You have to love SingTel and their Broadband Service

My regular readers might remember the fun I had getting details about the QoS of Singtel's ADSL service. Today about 1:30pm my VPN connection to mama blue started sputtering and terminated. Happily hacking away at my Domino and Portal Integration sample I did realize that only in the early afternoon. But it wasn't the VPNs fault. The whole Internet connection at home was down. A quick check: The Linksys AM300-A ADSL modem didn't show an internet connection but still a DSL connection. After resetting the modem the internet connection light came back on , but not the connection. The online status just stated: "Unable to obtain IP from PPPoE server".
Time for the hotline. After a few minutes (about 10) of the unavoidable waiting music, the friendly helpdesk operator walked me through the steps of resetting the modem (explaining to him that I did that before didn't help). Since this didn't help he promised to call me back in the evening, what he promptly did. However no new development, seems the behind-the-scene magic didn't work. So he decided to send the "wire man" to measure my line. They guy would stop by at my house between 11:00am and 1:00pm..... on the 11th of April. I reminded him that a) April fools was yesterday and b) it would be full nine days of waiting to measure something that very likely is not the problem. Horray!

Good to have a plan B (and a plan S, S like Starbucks). Digged out the cable modem and got a pay-per-day Starhub cable connection going. A quick Google rather suggests, that someone played with the firmware of the DSL end point.

Speak after me: Customers need service