Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!
It’s the last Monday of the month. I should have a larger project this week, but I had to split a step off into a prequel of sorts when it ballooned on me. For reasons I will go into next week, I ended up talking with tech support for my Internet provider.
It all started when I logged into my router’s off-site network settings (WHY??? is this a thing?) so I could forward a couple ports to Button Mash, my home server, when I noticed it alternating between two internal IP’s: the static IP I configured it to call itself and another one I thought was assigned to another [possibly decommissioned at present] Raspberry Pi – or it may have been a setting I never fully cleaned up. I have no way to tell.
Additionally, I learned that the online toy they’re having me use to try and manage the network is being retired. They want me to use their app I don’t want on the phone I don’t carry. No thanks. I’d rather move my whole network over to this 3rd party gaming router we have on hand.
Support Begins
Friday before posting: On my first session with support, I got a live agent after complaining to their help bot that it hated me. When I shared how I wanted to use my own router, the agent mentioned “bridge mode,” an option I had noted in the gateway’s admin panel. We continued by poking at my Manjaro workstation’s 10 Mbps connection speed with little luck because I was using a different computer.
Sunday: I got into chat with an agent on my now 3.5 Mbps connection. To not-my surprise, the obligatory reboot everything between me and the Internet didn’t change much. I told him no fewer than two or three times that I was on desktop, not phone; I do not have mobile data to remain connected; no, I do not think my family is interested in a coupon for this streaming service you’re offering; this is my one and only means of connecting to you. I followed my given instructions and pressed a button on the back of the gateway for an unusually long time. The Internet did not come back on.
Level 2
My father called a number given to me by the second chat agent, and we were connected with an awesome “Level 2” agent who could follow along as I described my unique home network while repairing the damage done by a factory reset. When bridge mode came up, I figured we might as well fix it how we want if it’s already broken and we have a professional on the line. He had some sudden technical issues of his own an hour plus into helping us.
We called back and got someone whom I had to remind a couple times that Debian 10 does not mean Windows 10. Nevertheless, he got the idea through to us that moving/disabling the default IP range was not a feature our gateway supports. I read something as much in a forum post; it said something about Layer 2 network devices, but that’s homework for a future topic.
The first guy called back just as I was giving into despair with the second guy. Long story short: our network is at around 80%; ButtonMash and GoldenOakLibry, our server and network storage, are configured with static IP’s and don’t show up at all right now. The awesome agent suggested upgrading to the next router, which might not be hard coded to serve its default IP range, allowing me to swap IP ranges between gateway and router. I don’t want to manually configure all my computers to find GoldenOakLibry at a new IP.
Takeaway
A lot of going through tech support as a customer is about explaining your exact situation to however many agents you may come into contact with.
Special thanks to Mr. E on my family’s personal Discord server for the suggestion of disabling the gateway’s integrated router.
Final Question
Have you ever had tech support struggling to keep up with you?
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.