Trouble Connecting to Earthlink?

Factual Questions
1

I am not sure if this is the right forum to put this in, but I seem to be unable to connect to my Earthlink account. It has been acting weird for a couple of days, and tonight I cannot connect at all.

Is anyone else having this problem? I don’t think it is my hardware, as I connected easily through my AOL access. So I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on the subject. I don’t particularly want to sit on hold on my cell phone waiting for customer support if it is Earthlink itself with the problem, and not just me.

Thanks,

Scotti

2

No problems here at all…got disconnected a few times last week…got right back on. Oh, this morning when I first went online to check my email it was really slow, IM wouldnt open etc. I logged off went right back on and all was well with the world.

In fact their reliablity is the reason I keep them.

3

Thanks, Mike. I usually find them quite reliable also. Maybe it is a regional problem, or ::sigh:: maybe I am going to have to bite the bullet and call them. This is one of those times when I REALLY hate not having a second line.

Anyway, I appreciate the input.

Cheri

4

As a matter of fact, I have been unable to connect (via DSL) for about a week. I’ve been battling tech support, trying to explain to them that it’s not on my computer (3 different computers, two with windows and one with Unix, all of which could connect previously, did not suddenly and simultaneously develop an identical problem. But try telling THEM that…), and finally after raising hell and telling them to just delete my account, they decided that the problem is this:

When the World Trade Center was destroyed, a lot of people in the NYC metro area were moved to other authentication servers (mine was in Cleveland). After the smoke cleared and the networks in NYC started working again, people were moved back. Some of us got caught in the mess and have never been able to sign on again (ME!).

So now I’m waiting for them to route my DSL modem to the authentication server that has my account. Sheesh. Ironically, I have been able to dial in with no trouble at all.

Are you in the NY/NJ/CT area?

5

I’ve been able to connect, but it has been unbelievably slow (basically non-existant) at random times for the past few days.

6

I’ve got Earthlink dial up access and no problems at all.

You can always check their site (assuming one has access) to see if they are entertaining problems.

7

There’s a phone (800) 719-4660 which, if you push one of the numbers will give you ‘Instant status’…what it is is a list of all ‘area codes/cities’ where they’re having problems.

I was adopted by Earthlink a year ago (My ISP sold out to them). They were great until they started jacking the price up, plus their access was also kinda slow. I switched to a mom and pop a few months ago and it’s faster and more reliable.

Personally, I think Earthlink will become (if it hasn’t already) the next AOL.

Arrrrggghhhhh :mad:

I’m in CA, so that 800 number may not work in your area. Worth a try tho. :smiley:

8

Thank you all for your help, I am going to try that 800 number tonight after work. And thanks Amarinth, since you are in my area (Hi hon, how is it going?) that helps me to determine what exactly is going on. If I find anything out, I will let you know.

Everyone have a lovely day!

Cheri

9

I’m in the DC metro and my earthlink hasn’t had any problems. i’ve always used earthlink because they are macintosh friendly!

10

I’ve had dial-up Earthlink for the past year-and-a-half. The first year was great. I always connected at 50.7K or 49.3K. Then they dumped my dial-up number, telling me that it was a leased number from some other company, and that they were consolidating.

Now I’m lucky to connect at 32K, and 24K is more common. I asked them about the slowdown, and they told me it was my phone line. When I told them how fast I had been connecting, the reason switched to there being a “lot of traffic” in my area.

No kidding! So why’d you dump my number?!

I also picked them because they were Mac friendly. Just not speed-friendly, I guess. Just the same, I’m not giving them up, because I can’t stand AOL, and don’t want to deal with getting a local ISP to configure my Mac. Maybe I need to upgrade to DSL…

11

I happen to live out in the middle of nowhere, where originally I only had one choice for an ISP (not really a choice then is it). They got bought by OneMain, and I went through the typical pain of this type of situation.

Then, OneMain got bought out by Earthlink, and from there all hell broke loose.

The first thing that happened was that I couldn’t connect any more. After 3 days I finally managed to get in touch with tech support, and they tell you go here, change this, etc. I happen to be a computer weenie, so rather than be mystified by all of this, I realized that the basic problem was that they had changed my user name, and had neglected to tell me so. No wonder I couldn’t get through to tech support. They had apparently done this to all of OneMain’s customers.

Next my e-mail suddenly stopped receiving mail. Again, another tech support call, and I found out that they changed my mail server, and once again didn’t bother to inform me of the change.

During this whole time, I have noticed a dramatic change in the quality of service. I never connect at much more than 33.6 anyway (too much copper between me and the nearest phone switching station, yet another advantage of living out in the boonties), so connection speed has never been the issue, but at first I was lucky to stay connected for more than half an hour straight. This has slowly gotten a little better, but I rarely stay connected for more than a couple of hours straight now. Sometimes the line just gets dropped, but Earthlink introduced a new way of taking me offline, it just “kinda” disconnects. The modem is still connected, and I can see my own data going out, but nothing ever comes back. I have to manually disconnect the connection and restart it.

Earthlink just moved their DNS servers around (they were kind enough to tell me in advance about this one), and also once again changed my user name, so if you are one of those unfortunate souls who’s ISP got gobbled up by them, this might be the probelm.

If I had someone to choose besides Earthlink in my area, I would have dropped them like a hot rock. The level of difficulty I have been experiencing is far above what I consider to be acceptable.

The cute thing is that they sent me an e-mail rating their tech support system. The way the questions were worded, they scored very well, but there was no place on the form to point out that the problems were caused by Earthlink’s stupidity in the first place. So yes, Earthlink, your tech support people are quite good at fixing your mistakes.

The DNS change just happened last weekend, by the way. Is that when you (the OP) started having trouble?

12

Maybe they lost their T3 to Planet Xenu.

13

Earthlink DSL here, and in the time I’ve been with earthlink (previously dial-up) I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the times where I had problems connecting. Of course, I’m in earthlink’s “home base” (the location where the company started, i.e. Southern California) so that might explain it. YMMV, IMHO, etc…

14

My brother in law is a Mac guy. He had nothing but problems with Earthlink and One Main (hi! engineer_comp_geek). Guess it just depends on who you get (in tech support, that is). Anyway he’s with the same ISP as I’m with.

Note to Robby & Tramp. I don’t know what this is, but I came across it in my travels. It sounds like a Mac friendly ISP. Link is: http://www.macconnect.com/ . Sounds kinda cheap too!

engineer_comp-geek, I was with One Main (firstly started with Lightspeed out here in CA, then they sold out to One Main which lasted about a year. Actually I had little trouble with either of those. Only when Earthlink bought them out have I had trouble. Finally left in disgust in August this year. Been with ETCrier here in town since then and have no trouble. While with Lightspeed/OneMain/Earthlink my top speed with 48000/49000, now it’s 50666 steady. :cool:

15

The 1-800-719-4660 & 1-888-847-4708 Numbers are nationwide.

Also, Dial up was still working correctly(minus some slow down) in NYC after 9-11-01 because it’s easier to re-route than DSL. DSL splits off at the CO(Central Office) and goes to a piece of a equipment called a DSLAM. The DSLAM is where the DSL signal it self originates from(to your home). It also connects you to the ISP’s(ELNK in this case) server through an ATM network. What happened to DSL in the Manhattan area? Well they can’t easily reroute the wires to another dslam easily and if it isn’t their dsl, verizon marks it down has low priority.

Also dialup numbers are sometimes decommissioned when one of several things happen :
1.) The number has reached capacity(actually 75% of capacity)
2.) If the number was originally coming from another backbone(Ie. UUNET, Spring, etc etc).

Hope this helps and clears somethings up.