To user of O2 and potential other ISPs

[Alastair Stevens]

> ...about 10 days ago my broadband went down. O2's solution to any problem is
> to send out a new router, which should be arriving today (hence I'm not too
> concerned about being locked out of my current router). It's helpful to know
> that the password is now set to the serial number.
>
> Odd thing is, BT is aware of a problem on my line which is interfering with
> ADSL, to do with a tree nixing the cable. O2's second line support didn't
> seem aware or willing to consider that this was not a router-related
> problem. Ah well. I guess they're too busy fending off support calls with
> the response "it meets our standards".

Interesting - we had O2 broadband for over a year, and the service and
speed was always excellent. I found the router to be an absolute
miserable pig to configure "properly" though - it's designed for Harry
Homeowner, which is fine, but for geeks it's simply terrible. I
discovered eventually that manually hacking the config file and
re-uploading it was massively quicker and more reliable (once you've
figured out the format) - perhaps everyone else already does this?

Then O2 slightly soured things by accusing me of not returning my
router after terminating due to a house move - but later relented and
admitted that they had received it. Now we're with BT (gulp), and I
have to say that the broadband itself has been faultless (and equally
fast); the general customer service is comically awful as usual,
though.

Sadly, the BT HomeHub router looks pretty but uses a noddy interface,
and the config file is binary so can't be hacked manually :-(    Never
mind, got it working properly eventually. As for security, who knows?
But there are only well-maintained Linux boxes on this network, so I
won't panic too much :-)

Cheers
AL

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ALASTAIR STEVENS
* Web - www.altrux.me.uk
* Blog - www.altrux.me.uk/blog.html