Today it is used mostly because it is default. Original motivation for that was compatibility with Radius/Diameter based AAA systems of ISPs (and to lesser extent the fact that the link the looks from both sides like faster dialup connection). The authentication in DSL is essentially an backward compatibility hack. He then told my mother that they needed my father to personally deliver his own death certificate before they would close the account.
The case worker brought didn't know how to handle the situation where someone had actually done everything that Comcast had asked and brought in the branch manager. While this all seemed fairly onerous, I can at least appreciate the formality from an security standpoint.Īfter jumping through all of the hoops set forth by the Comcast, my mother drove out to the local branch office and presented the paperwork. Also, they would be keeping the death certificate for their own records and a photocopy wouldn't do, so she'd need to go down to the county corner and get a second copy of the death certificate printed and hand signed. Comcast required that she bring in my father's death certificate. The account was in my father's name, so she expected there to be some trouble. My father passed away a few years back and my mother was trying to cut back on expenses, so she went to cancel the Comcast. For you, it worked just fine, like it does most of the time. Part of the problem is that getting Comcast to close your account can be a craps shoot.
I have no idea what the equivalent terms or appearance for a coax patch panel would be, my apologies for any mangling.
I spent a bit of time wondering how many people might have had spontaneous outages before this tech who actually tried to address the issue came out, as I knew quite a few people on my block had Comcast (aside from the xfinitywifi, you could tell because they'd all come outside almost immediately if they were at home and a persistent outage happened). Call, get another tech out, he goes up on the pole, comes back and says "yeah, there's not enough plugs up there so the last few techs have presumably just been unplugging someone and plugging whoever complained in", and then we get some time spent to remedy this situation. Tech comes out, confirms it's not something inside, pops outside onto the pole behind the house and it comes back.Ī few days later, it suddenly goes completely out again. I had a similar, if less malicious, story from my past.Īt a prior home, I had Comcast, and my internet suddenly went out one day. I then called Comcast and got a 3 day credit for the outage they created "intentionally" to prove I am a customer. He then went on about how they would have fun disconnecting competitors, and that competitors did it back to them etc. If they are a paying customer they will call and get it turned back on".
He said something along the lines of: "No, often in these multi-unit buildings we will disconnect people at random in case they are trying to steal cable. I asked him if the previous technician made a mistake during the install. The Comcast technician then told me my line was just disconnected. Within a few minutes it was working again. I was unable to check this myself since it was mounted high on the building and required a ladder to access. Then he goes out back to the cable box outside. After going through the phone support steps they scheduled a technician to come out and check the line.Ī couple days later, when the technician arrives, he checks the line only to confirm no signal. I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installing internet for a new tenant in the building. I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own).