LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 3:07 pm Post subject:

Lycander wrote:
That's kinda dumb in my opinion, using the Mac address of a modem that's rented. And what if we were to buy our own modem? We'd have to get the Mac address of it and give it to them I assume.

Yep. Along with the model and serial number of the modem. It took between five and ten minutes on the phone with tech support and I was good to go. No biggee.

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2003 4:16 pm Post subject:

When I got cable internet last December it was a fairly simple process that took less than 3 minutes to complete. I had allready purchased a cable modem and a linksys router after I had contacted Charter to make an appointment for a tech to come out and hook it up. I bought the stuff on a Thursday, they couldn't come out till next Tuesday, no biggie I had a major project for school due after winter vacation got out, so this gave me some time to work on it. But the project wasn't that bad, and I was able to finish it in about an hour. So I started watching tv, and then one of the charter commercials came on saying that "you can setup cable internet yourself with a self install kit".

Ok, I couldn't wait anymore, I hooked up the modem and the router and turned it on. Modem didn't work (it was able to send but not recieve) so I figured charter needed to fix something on thier end, I called them up and told them that I was a new customer to cable internet, they asked for the mac address of my modem, then all of sudden the lights all come on. The tech on the other end goes "Hmm....I'm unable to see your PC, you aren't using a router are you?" So I have to hook the modem directly up to my PC (Not too happy about this). A minute later the tech tells me to open up my web browser, when I do, I'm redirected to charters site and have to confirm what type of internet package I want. This sort of frightened me, because if he was able to make my browser go there when I launched it, what else could he do?

After I was done with that, I get the "Congradualtions on being a Charter Communications Pipeline Customer" crap, get off the phone, and immediately hook my router back up.

Self Install Kit is nothing more than a CD with a video telling complete morons how to plug the modem in, it also comes with a coax splitter and maybe an ethernet cable.

The story of needing software to run the service is complete BS.

Anyone is capable of setting up their own cable internet access, it just takes a few minutes and a phone call.