want to communicate with one another.

It's actually quite hopeful.

Google, eBay And Amazon To AT&T: We'll Build Our Own Network

Hot news (or potential news anyway) if you're tired of the ankle-grabbing big telcos make us do relative to using their pipes for Internet connectivity.  I had heard Google was already buying up lots of "dark" fiber and pondered whether the endgame would be their own telco-free Internet network. 

Link: Networking Pipeline | Blog | Google, eBay And Amazon To AT&T: We'll Build Our Own Network.

Accessing The Internet From Almost Anywhere

A friend wrote in with this question about using his laptop to connect to the 'net from anywhere (like the way you'd use a cell phone).

I feel pretty duhh having just bought but not opened a netgear 108 Mbps Wireless PC card for one of my laptops.  I thought I could just plug it in and access the internet from wherever I was.  I haven’t opened the box yet, and looks like, from reading it, that I will have to be near my own network or computer to be able to access the internet. Is this true?  I was wanting to convert my laptop to a computer that would access the internet so I could write up loans in homes that I would be visiting.  A guy came into my office with his computer and accessed the net and I thought this would fix me up. Will it?  Or must I take it back and get something else?