Today we have a double feature! Simply because The Kin felt a bit bad and because this story is simply too good NOT to share, The Kin decided to post about this.
So to start off, this post, while most are about customers and their various acts of stupidity and or clueless natures, this one is not. Sometimes it's the equipment. Not the customer's equipment, but the company equipment. Well, a lot of times, but that's neither here nor there. Pair bad equipment with clueless people and people unwilling to learn or listen, you have a recipe for disaster.
This post will have a bit of technical info just to elaborate on what happened and what makes this case so..Special. If you've worked with wireless routers, you typically know a few things about them. The SSID is the network name that shows up in the list. The mode, without going into too much detail, can be set to B/G/N, G/N, N or various combinations. These are protocols and affect the speed of the wireless as well as range and other factors. The network key is of course the password you use to connect, so on and so on.
So this customer calls in and says their wireless was being spotty. The Kin goes through with a normal channel change and the customer was actually really patient, eager to listen and generally pleasant. This is abnormal enough to begin with, so The Kin capitalized on it. So we get everything set up, all the devices are working except for this one computer using a USB wireless device. Now let's pause here for a moment.
Not all equipment is created equal. This is very, very important. If you have, for example, a wireless card that is old, for example, it uses 802.11 g, then it's not going to work on a network that is set to use only 802.11 n protocol. It's not backwards compatible. 802.11g IS compatible with 802.11b, but to a certain extent. Depending on the device, some will work, some won't work. The Kin assumed this was one of those cases and instructed the customer to change the mode to 802.11b/g/n so it encompasses everything. Here is where the mythical beast known as "Murphy" awakened from his slumber and began to terrorize the lands of cyberspace. Upon doing this, the network we had spent 30 minutes so far troubleshooting disappeared. Poof. Vanished. This customer however, was a good one. They were smart enough to keep a computer wired directly to it. Upon logging in, the SSID was changed from what they had to simply...admin. Yes. Changing the mode, for some bizarre reason, changed the SSID. Sense. It makes none.
The password was changed to a random string of numbers that was like a billion characters long. Weirdest thing The Kin has ever seen and the one other time it was seen, that router went south, fast and, liked the parrot of Monty Python, it ceased to be shortly after. So The Kin falls back upon the trusty factory reset.
This router was reset to the factory default and everything looked to be normal but this time the network key was simply changed to password..But the customer was still connecting using the default password which DEFINITELY WAS NOT "password." Again, Murphy's reign of terror and abilities to confuse, befuddle and bewilder never cease to amaze The Kin. Again, the factory reset goes through. This time things look to be saved and it looks like the reset may have scored a 9999 critical on good ol Murphy.
Finally, after twenty minutes of just doing factory resets and testing various changes to see if the modem was going to get "Murphed" things looked to stabilize and it looked like Murphy retreated to his lair to rest. From there we set the mode to B/G/N but Murphy wasn't done just yet. The computer with the usb wireless device still refused to connect. Everything was in order. The password was correct, the profile was removed and recreated but the router itself wasn't authenticating the password. The computer simply refused to connect despite all other equipment working flawlessly. In this case, it was one of two things. Probably the company's equipment or the USB device. The Kin wasn't really sure to be honest, and in this case, neither was the customer. The customer decided to look into getting another, more current USB wireless device to see if that helps and possibly look into getting their own equipment. After that, The Kin can't blame them. Kind of hard to convince someone to use something that breaks right in front of them.
Diagnosis: Faulty equipment with a side of Murphy
Solution: Get your own equipment, hopefully it's more Murph resistant.
Have a good day, everyone.
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