broadband calling danny boy
Hello, Comcast? Is anyone at hoooooome? Apparently not.
Broadband, that's what the kids like to call high-speed Internet access.
(Note the capital I in Internet -- the Internet is a proper noun; an
internet is any two or more connected networks.)
Broadband, that's not what Comcast "High Speed" Internet has been of late.
It seems an enterprising individual or two have discovered that Comcast's
own routers (the things that make the Internet go) are sending hundreds of
"ARP" packets every second to just about every single Comcast subscriber.
Now, don't ask me what an ARP packet is, frankly I don't really know or
care. What I do understand is that this is wrong and it's making our
Internet connection, formerly blazingly, fast completly unusable for most
of the past week.
Comcast blames their problems on: 1. User error. 2. Infected Windows users
(but what about us Mac users?). 3. Bad lines and/or the recent severe
thunderstorms.
Well, whatever they want to blame, the true root cause is out there and is
being largely ignored. For my part, I've ordered up Verizon DSL because I
frankly can't get any work done without a fast Internet connection... even
if the DSL is significanly slower than the cable was once, it's still
better than the 28k connection I can get on the regular dial-up modem.
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