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Speed Bumps II

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for August 17, 2000

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000

As you may recall from last week, at the close of the day on July 26, I was still waiting for Sympatico to initialize my new high-speed Internet connection. The installer from Montreal-based RBA Inc., had come to install the hardware and had to leave before my account was initialized. 

"Julie," the helpful Sympatico business desker had explained that I was lucky to have the technician arrive on the same day as the account's activation because "We always send the technicians out before the accounts are activated." 

She went on to explain that we had the right day, but that the technicians "have up until midnight" to activate the line. 

Midnight, as you may have guessed, came and went. I finally gave up around 2:00 am on the 27th and went to bed after calling the 24 hour/7 day support line and getting a recording advising me that Sympatico service for Toronto was out of order and that I should have as good a day as possible under the circumstances. ("Our engineers are working on it," chirped the recording – which probably wasn't, but sounded a lot like Julie.) 

Bright and early the next morning, at around 9:30, I called the Sympatico technical support line again. The helpful support tech confirmed that the account was activated and the line was activated, but that the "guys responsible" for adding my name and password to the authentication server hadn't done their bit yet. "Check back every hour or so," was the advice. 2:00 pm came and shortly after it went, voila! I had a connection, at least for a while...

Sharing? We don't speak no sharing... 

I have more than one computer, which given what I do shouldn't be surprising, but it also puts me in company with what Intel Canada estimates are between one and two million other Canadian households. Dataquest, the US industry analyzer, estimates that 60 per cent of consumers buying a new computer this year are buying a second or third system for use at home and ACNeilsen Canada estimates that nearly a third of consumers with one computer at home have two or more. 

So, I have to conclude that Sympatico either hasn't kept up with the trends, or being a child of The Phone Company, simply doesn't care. 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people with two or more computers are more, not less, likely to be adopters of high-speed Net connections and that once they have one, they're going to want to share it with all of the computers in the house. 

Despite this, the company's official policy is that it does not support connection sharing. "We're not allowed to talk about it," said one of their tech support chaps in a hushed voice during my third call to the support line. After being bumped up to a "second line" technician, I found out a little more. 

You see, not only could I not use Microsoft's Windows 98 Second Edition Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on the machine that was connected to the high-speed service, but if I tried to switch ICS to another machine with a dial-up connection, the Sympatico Access Manager still kakked out. In short, any attempt to share an Internet connection within my home network killed the Access Manager software – and killed it so effectively that even once ICS was removed from all machines, it would connect to the Internet, but couldn't go anywhere (all addresses reported "server not found"). 

Part of the problem (not recovering from ICS install and uninstall), said the second line tech, was that the version of Access Manager shipping on this month's Sympatico CD (1.2) was defective in many cases. 

"Connect to the Sympatico Web site and download the earlier version," he advised. And it had to be a direct connection, too, otherwise the file wouldn't be visible. I didn't bother getting into a discussion with him of what I'd do if I had no dial-up modem. I simply did as I was told – uninstalled the new version that the RBA tech has put in and downloaded the older revision, then installed it. 

Once again, I had a high-speed Internet connection, but I was back to square one with sharing it, because the older version of Access Manager didn't support ICS, either.

Users

I figured there had to be a Sympatico users group and that I wasn't the first customer to try ICS without success – and it turned out I was right on both counts. There is a good reference page at www.sympaticousers.org. 

According to the user group's notes, Access Manager – already dumped on several months ago by my colleague, Richard Morochove – is the culprit. The version supplied by Sympatico is brain-damaged and can't be used in a sharing environment. I won't bother walking you through all of the solutions suggested at the SympaticoUsers site except to say that for my taste, far too many of them involved a lot of arcane downloads and Windows Registry tweaks – all with instructions in geek-speak so dense that it was giving me more questions than answers. 

I chose the simplest, but more expensive option. Access Manager is produced for Sympatico by Sunnyvale, CA-based Network TeleSystems. The company also produces a non-brain-damaged version of the software called EnterNet 300. The only problem is the $29 US fee you have to pay to get a copy that lasts beyond 30 days. Once I added up the time I'd already spent, plus a conservative estimate of at least another day to try some of the more geek-intensive and potentially disruptive solutions, it was a no-brainer. I tried the free evaluation for a half-day, then ponied up the price after discovering that ICS now works like a charm.

I share; we share

So, I have high-speed xDSL through Sympatico but Access Manager is banished in favour of NTS EnterNet 300 and I'm sharing the connection with four other computers in the house. All in all, it only took four or five days of trying this and that, doing a lot of research, and paying an extra (estimated) $50 Canadian to get something up and running that should have been free and relatively painless. 

Now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to hear from one or more Sympatico public relations people lining up to chastise me for dumping on their product and quality of service – so I may as well answer their criticisms now. 

Quite simply, if the product – including Access Manager – was up to snuff and if the quality of service was better, you wouldn't be reading the rants from last week and this. So, don't yell at me. Put the energy into getting someone to fix it, instead. Your present and future customers will thank you for it.

Note: Chapter 3 in this saga — where Myles dumps Sympatico in favour of @Home — is available by clicking here

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