I like Comcast for my internet connection.

Honest. (People frequently bitch about the cable company [often with very good reason]; I’ve been fortunate in this regard. Few serious issues with TV or internet cable [beyond what follows] ).

I’ve had it for years (since it was Excite@home); it’s had issues here and there but – for the most part – been great. Fast, solid.

The last few months have been anything but fast and solid. Down dozens of times each day (cycling down and then up quickly). For the average user (who relies on HTTP or SMTP), not an issue.

I go down, my VPD goes away and the SSH connections I have open evaporate.

I go back up, reconnect to VPN, rebuild the SSH connections, fix the swap files of files open when it went down…and we have taken about 5-15 minutes.

And then the connection drops again.

Reconnect/rebuild…

And the the connection drops again.

And again…and again.

After literally hours on the phone, three visits by Comcast techs, the consensus is this: Uh, your stuff (modem/router/line to gateway) is fine. It’s the node in this area.

In other words, you’re screwed until we fix OUR stuff.

Great.

(Full disclosure: After about the a zillion phone calls, I was given a discount on X months of my bill. I told the supervisor thanks, but it’s not the money – it’s the connectivity!)

However, judging from the modem logs, we seem to have turned a corner.

Four days without a dropped connection.

Yee-ha!!!