Comcast ISP problems - Part 1, a ruined VPN
In Ed Foster's The Worst Vendor Poll back in January, Comcast beat out 23 other companies and was voted the second worst company, just behind Microsoft. After my first dealings with Comcast cable Internet access, I can confirm the opinions of those voters. While installing new service in an apartment, the Comcast guy screwed up my VPN.
Things started out on the wrong foot, the installer called ahead to his next appointment to say he'd be there in a few minutes before we were done. He had done the physical hooking up, but hadn't yet verified the Internet connection. So, when things went wrong with the initial net connection, he no doubt felt under the gun.
His first reaction when things didn't work, was to call the home office to activate the modem (or something to that effect). At the same time, he also opened Device Manager (the machine was running Windows XP) to see the Network adapters. That's where things went bad. When confronted with Network adapters that he didn't understand, the cable guy got rid of them, figuring they might be screwing things up.
In addition to the usual Ethernet and WiFI adapters, the computer (a laptop machine) had two VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapters and a TAP-Win32 adapter from my VPN. The cable guy disabled the two VMware adapters and removed the TAP-Win32 adapter. Re-enabling the VMware network adapters after he left was no big deal, but I lost access to my VPN at a time I really needed it. Fortunately the VPN software produced an accurate error message that pinpointed the problem (how rare is that?) and my VPN provider responded to my plea for help fairly quickly.
That Comcast doesn't train their employees about the various network adapters used by Windows XP is shameful. That they also don't train installers not to delete things willy nilly is downright disgraceful. No wonder so many people in the poll hated Comcast.
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Michael Horowitz is an independent computer consultant and the author of several classes on Defensive Computing. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Hello again from brmorris. I also had a problem with a Comcast installation and the Cisco VPN Client this week. One of my customers signed up for the digital phone/internet bundle with the combo modem. Her VPN worked fine for years, then after he left, she couldn't connect anymore. I had to change a setting to route the VPN traffic differently (transparent tunneling), but it gave a Cisco Reason 442: Failed to enable Virtual Adapter error. I had to uninstall/reinstall the VPN Client and it worked.
Either her technician did the same thing as you, or the crapware Desktop Doctor messed up the program.