If you've been following my adventures in VOIP so far, you'll know that I was at a point in my tale where I was becoming frustrated with Sunrocket's complete lack of communication, as well as not knowing where my package was. I was seriously thinking I'd made a mistake in going with Sunrocket, and was wondering if I should check to see if they'd charged my card already...when I got the long-awaited email telling me my package had shipped out two days earlier.
So I get my packages, and realize they've sent me two gizmos. No complaints there. You'd think at least one of them would work, right? I try setting up my service. No go. Sunrocket sales swore I could connect this thing downstream of my computer, using my computer as a wireless bridge...nope. Nothing.
Talk to my landlord, get in to his basement, get at the router / cable modem. Still nothing. This was exactly the situation I didn't want to be in, having to access the router, but I have to know if the gizmos are working before I spend hours tinkering with Windows, so here I am.
I call sunrocket support. I say "support" with sarcasm, if you must know. Am on the phone for four hours. The moron on the other end knows nothing about networking, IP addresses, or his gizmo. Tells me to connect it upstream of the router. I do this. Tells me I need to connect the router as well...I ask him why, wouldn't it be easier to just connect the Gizmo, cable modem, and phone and troubleshoot my interior networking problems later, and he says no, the device has to see and "configure" my router (what?).
I go along with this. No, I wasn't drunk, just masochistic. Nothing works. Can't get the voice light to come on. He says ok, we're going to have to open ports on your router. I say really, why, my router's connected downstream of the gizmo, remember? He says yeah, but we have to.
I suggest at this point if there's a problem with my router and the gizmo both trying to assign IP addresses to the network. He says sure, there is, turn off DHCP on the router. I say wait, are you sure the gizmo's assigning IPs? He says definitely.
I turn of DHCP. Computer loses connection to the world. He says ok, no problem, turn DHCP back on on the router. I say how, since my computer won't connect to the router without an IP address. He says yeah, so turn DHCP back on on the router.
We go through this a million times.
Eventually my patience snaps and I yell at him. Was this a tech support person or just some neanderthal that wandered in from the jungles and decided to answer the phones that day? Not sure. Anyway, so he says he'll talk to tech support and they'll call me.
I say no, because i don't have a phone, and was borrowing a friend's. I also say that if he thinks i'm going to sit here with no internet connection till his boys call me back, he's mistaken...he just left my network in pieces, can't offer a solution, and now he wants to bail.
Read on for more details of my Sunrocket purgatory.
