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I thought the initial problem was my fault. I drove past the telephone company, and didn’t pay the bill. Next day, I had to go to work, and by the time I got home they had turned the phone off. We were having some really nasty weather, so I walked over to the phone company (it is a scant 1 ½ blocks away ) and paid the bill.

When I returned home, I could access the internet just fine, but the PS2 would not pull up the Final Fantasy account, nor would the computer. Both said they could not access the Square Enix connection.

Both the PS2 account and the PC account for Final Fantasy are paid from the same credit card. My next step (since the budget was a little bit tight this month) was to check to see if somehow it had been billed and not paid. Not billed, plenty of cash on hand to pay it when it came through-so could not be the issue.

Next step was to unplug and replug EVERYTHING, which is supposed to take care of this sort of problem. Same results: Internet access, just dandy. PS2, SE-nope, nada, nothing, nein, nix…or any other negative you can think of; followed that step up with a call to the ISP provider. Well, gee, Sherlock, ya got internet, right? We aren’t Square Enix-dunno how to fix your problem. Actually, they were nicer than that, but that was the gist of the conversation.

By this time it was well past business hours, so I played WOW for a while, watched some TV and went to sleep.

Next morning, I tackled it again. Same results: Internet yes, Square Enix, no. Of course, since their U.S. offices are in California I couldn’t call till after 11:00 am. I cleaned the study, tried to play WOW and discovered that it was maintenance day. Played a stand-alone game for a bit and cleaned some more. At 11:08, I called Square Enix. Yes, I had an account. No, there was not a problem with the bill. Gee…try unplugging everything and plugging it back in in this exact order. That should reset the thing and make it work right. No luck.

I called my local ISP. This time I got a different tech, who kindly gave to me the static IP address needed to connect my computer to the internet. (My ISP is just a tiny bit old-fashioned, but they get the job done-usually.)

I called SE back a second time, armed with the ISP. Well, they weren’t sure-but they thought it must be in my linksys router. Here was the tcp numbers that they used for customers to connect, and here was a range of numbers that could be used.

I called linksys. I speak Ozarkian, which is an off-brand of the king’s English; the techie who took my call obviously was NOT a native speaker of English of any description. After several futile questions which I could barely understand, I took over the conversation, firmly (and VERY SLOWLY) and as clearly as I could in simple words explained what my ISP had said and what SE had said, and gave the guy the numbers involved. That seemed to put us on a much more even footing. The static IP address was the same as it had been before the resetting; we added the range of ports indicated by SE, but still no luck at all on connecting. By this time, I was giving serious consideration to canceling my account.

Instead, I decided to have some lunch, and let Trend Micro check for viruses, since it had been unhappy ever since I turned it off thinking that it might be the problem might be my anti-virus program or a firewall that SE was hanging up on.

I played Wow for a while, then went to watch TV-only to find the notice: “Inactive Account-contact service provider.” Called back, recycled the box, and got: Please provide account number and pin.” Called again, got, “please call customer service and they will give it to you”, but that was 3 minutes till closing…and I missed them-of course.

There was no point in further belaboring the situation now that it was after business hours once again. So I played WoW a while, read a bit, and hit the hay.

Next morning, once again I unplugged, turned off, and turned on EVERYTHING in the order given by the tech at SE. No result.

Then, I accessed my linksys account. I had forgotten my password. (typical) so I entered my email and got “server side error”. Since this sounded very much like the problem I was having with SE, I felt encouraged.

` Second call to Linksys-got a person who still had an accent, but much easier to understand. She directed me to change the port range and also to set my computer access to a static dns rather than automatic. I got ALMOST all the way into FFXI before my account timed out. I shut down everything except SE and saved and closed my text document.

Got logged into Playonline, got Friend list, got handle list, got through the acceptance screen, got to select character.r.r.r.r.r.r.r.r…..and timed out, and dropped connection. Called SE. Very nice young tech with AMERICAN accent did trouble shooting of my static IP from his end, and said we had a high ping rate and some packet loss. He then asked what Modem/router we were using, and I explained that it was a Bec, with one internet port an three for television.

Now, a call to my local internet provider….which resulted in changing all the IP addresses in my computer (again), and reconfiguring it so that I could connect directly to the provider’s modem/router. I explained what the tech from SE had said about the ping rate and packet loss. Once I again had internet connection, we tried SE again. NO LUCK! The tech support from my ISP suggested I arrange for a housecall from one of their techs. I called, and tried to arrange. The girl at the front desk was reluctant because she said if I didn’t have a problem, there was still a $50 house-call fee.

I was also down to wondering if it was really the service being turned off and on, or if there was another cause for the problem.

Twenty-four hours of just giving up, playing WoW, and doing general stuff-with the firewalls down and the virus protection off. At 1:30 am, my roomie was playing Wow when it began to say it was having problems. (I had been noticing lag and a mismatch between graphics and text before I went to bed at 11:30). He accessed FFXI! And was on it for about 7 minutes, then logged off. Wow was corrupted thanks to a Trojan. Had to be uninstalled and reinstalled. FFXI access was made with both windows and trend micro firewalls turned on. Hence: Firewalls not the issue, but it confirmed what I already knew: running barefoot on the internet is a BAD plan.

Saturday, I had to work and was gone all day. Sunday, I began looking through information on on-line publishers from www.writersmarket.com. I noticed that I would have to try the access two or three times to get a new page to load. Annoyed, I picked up the phone, and called tech support at my ISP. A few minutes at the command line in my computer pinging various other computers revealed no packet loss, but a very long wait time. The tech asked that I access www.speedtest.net. My download time was 1494 kpbs, but my upload was only 211. The tech remarked that I had a very high latency, and arranged for a house call on Monday. A quick comparison (courtesy of www.speedtest.net) revealed that my interenet service at this current time was SLOW!!!! As I had begun to suspect, the FFXI connection was a symptom of a more serious problem.

Monday, I when came home from work, my room mate was not in evidence. I spent a quiet evening knitting and watching movies. Next morning, he was up and about. “Guess what!” said he, “It isn’t our connection at all! The ISP had a part go down, and they are now running on an auxiliary! So…we didn’t need a house call.”

I groaned. More than 48 hours spent on hold, trying to diagnose a problem that could have been solved with a sentence or two of apology. I know that small internet service providers have their moments of trouble. Small businesses have small margins-I would have understood. I also understood that their reticence was the result of not wanting to scare away business.

A day of work, another hour on hold/deciphering accented English while resetting my Linksys router, and our little household network was again up and running. The ISP predicted full repairs by the end of the month. Well, I did say I understood how small business operates-it can take a while sometimes.

It was a great relief to get my mail and talk to my internet friends on FFXI-I just hope the next time my ISP has a problem, they won’t be quite as reticent about the cause of MY problems.