TimeWarner Screws Me Again
For the last week or so my web server has been down. No reason why it's happened, the computer seems to work fine and Hardware Mangler isn't reporting any errors so I figure it's something on TW's side. So I call up Tier 3 support and they tell me everything on their side is fine and that it might be a bad network card.
This is a plausible problem as I have had NICs go out on me in the past. So I head over to best buy and get a new Linksys card. After installing it I reaffirmed my belief that Linksys sucks because the card won't configure correctly. You would think a card that says it works on Windows 2K would work in W2K, but it didn't.
Time passes and on Thursday I went to get another new NIC, this time a NetGear. After waking up from the thunderstorm this afternoon I decided to put it in and give it a shot. Huzzah, the card returns ping when set to DHCP. But strangely it doesn't when configured with my static IP. This isn't right.
Another call to Tier 3 support, with a different tech this time, bears different results this time. When I tell him DHCP works but static doesn't he questions my configuration. When I tell him he says that's not what is programmed into my router. Upon doing some digging he finds that I am correct and that TW is wrong. It turns out the tech that was out last weekend to swap my router configured it incorrectly. Idiots.
Out of curiosity I checked, and the original NIC works fine with the router configured correctly. Normally I wouldn't be to upset about this because it's only a web server. The problem is I host safety-america.com on my server and my instructor had asked about some calls were people couldn't get to the website. My only response was that it's a hardware failure and I will have it fixed over the weekend.
So in synopsis here are the lessons learned from this:
This is a plausible problem as I have had NICs go out on me in the past. So I head over to best buy and get a new Linksys card. After installing it I reaffirmed my belief that Linksys sucks because the card won't configure correctly. You would think a card that says it works on Windows 2K would work in W2K, but it didn't.
Time passes and on Thursday I went to get another new NIC, this time a NetGear. After waking up from the thunderstorm this afternoon I decided to put it in and give it a shot. Huzzah, the card returns ping when set to DHCP. But strangely it doesn't when configured with my static IP. This isn't right.
Another call to Tier 3 support, with a different tech this time, bears different results this time. When I tell him DHCP works but static doesn't he questions my configuration. When I tell him he says that's not what is programmed into my router. Upon doing some digging he finds that I am correct and that TW is wrong. It turns out the tech that was out last weekend to swap my router configured it incorrectly. Idiots.
Out of curiosity I checked, and the original NIC works fine with the router configured correctly. Normally I wouldn't be to upset about this because it's only a web server. The problem is I host safety-america.com on my server and my instructor had asked about some calls were people couldn't get to the website. My only response was that it's a hardware failure and I will have it fixed over the weekend.
So in synopsis here are the lessons learned from this:
- Check cards assigned to static IPs to ensure they still work for DHCP.
- Don't by Linksys, they suck.
- When Tier 3 says your configuration isn't correct, after using it for 2 years, tell them they're idiots and need to look at their end again.