Bellsouth (AT&T) DSL Dilemma

Basically I lost my internet connection today for the first time in 2 1/2 years. I have a Linksys WRT54GS and AT&T DSL at 1.5mbps down 256kb up.

Now AT&T has installed fiberoptic cables here and it has been so for about five years.

Bascially I do not need a modem to connect to my ISP.

Anyways after my internet went out today I contacted AT&T twice and they told me service was still up in my area.

So then I contacted Linksys and after about 30min (including hold time) the support tech I was with told me that Linksys router are not designed to work without a modem. And that the router would eventually stop working and to make it work again I would have to get a modem for my connection and set it to "bridge" mode. I was of course, confused because the router had worked just fine for the past 2 1/2 years. Then that ended.

So basically I have been attempting to fix my internet for six hours when I decide to call bellsouth and ask how to set up a hard line from the wall to my router which I knew how to do but it wasnt working for some reason.

So I call and the guy walks me through the steps on how to do it, of course I already knew how to do it but anyways...

So when I finished the steps and hit "connect" It didnt connect so the guy says hes gonna run a line test, while he does I got disconnected from him and my internet mysteriously connects. About five minutes later I get a call back from the guy saying there is an outage in my area and that it should be fixed by 5pm EST. Meanwhile I tell the guy the internet came back while he ran the line test and hes like thats wonderful and then reassured me it should be fully up and running by 5pm EST. Anyways its still working right now so I guess some how the line test fixed it even though there is a reported outage in my area.

The funny this is, I called Bellsouth twice at different times to confirm there wasn't an area outage and both times they reassured me there was not.

I'm pissed, 6 hours at this crap. Not to mention the barely understandable accents of outsourced support workers, except Linksys tech support.

So basically I want to know a couple of things.

1. Will connecting a fiberoptic DSL line to my router without a modem kill my router? Because according to Linksys it will except its been fine for over two years.

2. Anyone else have fiberoptic DSL without a modem?

So basically my conclusion is that there was an outage in my area but I was given two other conclusions by two other people except those apparently turned out to be wrong.

 

Might have some useful info here: http://www.dslreports.com/forums/all

 

1 I doubt it, sounds like someone talking OTA. Especially since it has been (and is still) working.
2 Sorry, no.

The first person you call is always the wrong one. Find out and use the terminology to get to a real tech (2 most common are tier and level, as in level 2 Tech Support or Teir 2....). The person will ask question but just tell them to put you thru you were already talking to someone.

 

bellsouth is now beinging outsourced to inda and will always have 1st tier there but they are going to have somthing called support+ and there you will be calling the answer group in fort lauderdale florida where most of the tech or so called techs are on prison work release and will want you to reformat. so if you can get away from bellsouth and dont go to at&t same company. i know because i use to work there they have one goal your 139 dollars i tried to help people and they said that was not my job my job is to get the money and get off the phone in 20min or less to get the next persons money. if it is spyware reformat if they cant print reformat so in short get away from them if you dobt me here is the number 1866-294-3464

 

1) I doubt it.
2) no, but I have Bellsouth DSL(with modem) though.

 

Actually funny this thread was brought up because AT&T's DNS servers were down yesterday for the entire South East however there was a work around by using OpenDNS servers instead.

It is true, AT&T support sucks, I had a major problem with my DSL and it took two weeks before they even sent a tech to fix the problem. And when you called you always got connected with Greg or Chris in India and you could not understand what they were saying and they each gave their own version of the problem and how to fix it. AT&T does suck hardcore, but for the time being I have no choice but to keep them as my ISP.

 

NO. I have used a fiber optic service for over a year now (Verizon FIOS). The signal they give you is a std 10/100BaseT connection. It will work directly into your PC or any Router.

As normal the outsource techs are crap. And they get what the pay for. You may receive a how did we do survey. If so RIP them. That will be the only way they know things are not going well.