I didn’t understand why Internet connection kept disconnecting. I could work anywhere from one hour to half a day before I would lose my connection. Due to the nature of the problem it didn’t seem to indicate any of my equipment was at fault it really seemed to be a problem from my provider – Deutsche Telekom. So I gave their service line a call and although they were actually quite friendly but they couldn’t actually diagnose the problem either.
Their support person ran a diagnostic program which indicated some unusual problems that needed their 3rd level support to investigate. Over the next few weeks our DSL problems increased so I had more and more telephone calls but no actual success with the problem at hand. We finally agreed to have a visit from one of their engineers to checkout our service.
The visit was to occur during the day while I was at work but I was lucky that my mother-in-law could be there when the technician came to check out our service. He told her that he could find no problems with our service. This unfortunately did not equate into better DSL service so it was back to discussing my problems with their customer service personnel.
Up to this point, this story is probably quite similar to anyone who has had problems with Internet, cable, telephone or perhaps even a cell phone.
The final support call with Deutsche Telekom was a bit embarrassing, we agreed that there didn’t seem to be a problem with the physical connection nor was it a problem with a single device. All of the facts seemed to point to a the DSL router, which was provided to me by Telekom.
My favorite part of the discussion was when their support person asked if I knew someone who had a router that I could borrow. This way we could rule out if the router was the problem or not. It is an excellent way of determining the problem but it places all the work on the customer for a computer part that your buddy never will have sitting around unused. It is not too dissimilar than suggesting can you borrow the engine from your friends car to see if that solves your problem.
I did purchase a new router to see if it would help and as luck had it it did cure all of my problems.