Last night at work was just complete bullshit. I am starting to get sick of being in tier 2 support which is only for CHN (Comcast Home Networking) customers, and being a dumping ground for everything but CHN. Clearly this two tier system is not working at all and I would just rather them scrap the idea and combine everything into one, or re-train every single tier one agent. It seems that every night now we get more and more invalid transfers from people with cable issues, phone issues, AOL issues and issues about their 3rd party routers and VOIP phones. This night I got fed up with all the invalid transfers. I am not being paid to take tier 1 calls and to do their job. This is the reason why there is a 2 tier system. No one really seems to care and don’t see any problem with it. This includes the micro-management ie: Team-Leaders and includes Mr. Kavannah. Nothing is being done, and they all expect me, and others, to be a pawn and just accept every invalid call. Well i’m sorry. I am not going to accept this as an answer to the unorganized structure of Convergys (or Comcast) if you like, and am now refusing to accept and take any calls that are not related to Comcast Home Networking, which by the way, is a crock of shit in it’s own.
Why is Comcast Home Networking a crock?
Well lets begin with the outrageous installation charge of a severely outdated gateway, which is a modem, router, and Wifi access point in one. For 149.95, Comcast customers get to have this outdated piece of hardware installed, most likely by some illegal immigrant that cannot speako da anglis, or some teenager not even out of high school yet, that only knows the basics of networking, which is what he was taught to him by some Comcast trainee, that only knows the same. Most of the time, the installation is half-assed.
The hardware:
A Linksys wcg200 or a Netgear wgr814. The Linksys wcg200v2 only supports WEP, which by today, is one of the most insecure encryption to date and can be easily hacked within minutes with the right tools. Honestly, it would be safer to leave your network open than it would to be using WEP, because the later will only tempt people to hack your network because they know how easy it is to hack. Despite the wcg200’s short-comings with security, it seems to be the most reliable out of the two.
The Netgear wgr814, however is very different. It supports only WPA-PSK which, is more secure than WEP, but is still susceptible to being cracked using a dictionary attack, though it’s uncommon to have a WPA network cracked because it is still easier to crack WEP, and it’s still in abundance. Here is the caveat though: Comcast has both gateways modified with their own firmware so it limits the capabilities of both routers and a lot of the options necessary for today’s home networks, are not available. The worse to come, though is that Comcast has updated the firmware to the Netgear gateway to the point that it’s completely and utterly useless as a reliable gateway and they refuse to fix it.
Just what’s wrong with the Netgear? You are stuck using the old WEP encryption that is so easy to crack, which equals out to be “false sense of security”, if you are using any wireless computer running Windows Vista. Comcast, through their firmware update for this gateway, made it so that when WPA is used, Vista machines will only have access to Google. For the longest time, they blamed it on Microsoft and a Windows update, however, with the combined efforts one night on a 3 way call between a Dell rep, a Comcast customer and myself, found out that it was in fact the result of Comcast’s firmware update.
Now, part of the function of a gateway, and a router, is to route information from one place to another. This is not so with either piece of equipment. Since Comcast has modified the firmware on these gateways, it is next to impossible to use more than one computer to play games online, or to play your PS3 or XBOX online. If you are so unlucky to have the Netgear gateway, then you will never, ever be able to get your gaming console online. What happens is that the gaming console will crash the entire gateway and down will come the entire home network with it. There used to be a fix, which was adding the console to the DMZ, but again, with Comcast’s nasty firmware, this no longer holds true. Do you use VPN to connect to your workplace? well, your in for a surprise as well, as many people have had problems with their VPN connections, even when their computer is added to the DMZ and no, port forwarding will not work either. Why is this? One suspicion is that Comcast disabled the option for IPsec, PPoE L2TP and VPN pass-through. Another suspicion is that Comcast has also disabled Universal Plug and Play, which can be useful for many software applications
So, lets go back a little bit. What exactly does one get for 149.95 + 5.00/mo rental for the gateway? You get, a half-assed installation with no “site survey” completed by the tech, to make sure the wireless signal gets to where it’s supposed to go, you may or may not be left with an Ethernet cable, if a USB network card was installed, you may or may not be left with the driver cd. An outdated, insecure, unreliable gateway will be installed in the most un-professional manner and location and installed with insecure settings. To go along with that, you’ll find lack-luster technical support (more on that later).
So what can be done about this? What are the options available to Comcast and future Comcast customers? Stay tuned for more in the next segment.
