We can haz interwebs! (again)

Coming back from holiday to find your Internet connection isn't working is bad enough. To be without that connection for a whole month is like torture.

Today, an Altitude Infrastructure engineer finally arrived to fix the problem with our wimax-based service, provided by WiBox. We'd come to the conclusion that it was a hardware fault. It wasn't. It appears, as far as I can work out, that WiBox had changed our connection settings WITHOUT TELLING US!

We've had this service for years. Throughout that time we had a fixed IP and no login credentials were needed. Now, it seems, we need to connect using PPPoE, with a dynamic IP set by WiBox. Nobody had ever informed us of this change. Sheesh!

It's been a frustrating month. Just getting to the point where we could talk to a WiBox engineer involved getting the local council and certain well-connected people to kick some WiBox ass. It was while chatting to that engineer that I was given the PPPoE login details - but that was only for the purposes of running tests (which, strangely, failed. At that point I was unable to make a PPPoE connection).

We made do with an expensive substitute - a 3G+ connection via a mifi unit fitted with an SFR mobile broadband SIM. And while that was fast, and relatively good value as far as mobile broadband goes (no data cap at all for 4.50euros a day), it had its irritations. First, the connection would drop to 2G just when we needed it most. Recharging the account every other day was annoying (the deal is 9euros for 48hrs). But worst of all, we found that there is a limit on how much you can recharge the account in each calendar month. In effect, you can only get 18 days of connection per month. If we're ever in this situation again, we'll buy a second SFR dongle in Trish's name.

I did check out mobile broadband offerings by other suppliers, such as Orange and Bouyges, but they're all stupidly expensive. Ditto Orange's tethering deal for my iPhone.

So it's just as well that engineer turned up today.

It seems that WiBox contacted three local installers in an attempt to get someone to us. But they turned out to be unavailable or no longer qualified. So sibling firm Altitude Telecom sent someone instead (delayed by a day due to snow). He quickly pronounced the connection to be in perfect working order (and with an impressively strong signal, to boot). Yet my attempts to connect, either via our router or with the laptop connected directly to the IDU, failed.

Then the engineer admitted he was using a test account setting, via PPPoE. I remembered the PPPoE settings the other engineer had given me over the phone and tried them. Success.

So, it was working all along, it's just that no-one from WiBox had thought to tell us that we needed to change our settings. I feel a letter coming on...