It may be a bit late for it now , but here is an excellent and very detailed HowTo on connecting to an ISP using dial up.

The author is Bill Unruh , he helped me fix my dial up problems through the Ng comp.protocols.ppp


How to hook up PPP In Linux

Cmon guys, dont be like that.

Not all tech support ppl are idiots. I work for a major IT company & i am redhat & microsoft certified. I am very well capable of helping anybody that I speak with, but if a customer is not actively helping me help them than I seriously dont want to even bother.

To the customer, its my fault that their machine is not performing & I am abused.

I admit i dont have all the answers, but if a customer is actively helping me help them then the solution is provided. No we dont work to scripts or anything like that, its more a of a mental checklist for me. If a modem is not working then first thing that comes to mind is the line, then the error number they get, then see if its responding at all.

Dont call asking for an answer, participate in the problem & it it will be resolved.

>MaJ

I hate tech support...LOL. I work from 6:30 at night till 3:30am. Its pretty boring after 1:30am but thats the best time because its quiet and all I do is surf. They let us bring in our own laptops and play games which is cool because the last company I worked for didnt let you do a thing and was so micro managed that people were scared to even use the bathroom without telling someone. The good thing about working around a bunch of I.T people is that you can always find software that you need. But like I said tech support is a test of patience. I slammed my headphones tonight because some guy didnt want to give me any info: "what OS are you using...?" I dont now you tell me....what mail client do you have sir "I dont fu***ng know...I just want my email to work" ok sir click on start and programs...."why? whats this got to do with email?" SLAM hang up!

I wasn't saying that tech support people are idiots, it's one of the things I do myself. Granted I support Windows and general hardware since I am just now starting to even get a good hang of Linux and I'm not all too interested in learning Mac. I understand that the woman I got at the ISP didn't know Linux which is fine, but the least she could have done is try to find someone that does. Perhaps then the new person could have pointed me in the right direction to get it resolved. Even if there wasn't anybody there that knew Linux, the attempt would have been reassuring. I know better than to think that tech support has all the answers, but they can at least be a little more helpful than "figure it out on your own". I did get it figured out on my own, but the point is that tech support should do just that... support or try to anyway. These places that have tech support staffed should try to find knowledgeable people for the job. A college degree doesn't mean anything either. The bottom 97% of my graduating class from college is a good example that a degree doesn't mean anything.

digitalhead: You are right, yes she should have referred it to somebody else or even called you back with a resolution. Its amazing the amount of ISP's that dont support linux tho. Im in sydney australia with an ISP called iinet, they provide full support for redhat linux & from what I have heard even put their guys through training for certification.


Jaz, I know its a test of patience.

I was given a formal warning from my company for swearing at a customer. But that was when I used to support retail customers, I now support corporate/enterprise customers & tehy are a bit easier to manage because they generally have had their local guys look at the issue first.

Luckily I work through the day with 6 other guys in my team. Often we have alot of time to surf the net & listen to mp3s.

Well... I once called my ADSL Technical Support to verify if the service was working fine, because I had tried to connect and failed. So I call and I just ask iff everything's fine within my area. However, the guy refuses to tell me that unless we go through the inevitable "Click on the Start button, blah blah".

So they wanted to know what certain IE configuration thingie. They were like Start -> Programs -> IE - > Preferences -> Blah blah -> What do you see now? Of course I couldn't remember and had to tell them I was using Linux. They said "Oh sorry... we don't support Linux". I said "Ok.. I don't have a problem with that. I just want to know if the thingie is working correctly within my zone.

After more than 20 minutes the guy refused to keep helping me (was he helping at all?) and I asked him to call his supervisor. After 20 minutes of waiting I finally got the informationn I wanted

"Sorry... they're doing some maintainance to the servers. Everything's gonna be back to normal within 60 min. Thank you""

:O